According to a Washington Post news item of May 4, 2007, it appears that President Bush’s Justice Department is writing legislation to immunize the phone companies from lawsuits stemming from post-9/11 surveillance.

‘The proposal states that “no action shall lie . . . in any court, and no penalty . . . shall be imposed . . . against any person” for giving the government information, including customer records, in connection with alleged intelligence activity the attorney general certifies “is, was, would be or would have been” intended to protect the United States from terrorist attack. The measure, which has not yet been filed, is contained in a proposed amendment to the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill.’ read the full story…

Surely this must be another form of Corporate Welfare. If phone companies broke the law, and cooperated with a portion of the government illegally, then shouldn’t they be held both financially and criminally liable? The Executive Branch doesn’t play legislative interference when a person has shoplifted by declaring there should be no penalty for having doing so; by similar logic, why should telephone corporations be granted special legal exemption from laws they were supposed to follow?

On January 17, 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote a letter stating that, in the future, all intelligence gathering of targeted communications will be conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (PDF link via Wikipedia). Unfortunately, the story detailed by the Washington Post news item referenced above, if true, shows that the Executive Branch wishes to excuse the past illegalities of its co-conspirators.

Why is it constitutional for the Justice Department, which is under the Executive Branch, to write legislation, when Article 1 of the Constitution grants legislative authority to the Legislative Branch, otherwise known as Congress?

It appears that phone companies that may have illegally complied with past Executive Branch requests for intelligence on phone conversations have left the companies with a rather large legal liability. In turn, the Executive Branch appears to be attempting to mitigate these liabilities by legislating retroactively. If it was illegal then, then why declare that no penalties or punishments can be assigned for those acts?

This appears to me to be ultimately all about money, and the ability of certain wealthy entities to be above law in effect at the time. In order to achieve this the Executive Branch simply attempts to change the law for the benefit of very few. Shouldn’t there be a penalty for breaking the law?

As usual, citizens lose when the government doesn’t advocate for them, but instead for a few wealthy entities that have interests that oppose the Constitution and the law. Congress needs to severely limit the power of the Executive Branch to legislate.

A good first step would be to impeach the current occupants of the White House.

Once upon a time, I bought and sold stock. During that time I used what is typically referred to as technical analysis and charting. I have a shelf of approximately 35 books about the subject, all of them read at least once, some of them studied closely.

During the time that I traded, which I no longer do, it became apparent to me that volume, one technical measure of how many shares changed hands in the given time period, seemed artificially inflated at times. It was nothing in my view that could be proven using only pure technical analysis, but it was more of a gut feeling based upon studies of price and volume movement contrasted against how it moved historically.

Options? Today we learn:

“One of the nation’s highest-paid executives has left his job after becoming ensnared in a stock options scandal that already has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” read more…

I’m continually amazed by the apparent corruption that seems to exist in business and at the top of many hierarchical pyramids that exist all around us, whether it is legal or not. While I’m not privy to any information about this particular scandal beyond what I read in the news, the following phrase caught my attention, “… has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” Does this mean that those employees, companies, and investors who owned stock in the unnamed companies were lied to before the “profits” were wiped out?

From the same article:

“The company’s review didn’t reach any conclusion about whether there was intentional wrongdoing….”

Why does our society teach most of us little citizens to be honest, and punishes us severely when we’re not, often with zero tolerance, but that people at the top of hierarchy seem to get minor punishments, if any, when they’re either dishonest or seem to be? If it’s true that only the dishonest rise to the top, then why as a society do we teach our children to be honest and punish them when they’re not? (I’m not personally convinced that ‘only’ the dishonest rise to the top, it just often seems that way). Perhaps the question that should be asked is why do any of the dishonest ever rise to the top?

It’s curious that those with so much income seem to so easily escape the severe punishment so commonly prescribed for the rest of us. Why is stealing a candy bar such a heinous offense that it requires jail time, or at the very least a court appearance; but if you’re a CEO and take millions with the stroke of a pen are you allowed to resign if discovered, maybe pay back a small portion of it, perhaps continue to collect an astronomical retirement, indeed, simply have your act deemed “an error”.

We have a serious inequity of justice in the United States and we also appear to have a serious inequity of income distribution, both appear deep and entrenched, and lately these two groups seem to intersect in the title of CEO.

There’s an old saying, “Those with the gold make the rules.”

Why isn’t that rule enshrined in the text of the Declaration of Independence, and observed within the governmental structure delineated by the U.S. Constitution? Perhaps because it isn’t supposed to be that way?

Reality is hard to dismiss, even with a dreamy statement of principals that contradicts it.

The following website has a slideshow that offers a reasonably good explanation of how the stock market and its clearing mechanisms works, with several case studies, as well as some commentary about the SEC placed in historical context. Rather than trying to synopsize it further, it’s offered for your perusal. The show lasts for about 80 minutes, so be prepared to spend at least that much time listening and watching. As a slideshow, it’s not presented primarily as text, so it’s hard if not impossible to speed it up, making my favorite method of reading fast impossible.

The information presented is worth the time spent watching and listening, even if you have little interest in the stock market. Darkside of the Looking Glass may dispel some myths.

The hypocrisy of the Executive Branch and their legislative cohorts is stunning. They want secrecy and privacy for their actions, but are unwilling to grant privacy to others. They seem to want citizens to have the perception of privacy, without the reality of privacy. They seem to want corporations to collect extra customer cash from the value added by customer-perceived privacy, but they want corporations to give them free customer data. They seem to want the private sector to be somewhat more transparent, more like the public sector, but with funding by the so-called choice of consumers instead of by the mandate of taxpayer funding; while simultaneously seeming to want government to be less transparent, more like the private sector, more secretive, and to maintain the mandate of taxes to pay for it.

A curious pattern of common hypocrisy emerges: Beside the collection of money, corporations and government both seem to want loyalty from the worker, customer, taxpayer, and citizen; but both seem unwilling to be likewise loyal to the citizen. (read more . . . )

AT&T is in the news, this time they are alleged to have updated their privacy policy to include language that grants them ownership over customers’ data according to an article by David Lazarus of the San Franscisco Chronicle. Yesterday, the Associated Press wrote about how police agencies across the country have been using private data brokers to bypass privacy laws that prevent the police from legally obtaining that information without a warrant.

It seems that our 4th Amendment guarantee to be safe in “persons … papers, and effects” has been shredded (read more . . . )

On Monday, while testifying at a congressional hearing investigating the Executive Branch’s authorization of without-a-warrant wiretapping of U.S. citizens, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said, “I gave in my opening statement, Senator, examples that President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all, uh, authorized electronic wiretapping.”

I watched this on CSPAN, live, as the statement was made, and was truly surprised there was no audible laughter emanating from the television’s speakers. Immediately after hearing the statement I burst out laughing, it was the best joke I’d heard all year.

What makes Gonzales’s statement so ridiculous is that the electric telegraph was patented in the U.S. in 1837, this was shortly after electromagnetism was discovered by scientists in the 1820s or thereabouts. Since George Washington was the first U.S. president, holding office from the years 1789-1797, it seems impossible that “electronic wiretapping” could have been performed during his presidency.

Many of us have heard or read of the story about Ben Franklin flying the kite in a lighting storm which lit up a key when the kite was struck by a bolt of lightning, and which, as the tale goes, marked the discovery of electricity. That reportedly happened in the mid 1700s sometime, according to Wikipedia, if in fact it is a true story. Static electricity was known of much earlier, but I digress.

If you haven’t seen or heard Gonzales’s statement, one video clip can be downloaded at Intoxination, via Crooks and Liars.

In a (mostly) unrelated bit of trivia, Western Union recently sent its last telegram, and this was said to have completed the company’s transition from communications to financial services. Here are some fair use snippets from the article, the emphasis on year dates was added by me:

“Effective January 27, 2006 … Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.” … “The peak of Western Union’s telegram business was 1929, when the company and its army of uniformed messengers delivered 200 million telegrams worldwide — almost 550,000 a day.” … “Strictly speaking, the telegram — by definition, a message sent by telegraph — died a long time ago. In the mid-1960s, Western Union began sending its customers’ messages wirelessly using microwave radio beams instead of wires strung on poles.” “Western Union was first on many fronts: It built the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861, it introduced the first stock ticker in 1866 and was one of the first 11 stocks tracked by the Dow Jones Average.”

I wrote above that this financial news item was mostly unrelated to this article’s main topic of warrentless wiretapping. However, the dates are curious:

• 1861 was the start of Lincoln’s Civil War, it was also in the mid-1800s that saw the beginning of Corporate Welfare.

“Charter revocation became less frequent, and government functions shifted from keeping a close watch on corporations to encouraging their growth. For example, between 1861 and 1871, railroads received nearly $100 million in financial aid, and 200 million acres of land.” (read more as PDF…)

• 1866 was during the American period known as Reconstruction.
• 1929 was the year President Hoover took office, the infamous stock market crash occurred which marked the end of the Roaring 20s, and about one month later, Hoover told Congress that (paraphrased) the economy was doing great and the American people had regained confidence in it.
• mid-1960s was a time of much technical innovation, one of which related to a precursor of today’s Internet, Darpanet if I remember correctly.
• 2006? What will the historians tell us in the future about now? We should know most of the possibilities by the end of the year. Perhaps the historically most significant event will be warrentless wiretapping, perhaps it will be something else more serious.

The connection in my mind between the two seemingly unrelated items is primarily due to the term Gonzales used in his testimony, “electronic wiretapping” and, paraphrasing, that the Executive Branch had done this broadly in various administrations. The news item about Western Union I’d noticed a few weeks ago relates to the telegraph, one of the first uses of ‘conductive wires’ for ‘electronic communication.’ Connecting the dots to a wider corporatist consipiracy seems tinfoilish, but is it all that hard to imagine when considering Abramoff, Cunningham, Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson, et al? I guess corporate crime still pays.

EFF’s Class-Action Lawsuit Against AT&T for Collaboration with Illegal Domestic Spying Program

The investigation and turning of the wheels of justice down the road of wiretapping without-a-warrant or illegal domestic spying will require a firm grip on events to avoid slipping into hasty judgements that may be wrong turns if driven by a lack of meticulousness. If one views AG Gonzales’s statement, the one that seems so ridiculous on its face, as an admission to the public that our government has historically spied on its own citizens in spite of a 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and siezure, then it certainly explains why there was no laughter in the hearing room. In this case, Gonzales’s statement is definitely not ridiculous.

Twelve scholars wrote:

“Dear Members of Congress: We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush Administration’s National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in the New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department’s December 22, 2005 letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration’s defense of the program. Although the program’s secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department’s defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law.” (read more of the scholars’ legal reasoning…. Scroll to the bottom for their names, academic qualifications, and experience.)

It appears that the FISA law, passed by the Legislative Branch and signed by the President in 1978, was violated by the current Executive Branch.

Most all of us who have watched television cannot miss the flood of commercials that, we have often been told, help support the artists creating the entertainment as well as the corporate distribution network that brings the shows to us. It seems to me that the time granted to commercials on television versus the time granted to the show itself is a growing ratio—commercials are much more preponderant than they were 20- or even 5-years ago—and at the same time costs for viewers to purchase programming have increased far in excess of the rate of inflation for some number of years now.

If one has subscribed to a premium movie channel, the viewer will see fewer commercials, but this is not the only way to decrease commercial content. Technologies such as VCRs and Tivo have apparently turned the advertisers’ television model on its head, as viewers using these devices can skip through the commercial onslaught.

TV advertisers claim they aren’t getting the market saturation they feel they have paid for and claim they are entitled to, so they are increasingly demanding that screenwriters include more product placements within the body of the show itself. The Writer’s Guild of America claims the increasing frequency of this is unfair, perhaps even deceptive, and is fighting back. From an article authored by David Cohn (his weblog), and published by Wired News:

“While the WGA hasn’t filed a FCC petition, they have drawn up a list of demands. These demands include a full disclosure of all advertisers, strict limits on products placed in children’s programming and a collective voice for writers on how products can be incorporated into story lines.”

While I’m absolutely certain that the majority of writers are underpaid (I know well more than one novelist that claims this), and I fully support the rights of groups of people to gather together in peaceful dissent and to petition for higher wages, I have to ask, where is the concern for the average entertainment viewer?

Has the purchaser of cable TV or satellite programming simply been relegated to consumer status?

If one watches over-the-air broadcasts, or even subscribes to basic cable or satellite programming, but doesn’t routinely record shows using a VCR or Tivo for the purpose of commercial free television viewing, then increasing the amount of product placements written into the body of entertainment itself further increase the commercial onslaught that this subset of viewers watch.

If one is paying for a premium movie channel, for advertisement-free viewing, and advertisements are increasingly included in the script as product placements, then are premium-channel purchasers getting the same level of service they received in the past? If one buys DVDs to watch instead of subscribing to a premium movie channel, and advertisements are written into the movie script, then has the retail cost of DVDs gone down as a result of this advertiser subsidy?

If the Television Networks don’t watch out, they’ll find the insatiable greed of their advertisers causes even more people to turn off the TV, more than those who already have. If average television viewers are going to be watching only commercial content, both in the obvious commercial slots as well as the increasing amounts of advertisements within the body of the show itself, advertisements that are not obvious and have an intent other than telling the screenwriter’s story, then shouldn’t those viewers be paid to watch TV?

According to a Justice Department press release, KPMG LLC, the US member firm of KPMG International, a major international accounting and consulting firm, has agreed to pay $465 million in fines, restitution, and penalties, the result of tax evasion and shelters that cost the United States $2.5 billion in taxes not received.

How does this settlement deter future corporate fraud? If I said to you, “I’ll give you change for $1.00 if you give me $5.00,” would you be dim enough to take the deal? The actual figures were $465 million in exchange for $2.5 billion.

Shades of Enron and Arthur Anderson? When does the pattern of Robber Baron behavior consume all corporations? Is the corporate structure itself the problem?

CEO Timothy P. Flynn, in a PDF file says: “The resolution of this matter allows KPMG to confidently face the future as we provide high quality audit, tax and advisory services to our large multinational, middle market and government clients.”

In an unrelated(?) news item of the day, the Small Business Administration has reported that 23% of federal contracts awarded were to small business, but according to the Small Business League, this is likely not true.

“The latest SBA small business statistics ignore the findings of seven separate government investigations and two private studies that have all concluded the SBA has dramatically overstated the governments true level of contracts with small businesses by reporting billions in awards to many of the largest firms in the country as small business awards.”

One of the reasons given for the awarding of contracts to some of the largest U.S. firms is reported by the SBA to be “vendor deception.” The American Small Business League needed a court ruling upholding a FOIA request in order to obtain this information.

“What is in this report that the SBA doesn’t want the public to know?” asked Lloyd Chapman, president of the ASBL. “Instead of spending six months in court trying to suppress evidence, the SBA should be working to stop big corporations from stealing small business contracts.”

Well, now we know: Corporatist Crime still Pays

I just read a future prediction regarding the collapse of civilization, apparently written by the same oil-industry analyst Jan Lundberg who formerly wrote the Lundberg Letter, “the bible of the oil industry.”

Be forewarned it is a dark, disturbing read in the beginning. The end of civilization as we know it is accompanied by a huge population die off, and how that may play out as a result of the end of oil is explored. However, I have to remember while reading it that this is just one person’s sight-into-the-future.

“The fall of the U.S. may be the swiftest empire collapse in world history. It is obvious that the U.S. population and the nation’s infrastructure is heavily petroleum dependent. The U.S. peaked in oil production (extraction) in 1971. The world may be peaking now, as some evidence indicates, or in a few short years. As a severe energy shortage is on tap as soon as the gap between supply and demand is felt by the market, and the Earth gives noticeably less oil than just recently, there will be a cascade of impacts on the economy and people’s lives.”

Although not mentioned in the linked quote above, Lundberg’s particular views of a hydrogen ‘economy’ are curious, in the article’s English use he/she put the quotes around hydrogen as well as economy. She/he appears to completely discount any future for hydrogen as an energy source or storage medium.

There are promising developments in the direct conversion of sunlight and water into hydrogen without the use of “generated” electricity in the process. Older processes such as the electrolytic separation of hydrogen and oxygen using anodes and cathodes that many of us saw demonstrated in science classes and which were powered by wall-outlet electricity are being pointed to by detractors as a reason why solar hydrogen is not economic. Often, the phrase “solar hydrogen” is framed to mean photo-voltaic cells that produce electricity that in turn powers anode-cathode separation processes, and which isn’t as efficient as it could be: remember, baby-steps are taken first, walking and running come later. Newer technologies surpass these prior limitations, but detractors point to older processes as proof for why they will never work.

In other words, solar hydrogen without a carbon cycle is just around the corner.

Fossil-fuel free solar hydrogen has already been produced in small quantities. From Australia we learn about their solar hydrogen contributions, a conceptual solar cell that produces hydrogen directly from sunlight and pure water. “This is potentially huge, with a market the size of all the existing markets for coal, oil and gas combined,” says Professor Janusz Nowotny, who with Professor Chris Sorrell is leading a solar hydrogen research project at the University of NSW Centre for Materials and Energy Conversion. Lundberg fails to mention these types of solar hydrogen.

It is clear to me that our current society is economically rewarding mostly corporations; therefore, an ‘economy’ based upon hydrogen would likely be a continuation of the same exploitation by corporate entities whose bottom line (money) reigns supreme over ‘all other considerations’. In the years that I’ve been alive, it appears that social welfare concerns such as environmentalism have been minimized by energy corporations and corporate welfare is increasingly legislated over the course of many more years. Lundberg reminded me of stories I’ve read elsewhere about how General Motors destroyed the electric trolley services that many cities had earlier in the 20th century, which was an obvious benefit for the petroleum and automotive industries.

What Lundberg is describing is one phenomenon of corporatism, how environmentally sounder technologies were forced out of existence by the greedy corporate machine. Cut-throat competition that forces mom & pop businesses to close is another manifestation of concentration of capital, the dangers of which are well known to historians.

The obscene pay of many CEOs is a different kind of corporatist phenomenon that is a sickness in our society today, it is one which increases the financial stress on all the rest of us. This is a market-distorting, relative-pay disparity problem versus the lowest paid worker, and is an abnormal concentration of capital: one of the reasons Will Durant, author of the acclaimed Story of Civilization series, teaches us that prior great civilizations historically fail. In the corporatist system, the CEOs want us to believe they deserve this financial welfare: in the same system the poor and even the middle class don’t deserve much, and whatever they do manage to earn will be a laborious task that is also of primary benefit to the overall corporatist system.

How just is it that poor people must now often work two full-time minimum-wage jobs just to pay their bills? There sure isn’t much time for the working-poor to be politically active after cooking their food and doing their laundry and working their jobs, they certainly don’t have money left over to contribute to political campaigns. In contrast, the pay of CEOs grants them ample leisure time if they so desire, and generous campaign contributions are routine in their pay-to-play political action system. Today this is all part of the corporatist system.

I digressed a bit. A question that Lundberg’s article brings to mind: Would it ultimately be good if the greedy’s support structure were removed from under them?

If Lundberg’s scenario comes to pass, it will be a painful transition, one that will be just as hard on the poor as the wealthy, but the society that might emerge from the chaos he/she describes promises survivors much more fulfilling lives.

***

To provide a little balance to the chaotic, dire scenario of Jan Lundberg, the Houston Chronicle published “Boring fact is oil not soon tapped out” by Scott Tinker, apparently the state geologist of Texas. (Via Peak Oil News)

“If there is an important peak of oil, it actually occurred in the early 1980s when oil consumption as a percentage of total global energy topped out just shy of 50 percent” and which he claims is now at 40%. The energy transition trend is consistent and well underway.

Hydrogen isn’t directly mentioned in this article, but at least it isn’t disparaged as in Lundberg’s article. I’m reminded of an old saying that goes something like, “It’s not what they’re telling you that’s most important, what they’re not saying is.”

The bright side of Tinker’s perspective, if it can correctly be considered bright, is that our New World Order corporatist society will keep ticking along, and he believes “investment” will be required. One question I have for Tinker is how will our corporatist society treat the poor if they don’t have money to “invest”?

I hope I helped to fill in a couple of blanks with this short rant, but please remember that my crystal ball is likely broken.

Adam Shostack points out that ChoicePoint has framed an issue as something other than what it is. However, I focus on what may be a different aspect of the ChoicePoint reframing than that which Adam observes.

If the CEO of ChoicePoint, Derek Smith, espouses the theory that society is better off if “everyone can check the background of anyone else”, then he hasn’t achieved much else other than to enrich his own pocket at others’ expense. In the last reports I read, ChoicePoint was not opening up its database further, but rather, in response to the data-theft issues, restricting access to fewer organizations.

This action of ChoicePoint means his publicly stated vision is further from realization, not closer. Perhaps his vision of a freely transparent society is just another sales pitch he is using mostly to his own and ChoicePoint’s benefit.

Doesn’t Mr. Smith believe in the Fourth Amendment? Does he believe in capitalism? Does he believe in the property rights of others?

Perhaps Mr. Smith firstly believes in corporatism, then secondly believes only in capitalism when it’s his corporate property in need of rights. Perhaps that’s why he claims to believe regulation, not capitalism, is the fix for consumers whose data is sold as the property of ChoicePoint. This logic would be hilarious if it wasn’t so corporopathically twisted with respect to the Fourth Amendment rights of the people.

I wrote more of my thoughts about this in the comments of a prior posting about ChoicePoint. In summary, the information in ChoicePoint’s database should be recognized as ‘the property’ of each citizen it represents. When ChoicePoint sells data about anyone, that citizen should get a royalty. This would be equitable capitalism instead of corporatism.

The rationale that government regulation is the answer to the past and continuing corporate theft of citizens’ Fourth Amendment property and calling it ChoicePoint’s own, speaks loudly to the corporate welfare state that years of graft have brought us.

That the corporate seizure of people’s data is apparently legal, indicts corporatism as a defining element of the corporate welfare scam. Perhaps we need a new word to refer to some of the corporations and executives of the world: corporopathic. They unreasonably seize from all the people, pay themselves outrageous bounty; in response the corporate media has the audacity to claim that others have stolen from them!
That’s the essential framing of the issue now in creation for Choicepoint.