His disclosures did not cause grave damage to national security.
What Snowden discovered is “material evidence of an institutional crime.”
As a system administrator, Snowden “could go on the network or go into any file or any system and change it or add to it or whatever, just to make sure — because he would be responsible to get it back up and running if, in fact, it failed. So that meant he had access to go in and put anything. That’s why he said, I think, ‘I can even target the president or a judge.’ If he knew their phone numbers or attributes, he could insert them into the target list which would be distributed worldwide. And then it would be collected, yeah, that’s right. As a super-user, he could do that.”
“The idea that we have robust checks and balances on this is a myth.”
Congressional overseers “have no real way of seeing into what these agencies are doing. They are totally dependent on the agencies briefing them on programs, telling them what they are doing.”
Lawmakers “don’t really don’t understand what the NSA does and how it operates. Even when they get briefings, they still don’t understand.”
Asked what Edward Snowden should expect to happen to him, one of the men, William Binney, answered, “first tortured, then maybe even rendered and tortured and then incarcerated and then tried and incarcerated or even executed.” Interesting that this is what a whistleblower thinks the U.S. government will do to a citizen. The abuse of Bradley Manning worked.
“There is no path for intelligence-community whistle-blowers who know wrong is being done. There is none. It’s a toss of the coin, and the odds are you are going to be hammered.”
A snap of a finger, a handful of scattered microphones and a computer algorithm are all it takes to create an accurate three-dimensional map of a room, say Swiss and US researchers.
The method, described in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured the distance between echoes to create maps of both a university lecture room and a cathedral alcove.
With more refinement, the technique could someday lead to better ways of designing concert halls for specific acoustics, aid investigations and even help with crime scene reconstruction, researchers said.
Officials at Logan Middle School in Logan County, West Va. maintain that Marcum, who has since completed eighth grade, was suspended for one day because he caused a disruption after a teacher asked him to remove a shirt emblazoned with a hunting rifle and the statement “protect your right.”
“She said, ‘Are you supposed to wear that in school?’” Marcum had previously explained in an interview with local station, WOWK-TV. “I said, ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’”
Supreme Court: For right to remain silent, a suspect must speak - You must tell the police, that you are invoking your 5th Amendment right to remain silent BEFORE YOU GET ARRESTED!!!! Your actions, including not speaking to them after you are arrested , are not protecting you from self incriminating …..
Just being silent is not enough. The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that a suspect’s silence during informal police questioning can be used as evidence of guilt unless the right is invoked.
“Before petitioner could rely on the privilege against self-incrimination, he was required to invoke it,
Domestic spying capabilities used by the National Security Agency to collect massive amounts of data on American citizens could soon be available to the Department of Homeland Security — a bureaucracy with the power to arrest citizens that is not subject to limitations imposed on the NSA.
Unlike the DHS, the NSA is an intelligence agency, not a domestic law enforcement agency. It cannot arrest those suspected of wrongdoing. That power of the federal government lies with agencies under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, the Treasury, Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies.
There’s no easy answer for HIV; the sly virus uses our own immune cells to its advantage and mutates readily to shrug off round after round of anti-retrovirals. But thanks to the efforts researchers from the University of Illinois and some heavy-duty number crunching from one of the world’s fastest petaflop supercomputers, we may be able to stop HIV right in its tracks.
These new robot-painting machines can wash, apply solvent to remove dirt, rinse and then spray two different paint types. They reach,even into complex spaces inside the open wing root that must be painted for corrosion protection.
Manually, it takes a team of painters 4.5 hours to do the first coat. The robots do it in 24 minutes with perfect quality. Boeing began using the machine in February. By midsummer, all 777 wings will be painted this way.
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been? It’s alright we know where you’ve been.
You’ve been in the pipeline, filling in time,
provided with toys and Scouting for Boys.
You bought a guitar to punish your ma,
And you didn’t like school, and you know you’re nobody’s fool,
So welcome to the machine.
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream? It’s alright we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star, he played a mean guitar,
He always ate in the Steak Bar. He loved to drive in his Jaguar.
So welcome to the machine.
A Batavia High School teacher’s fans are rallying to support him as he faces possible discipline for advising students of their Constitutional rights before taking a school survey on their behavior.
They’ve been collecting signatures on an online petition, passing the word on Facebook, sending letters to the school board, and planning to speak at Tuesday’s school board meeting.
Students and parents have praised his ability to interest reluctant students in history and current affairs.
But John Dryden said he’s not the point. He wants people to focus on the issue he raised: Whether school officials considered that students could incriminate themselves with their answers to the survey that included questions about drug and alcohol use.
Dryden, a social studies teacher, told some of his students April 18 that they had a 5th Amendment right to not incriminate themselves by answering questions on the survey, which had each student’s name printed on it.
Losing our freedoms little by little and damn you if you inform the youngsters of their rights. Today’s educational system is a disgrace.
A government that does not tax sufficiently to cover its spending will eventually run into all manner of debt-generated trouble. Its nominal interest rates will rise as bondholders fear inflation. Its business leaders will hunker down and try to move their wealth out of the companies they run for fear of high future corporate taxes.
Moreover, real interest rates will rise, owing to policy uncertainty, rendering many investments that are truly socially productive unprofitable. And, when inflation takes hold, the division of labor will shrink. What once was a large web held together by thin monetary ties will fragment into very small networks solidified by thick bonds of personal trust and social obligation. And a small division of labor means low productivity.
ll of this is bound to happen – eventually – if a government does not tax sufficiently to cover its spending. But can it happen as long as interest rates remain low, stock prices remain buoyant, and inflation remains subdued? I and other economists – including Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, Paul Krugman, and many more – believe that it cannot.
Two months from now, revised government estimates are likely to show that the economy is even bigger than the currently stated $15 trillion.
And while the numbers may make some blink or gasp, the mere size of gross domestic product won’t hide the reality that in terms of actual growth, this is also the worst economy in 83 years.
GDP growth is in the midst of its longest sub-3 percent annual growth rate since 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression, according to Bespoke Investment Group. The economy hasn’t topped 3 percent since 2005—before Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke took over—and is unlikely to do so this year.
President Obama’s proposal to limit the value of 401(k)s, pensions, and other tax-favored retirement accounts to about $3.4 million certainly sounds reasonable. After all, at a time of big budget deficits, we shouldn’t subsidize “the rich” with tax breaks, should we?
Communism cannot create wealth in a sustainable manner. While capitalism invigorates, communism enervates. This is why it not only cannot have capitalism within it – because the contrast is too great and too obvious – but even contiguous to it. In both cases, communism’s victims will seek to escape from it. Within communism, they will patronize the pockets of capitalism. Outside its borders, they will run to it.
It is noteworthy and telling that never in numbers have people sought to escape capitalism for communism. The misguided few who have, almost invariably soon sought to leave. Those who stayed found themselves literally trapped or effectively so – by being such pariahs in the broader world that they had nowhere else to go.
Communism and the attempts to restrict capitalism are bound to fail. It will come sooner or later, but come it will. As evidence just recall: On May 1, the communists used to sing The Internationale, today they sound the international distress signal: Mayday.
Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income: A new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). (Bill: PPACA, Reconciliation Act; Page: 2,000-2,003; 87-93)
Obamacare Medical Device Tax: . Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales. This will make everything from pacemakers to artificial hips more expensive. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,980-1,986)
Obamacare High Medical Bills Tax: Before Obamacare, Americans facing high medical expenses were allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceeded 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). Obamacare now imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Therefore, Obamacare not only makes it more difficult to claim this deduction, it widens the net of taxable income. According to the IRS, 10 million families took advantage of this tax deduction in 2009, the latest year of available data. Almost all are middle class. The average taxpayer claiming this deduction earned just over $53,000 annually. ATR estimates that the average income tax increase for the average family claiming this tax benefit will be $200 – $400 per year. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,994-1,995)
Obamacare Flexible Spending Account Tax: The 30 – 35 million Americans who use a pre-tax Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs face a new Obamacare cap of $2,500. This will squeeze $13 billion of tax money from Americans over the next ten years. (Before Obamacare, the accounts were unlimited under federal law, though employers were allowed to set a cap.) Now, a parent looking to sock away extra money to pay for braces will find themselves quickly hitting this new cap, meaning they would have to pony up some or all of the cost with after-tax dollars.
There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. Nationwide there are several million families with special needs children and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,388-2,389)
Starting in Tax Year 2014:
Obamacare Individual Mandate Non-Compliance Tax: Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance – as defined by President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services — must pay an income surtax to the IRS. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that six million American families will be liable for the tax, and as pointed out by the Associated Press: “Most would be in the middle class.”
In addition, 100 percent of Americans filing a tax return (140 million filers) will be forced to submit paperwork to the IRS showing they either had “qualifying” health insurance for every month of the tax year or they obtained an exemption to the mandate.
Americans liable for the surtax will pay according to the following schedule
1 Adult
2 Adults
3+ Adults
2014
1%AGI/$95
1%AGI/$190
1%AGI/$285
2015
2%AGI/$325
2%AGI/$650
2%AGI/$975
2016
2.5%AGI/$695
2.5%AGI/$1390
2.5%AGI/$2085
(Bill: PPACA; Page: 317-337)
Obamacare Employer Mandate Tax: If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2,000 for all full-time employees. This provision applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3,000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer). (Bill: PPACA; Page: 345-346)
Obamacare Tax on Health Insurers: Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. The tax phases in gradually until 2018. Fully imposed on firms with $50 million in profits. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,986-1,993)
Starting in tax year 2018
Obamacare Tax on Union Member and Early Retiree Health Insurance Plans: Obamacare imposes a new 40 percent excise tax on high cost or “Cadillac” health insurance plans, effective in 2018. This tax increase will most directly affect union families and early retirees, who are likely to be covered by such plans. This Obamacare tax will be levied on insurance policies whose premiums exceed $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family. Middle class union members tend to be covered by such plans in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family) for early retirees and high-risk professions. CPI +1 percentage point indexed. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,941-1,956)
Stand tall for the beast of America.
Lay down like a naked dead body,
keep it real for the people workin’ overtime,
they can’t stay living off the governments dime.
Stand tall for the people of America.
Stand tall for the man next door,
we are free in the land of America,
we aint goin’ down like this.
Stand tall for the beast of America.
Lay down like a naked dead body,
keep it real for the people workin’ overtime,
they can’t stay living off the governments dime.
Stand tall for the people of America.
Stand tall for the man next door,
we are free in the land of America,
we aint goin’ down like this.
I will be right to you,
I will be right to you,
I will be right to you,
and together we can stand up to the beast.
You see…Suppression is a m*thxr f*cken prison
SO i hand you the key to your cell,
you’ve got to love you neighbor,
love your neighbor.
And let your neighbor, love you back.
Stand tall for the beast of America.
Lay down like a naked dead body,
keep it real for the people workin’ overtime,
they can’t stay living off the governments dime.
Stand tall for the people of America.
Stand tall for the man next door,
we are free in the land of America,
we aint goin’ down like this.
It took only about five minutes for the market to tank and rebound after a group hacked the Associated Press’ Twitter feed to put out bogus information — and now the feds are taking a longer look to find out who got rich during the chaos.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have each opened investigations into the hack that falsely reported “explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured” and briefly wiped away $136 billion in market value.
Sources in and out of government say investigators will sort through the big financial winners and not just conduct a standard review of a market swing.
According to a new reportby the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Barack Obama has spent over twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings of any kind (474.4 hours).
President Obama’s new budget proposal aims to trim Americans’ nest eggs by setting a cap on lifetime contributions of 401(k)s at an average of $2.7 million and putting the policing of the limit on their employers.
The idea is supposed to simplify the tax code, but would actually make life much more complicated, says one expert.
The YouTube channel Patriot News Organization on Thursday uploaded atraining video from the Department of Homeland Security that depicts a fake news broadcast about a police SWAT team raiding an American house and arresting “extremist” members of a “local militia group” for possession of illegal firearms and planning to commit terrorist attacks.
“Very disturbing video straight from DHS website – they use it to help train all of the deputized agencies during a crisis, even hospital administrators, media faces, everything and everyone that would be involved in such an event,” reads the Patriot News Organization’s description of the video.
Fridges, washing machines and other electrical goods could be switched off automatically in British homes without the owners’ consent under EU proposals to help power stations meet demand for electricity.
In January, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare introduced two new bills to the Idaho Senate Health and Welfare Committee that would make it impossible to remove a child’s name and date of birth from the “voluntary” vaccine registry and extend the vaccine registry to all Idahoans with the stated purpose of monitoring their vaccine status. At first blush, this type of information gathering might seem relatively benign, but is it really harmless in practice? Is there potential for abuse and what are the ramifications if we allow this type of information gathering?
California’s biggest problem is business regulation, on which it ranks dead last. As most residents know, the state has some of the strictest local zoning regulations in the country, which reduce the housing supply and drive up home prices.
Anyone hoping for signs of a healthy economic recovery was disappointed by lower-than-expected GDP growth for the first quarter of 2013—a mere 2.5%, far short of the forecast 3.2%. Meanwhile, the stock market continues to soar, hitting record levels in recent weeks. It’s a striking disconnect, and one that is discouraging and confusing for Americans as they seek to earn a living and save for the future.
Companies and small businesses are also dealing with the same paradox. Many are in good shape and have money to spend. So why aren’t they pumping more capital back into the economy, creating jobs and fueling the country’s economic engine?
Quite simply, if firms can’t see a clear road to economic recovery ahead, they’re not going to hire and they’re not going to spend. It’s what economists call a “deadweight loss”—loss caused by inefficiency.
The sister of teachers-union president Michael Mulgrew is under investigation for failing to disclose she managed a company that raked in $39.6 million in public-school contracts while she was on an 11-year child-care leave from her city teaching job, The Post has learned.
Kathleen Mulgrew-Daretany, 40, was an English teacher at Lafayette HS in Brooklyn for less than five years with a $56,707 salary. She left in 2001 on maternity and child-care leave, but was allowed to remain on the Department of Education employment rolls.
A Spanish-language leaflet that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided to the Mexican Embassy in Washington advises border-crossing Mexicans that they can collect taxpayer-funded food stamp benefits for their children without admitting that they’re illegal immigrants.
Underlined and in boldface type, the document tells immigrants who are unlawfully in the United States that, ‘You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.’
The USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, is funded in order to prevent hunger by helping poor families maintain a basic level of nutrition for both adults and children.
A hormone called betatrophin was surprisingly found to cause mice producing insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells at up to 30 times the normal rate. The new beta cells only produce insulin when called for by the body, offering the potential for the natural regulation of insulin and a great reduction in the complications associated with diabetes.
Clinical trials are underway in Denmark, where researchers at the Aarhus University Hospital are using a ‘novel approach’ to fight the HIV virus. The latest testing comes as a U.S. trial first started in 2009 to prevent HIV infection was halted last week.
If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble.
This is not so much a gamble as a certainty: under a 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family – and that’s before paying taxes on withdrawals to Uncle Sam.
While Apple was on its way to the company’s first profit decline in almost a decade during the first three months of the year, Samsung’s net profit grew 42 percent in the same period to 7.2 trillion won – about $6.5 billion U.S. from 5 trillion won a year earlier. It was a record-setting quarter for the Korean consumer electronics maker. “Our business earnings grew from the previous quarter driven by an increase in smartphone sales and decreased marketing expenses,” Hyun Joon Kim, Samsung’s vice president of mobile planning told analysts.
In other words, Samsung sold more phones while pumping less money into marketing. Kim further pinned the quarter’s success on sales of its flagship smartphone the Galaxy S3 and its oversized Galaxy Note 2 handset.
Apple needs to extract itself from the toxic relationship with Samsung, its ARMsupplier.
Intel is the best large-scale silicon manufacturer in the world. They have the people, the technology, and the plant capacity to match Apple’s needs for years to come.
“But Intel doesn’t do ARM!” you say. Indeed, Intel has no interest in the fierce competition and small margins in the ARM-based SoC market. Joining the ARM fray would severely disrupt Intel’s numbers and infuriate Wall Street. But if Intel were to essentially “go private” as Apple’s semiconductor manufacturing arm (pun intended), catering to all of Apple’s x86 and ARM needs (and whatever else Bob Mansfield is secretly plotting), Wall Street would have no such objection.
Intel is flailing. The traditional PC market – Intel’s lifeblood – continues to shrink, yet the company does nothing to break into the ARM-dominated mobile sector. In the meantime, the company makes perplexing investments such as buying McAfee for $7.68B.
There’s a leadership vacuum at Intel. Six months after announcing CEO Paul Otellini‘s “retirement”, Intel’s Board has yet to find a replacement who can sail the ship in more competitive waters. Apple could commission Pat Gelsinger, a 30-year Intel veteran and former CTO (Intel’s first) who fled to VMware after his career stalled at Intel. Despite being a bit of a Bill Gates look-alike (once upon a time), Gelsinger is a real technologist who would fit well within Apple, especially if he were given the opportunity to really “go for” the ARM architecture instead of iteratively tweaking x86 devices.
Last but not least, Intel’s market cap is about $115B, eminently affordable. The company is profitable and generates a good deal of cash, even after the heavy capital expenditures required by its constant need to build new and expensive manufacturing plants.
…oh, and one more thing: Wouldn’t it be fun to “partner” more closely with Microsoft, HP and Dell, working on x86 developments, schedules and… pricing?
Last week, Red Lobster basically admitted that it had crossed the line with the introduction of a policy aimed at increasing efficiency and lowering restaurant costs. In July 2012, the restaurant chain, owned by Orlando-based Darden Restaurants, eliminated the busboy position, demoted many waiters to lower-paid status as “service assistants” and forced the remaining full-fledged servers to increase the number of tables they handled from three to four.
Lo and behold, it appears as if Red Lobster is now acknowledging that these critics may have been on to something. Less than a year after the four-table policy was launched, the company announced it is reversing the decision, and waitstaff will go back to serving three tables at a time. A Red Lobster spokesperson told the Orlando Sentinel that while some customers liked the four-table policy, once it was introduced around the country, “far more folks told us that in some instances, it really turned out to be a barrier to providing that great guest experience.
