Stupid Party sellouts stupidly stagger summit-ward

Dave Camp, R-MI (and Is anybody running against this guy in the primary?):

“I think what we have to do is keep it on the policy and really continue to describe that we have listened to the American people, and anyone listening to the American people would say scrap this bill and begin again, and let’s begin again by focusing on lowering costs...”

No, dummy, the only purpose of this health insurance summit is to undermine the Republicans and give cover to the Democrats.  It’s stupid for the Republicans to buy into it.

It makes no difference whether the Republicans offer anything.  The Democrats hold all the power, let them come up with a plan that the public will accept, or let them fail and suffer the consequences.

There is no need to pass anything.  The Republicans have the best argument: The Democrats already spent all the money, so there’s none left for anything else.  Plus public sentiment backs no-action:

In a New York Times/CBS poll [!!!] released this month, 56 percent said they preferred “a smaller government providing fewer services” to 34 percent in favor of “a bigger government providing more services.”  Some 27 percent named jobs as the most important issue confronting the nation while 25 percent said the economy.  Thirteen percent said health care, fewer than the 16 percent who said “other.”

13% - the best the liberal press could come up with - and 56% saying they want smaller government. Neither is a clarion call for immediate action.

Regardless of the outcome, Republicans will get no credit.  The Democrats and the press - but I repeat myself - will label the Republicans as mean-spirited obstructionists.  It’s as inevitable as Lucy yanking away Charlie Brown’s football, and it won’t be any different this time, either.

Finally, beware the chimera of “bipartisanship.”  For the Democrats and the press (but I repeat myself) “bipartisanship” means Republicans giving up Republican principles to give the Democrats what they want.  This time, just say no.  Your base is watching: Any move away from “no” will be taken as more RINO-willingness to sell out to socialism-lite.   You don’t want to go there.

And as for that message from the American people, Rep. Camp?  You should have stopped at “scrap the bill.”


Provoked by: Bashir, commenting at Daily Pundit, where there’s more discussion.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 22:21:21 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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OK, RINO apologists. Tell me where I’m wrong.

In the comment thread of this post at Daily Pundit, poster “TraitorHater” lamented:

Why Republicans don’t run on a program of deregulation and ending corrupt interventionism picking winners and losers this year, which because of the lousy current House and Senate campaign committees it appears they won’t do, I can’t understand.

To which I replied: Because:

• Because deregulation reduces the power of the government and, by extension, the Republican establishment.
• Because without regulation it’s harder to do favors for your buddies in business or in the pressure groups…
• …or screw the folks who aren’t your buddies, which makes it harder to extract protection money campaign contributions.
• Because less regulation means less lobbying -> fewer post-congressional career opportunities.  (Horrors! Ex-congressmen might have to work for a living!)
  
• Because deregulation means that people have more opportunity to do what they want, instead of what they’re told…
• …which is anathema to the political class and the “educated” (see David Brooks)
• And speaking of the “educated classes,” less regulation means less influence for the media, the academy, and the progressive internationalists/socialists generally…
• …also anathema to the political class and the “educated” (see David Brooks)

Vote ’em all out.


LATER (100120 17:55): Quoth Tam:

Nowadays we just have the Party of Big Government and the Party of Even Bigger Government and the easiest way of telling them apart is that one of them doesn't like abortion and gay cooties.

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Ability is insufficient. There must be permission, too.

Via “Mr.B,” Herbert E. Meyer on our latest intelligence screwups:

The reason our intelligence service keeps failing to connect the dots is because the officials in charge don’t know how.  And the blame lies squarely with President Obama -- and alas, with President George W. Bush before him -- for appointing managers rather than dot-connectors to run our intelligence service.

Mr.B believes the rot goes beyond the exceutives, and that we must clean house:

Like any bureaucracy, the intelligence game is full of mindless drones...

Having people who are just putting in their time towards retirement is NOT going to keep the citizens of (and visitors to) this country safe.
...
Civil service laws be damned.  Get the right folks in there, and the pencil pushing REMFS who just need to get their time in, and their proper tickets punched the hell out of the “intelligence” game.

Well yes, but...

Look, “dot-connecting” is as much an art as it is a skill, and nine times out of ten it’s the product of a judgement call.  It’s tricky under the best of circumstances, even moreso when being wrong might land the dot-connector in political hot water.

And good dot-connectors are smart- certainly smart enough to detect the unspoken messages issuing from their superiors.  What kind of messages do you suppose our dot-connectors are detecting?

What is obvious is that neither the Bush administration (which began by “declaring war on a noun”) nor the Obama administration (whose F.B.I. is busy taking sensitivity lessons from people connected with the Muslim Brotherhood) have been interested in connecting the “wrong kind” of dots. Fear of accusations of racism, international pressures, political correctness, sympathy for “revolutionaries”... whatever the reason, both administrations have continually bent over backwards, failing to name the enemy and rushing to declare each new incident “isolated.”

So it’s no surprise that, in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, we discovered that Nidal Malik Hasan’s conduct and statements repeatedly raised concerns among his superiors and colleagues; and that each time those superiors and colleagues failed to act, instead keeping their concerns to themselves.   No surprise at all that those superiors and colleagues might have believed that connecting “Muslim” with “Jihad” or “terror” might be a career-ender.

I cannot believe that our military and our intelligence agencies have lost all  ability to connect the dots.  What I can believe is that our dot-connectors know which way the wind blows, and- consciously or unconsciously- tailor their output to avoid conclusions their superiors “don’t want to hear.”  And as long as those superiors “don’t want to hear” about Islamic terrorism, it will take something really frightening to make it across that threshold.

Which won’t be solved by replacing a few incompetent agency heads.  Permission to connect the dots has to come from the White House.

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Saving daylight: So, what’s in the account?

(My previous post, mostly about Indiana’s time follies, is here.)

First, a few definitions:

Of the three types of twilight, we who live in urban areas are probably most interested in the first, Civil twilight.  Although the sun is below the horizon, during that period there’s still enough sky illumination to allow “normal activities” without artificial lighting.  (In Indiana the length of Civil twilight varies between 28 and 33 minutes.)  At the end of Civil twilight in the evening, the sky is still light; but if you plan on doing anything outdoors it’s time to turn the lights on.  During Nautical twilight sailors at sea can still make out the horizon clearly enough to do star sightings, but for those of us on land things just gradually get darker.  By the time we urbanites reach Astronomical twilight any remaining sky illumination has usually been swamped by the glow of city lights.

Now let’s look at Daylight saving, or, rather, let’s first not look at daylight saving.  Here’s a plot of the sunrise/sunset and Civil twilight data for Indianapolis for the year 2009.  Violet is darkness; the orange bands are the periods of Civil twilight:


With daylight savings added, the plot looks like this:

As you can see, the major result is to extend the working day at the expense of the early morning.  But there are some other interesting effects:

If you prefer to “get up with the sun,” it’s harder to do under Daylight savings time.  Without DST, if your alarm sounds at 6:30, you’ll awaken to sunshine from April 1 to September 19 (172 days); and with enough light to walk out and get the paper from (roughly) March 14 to October 22 (223 days).  Apply DST, and sunrise comes at 6:30 or earlier only on the 63 days from May 15 to July 16, with Civil twilight beginning at 6:30 or earlier from April 21 to August 17 (119 days).  A 6 o’clock wakeup is worse: With DST, the sun is never in the sky at 6 or before (without DST: April 20-August 18 - 121 days), and Civil twilight is around for only 66 days, from May 14 to July 18.

You do get more light at the end of the day, just hope you don’t have kids to put to bed:  Even without DST the end of Civil twilight (remember, not darkness - that’s half-an-hour later) falls after 8:30 p.m. (2030) from May 22 to July 30.  Daylight saving makes the sky Civil-twilight-or-brighter from March 26 to September 9, with the latest end of Civil twilight at 9:50p.m. (2150) on June 26 and 27.  The golf courses love it, but pity the drive-in theater operators (or you, if you want to do some weeknight astronomy).

Eastbound drivers on the 7a.m. - 8a.m. morning commute also “benefitted” by getting to face the rising sun four times:  Between January 23 (sunrise 8:00) and March 7 (sunrise 7:08, at which point DST kicked in), from March 12 (8:00 daylight time) to April 19th (7:01 daylight), then from August 18 (7:00 daylight) to October 20 (8:00 daylight), with a final round from November 1 (7:14 standard time) to December 22 (8:00 standard).  My back-of-the-envelope calculation says DST gives them an extra 96 days of glare (and I wonder how many extra sun-in-the-eyes related accidents)!

Homeward commuters don’t have it quite as bad:  Drivers headed westbound between 5 and 6 o’clock face the sun for 29 days (from January 1 to January 28), 16 days from March 8 to March 23 (but only if their travel was 5:44 or later), and finally the 61 days from November 1 (when the end of DST moved sunset from 6:43 to 5:43) to the end of the year. Overall, 105 days under daylight, 103 without:  A wash, with the only disadvantage the sudden appearance of the setting sun on November 1.

That last congressional revision of DST dates also ensured that the latest sunrise of the year no longer falls in late December, when you might expect it. This year it took place on October 31, at 8:12 a.m..  (The latest December sunrise- actually December 30-January 8- is 8:06 a.m..  The final seven days in October have sunrises at 8:06 daylight or later, moving the end of DST to the first Sunday in November means those sunrises will always occur under daylight time.)

After the jump, “How dark is it?”

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 22:37:53 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Saving daylight: What time is it?

This past weekend, most of us in the United States^[1] engaged in the biannual ritual of adjusting our clocks, this time to accommodate the end of daylight savings time.  Of course DST doesn’t actually save any daylight, it just moves it around a little.  Here in Indianapolis our sunrise moved from shortly after 8am to shortly after 7, while this evening’s sunset will be at a-quarter-to-six.  One might ask if all the clock-adjusting is worth it?

Congress seems to think so.  In fact, as is the case with many of the nostrums advocated by our Washington solons, their opinion appears to be “if a little is good, then even more will be better.”  Twice in the last 50 years, in the name of “conserving energy,” Congress extended the daylight time period: First during the 1970s energy “crisis,” when it set the 1974 starting date at January 6^th and the 1975 starting date February 23^rd, and again with 2005’s Energy Policy Act, which (effective 2007) both advanced the starting day (moved to the second Sunday in March from the last Sunday in April), and delayed the ending day (previously, the last Sunday in October, delayed until the first Sunday in November ).  Under this current regime, we are now “saving daylight” for 238 of the year’s 365 days.

The question of “What time is it?” has long been a bone of contention in Indiana.  Logically, the division between the eastern and central time zones should fall at about 85° longitude, close to the state’s eastern border.  But the cities of Indianapolis, South Bend, and Fort Wayne have always looked eastward (out of commercial ties and aspirations of becoming “major metros”), while the corners near Chicago and Cincinnati, along with the southwestern counties around Evansville, prefer to align their time with the adjacent states.  In 1918, Congress placed Indiana in the Central time zone, but over time the boundary crept westward, accompanied by legislative action, court cases, popular uproar, and civil disobedience.^[2]  The federal Uniform Time Act of 1966, which (again) attempted to put the entire state in one time zone, only reignited the confusion.  Finally, in the late 60s, an informal compromise was reached which put the state’s northwest and southwest corners in the Central zone, observing daylight time, and set the rest of the state’s clocks to Eastern time, but with no daylight savings.^[3]  This arrangement was finally ratified by the state legislature (over the governor’s veto) and the U.S. Congress in 1966.

Why no daylight time?  Aside from stubbornness and distrust on the part of the citizenry, the part of the state that observed eastern time could be thought of as already being on daylight time- all year around (when compared to the 1918 division)^[4].  And there was some truth in this: In Indianapolis, Eastern Standard time means sunsets as late as 8:20pm, with civil twilight^[5] continuing until almost 9:00.  Entertainment interests, specifically the Theater Owners of Indiana, lobbied the legislature against daylight time (with daylight-savings sunsets as late as 9:20, drive-ins would have been unable to start their programs until shortly before 10pm).  They were joined by the farmers, who, operating by the sun, saw no reason to move their clocks back and forth.  Others were less satisfied.^[6]

The 1966 compromise held- mostly- until 2005, when Governor Mitch Daniels, spurred by businesses complaining that their customers “could never tell what time we’re on,” re-opened the can of worms by including a statewide daylight time provision in an economic development package.  This time it passed, and Indiana has observed daylight time throughout the state since 2006, although with some jockeying of the boundary between Eastern and Central.

Next: Now what?


Elsewhere:

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Wall Street Journal wrong (again) on net neutrality

Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page carried yet another editorial decrying the push for “network neutrality” on the Internet.  And, yet again, the Journal editors got it wrong.

Healined Bad News for Broadband (with the subhead “The FCC wins one for Google.”), the editors begin by intentionally confusing two issues: Network neutrality, and broadband expansion.  Let’s try to untangle them:

President Obama has been a long-time proponent of "net neutrality," which would prevent the use of price to address the increasing popularity of video streaming and other bandwidth-intensive activities that cause Web bottlenecks.

Well, no.  “Net neutrality” says nothing about price, except that the carriers would not be allowed to charge different prices for transporting the similar kinds of packets.  It also says nothing about the option of metered service, where customers who use more bandwidth would pay more.

The new policy is a big political victory for Google and other Web content providers whose business model depends on free-loading off the huge capital investments in broadband made by others.

Ummm... demagogue much?  It’s just as easy- and just as inaccurate- to say that the carriers’ business model depends on “free-loading off the huge capital investments in content and server capacity made by the content providers.”   Either statement ignores the fact that the one needs the other (why a transmission system,  if there’s nothing to transmit?), and that the content folks already pay big buck$ for their connections and bandwidth.  So let’s have no more talk of “free-loading.”

The telecom industry already operates under a set of FCC “principles” of open Internet access, and there have been a mere handful of complaints of network operators abusing them.

Like this, this, this, and this.  Principled?

Mr. [new Federal Communications Commission chair Julius] Genachowski nevertheless wants to codify these principles and extend them for the first time to wireless Internet providers.

Which is a bad thing because...?  Didn’t I just hear something about AT&T blocking Skype connections on the iPhone?

Normally, proponents of government regulation cite a lack of competition as reason to intervene.

...or when companies abuse their customers.  Like credit cards, for example?

But the typical cell phone user...

Woah!  Whiplash!  I thought the topic was Internet access, not cell phones.

...in the U.S. has between four and six carriers to choose from. With all that competition...

I don’t know about “the U.S.,” but in my Indianapolis neighborhood, while I can get dial-up from several suppliers, for high speed I have a total of one choice - the cable TV provider.  (The telco gives me the old “Sorry, too far from the exchange” story every time I ask about DSL.  Then they pipe up with, “But we can get you a T-1 for only $900 installation!”)  What is this “competition” of which you speak?

So what’s the justification for more government regulation?  Beyond lobbying by Google and MoveOn.org, we can't see one.

Ah yes, invoking the evil Google, and evil-er MoveOn.org.  (Do I sense an argument running thin?)

Note that the editors don’t address the core issue of “net neutrality,” which is whether carriers should be permitted to handle different people’s data differently.  Or, more accurately: Can they reduce the quality of someone’s service (and maybe that someone is a competitor) unless that same someone pays a premium for service that the carriers are already being paid for.

(And don’t think AT&T and Verizon haven’t already talked about doing just that.)

But let’s shift the focus for a moment.

Mr. Obama has also complained about the pace of broadband deployment.  If the Administration wants telecom firms to keep expanding their high-speed networks, net neutrality rules are the wrong way forward....

Telecom has been one of the bright spots during this recession.

Which is nice, but irrelevant.

Phone companies like Verizon and AT&T have spent tens of billions of dollars on broadband pipe in the past two years.  To pick one example: AT&T's capital investments in the U.S. totaled some $18 billion in 2008, the highest of any company.  By threatening to limit what telecom companies can charge and to whom, net neutrality rules will discourage such investment.

Well yes, regulation does discourage investment.  Which I might feel a bit more concerned about, except I keep remembering the $200 billion in tax breaks we already gave the incumbent carriers, in exchange for which we were supposed to get fiber-to-the-home by the year 2000(!!!), and for which we actually got nothing.^[1]

(Thank you... I’m all better now!)

Anyway, I’m not particularly concerned with the welfare of companies whose principal problem is too much demand for their product. And AT&T, well, $18 billion in 2008- looks like you have about five more years to go.

Anyway, summing up:

Net neutrality mandates also risk turning broadband service into a commodity...

Strictly speaking, it turns internet service into a commodity.  Which is not necessarily a bad thing.  There are other kinds of broadband that don’t (or wouldn’t) fall under these regulations, just don’t call it “Internet,” ’kay?

...and making it much more difficult for potential new entrants to differentiate their offerings.

Ya mean all those new entrants who won’t be able to get their ideas off the ground because they can’t afford the “AT&T Tax?”  Those new entrants?

An Internet operator hoping to specialize in video or peer-to-peer file-sharing would be prevented from doing so.

Bullshit.

It’s as if the government were saying that if you want to start a supermarket, it has to be a Kroger or Safeway because Trader Joe’s discriminates.

How about that your supermarket it can be a Kroger or a Safeway or a Trader Joe’s; but whichever it is, you won’t have to pay off Big Louie so the delivery trucks can come down your street?

Internet service providers manage their networks to give quality service to the greatest number of people...

Oh?  How about: “Internet service providers manage their networks to make the largest abount of money possible. (NTTAWTT.) And maybe it’s good public policy to make sure internet service providers don’t take advantage of their gatekeeper position to screw their customers.”

...which is as it should be. If the Obama Administration really wants unfettered “competition, creativity and entrepreneurial activity,” the best policy is to stay out of the way.

You know, the Journal’s editors really need to stop blindly rewriting AT&T press releases.  It makes them look dumb.

And when there’s “unfettered competition” facing the big incumbent carriers, they can get back to me.


Related (please read the first before commenting):

Elsewhere:
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Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 21:07:57 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Medical “reform” = $37 billion in new *state* taxes

Nashville’s CityPaper reports that state governors are objecting to

...a provision in House and Senate [Obamacare] bills to expand Medicaid to cover anyone with income less than 133 percent of the poverty level, or $29,327 for a family of four.

Since states pay roughly one third of Medicaid, the provision could add billions of dollars in costs to state governments.
...
In a letter to the Senate, Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said: “States will likely have to pick up the tab for this extension of Medicaid.  We have estimated that the price for Indiana could reach upwards of $724 million annually.

“These additional costs will overwhelm our resources and obliterate the reserves we have fought so hard to protect.”

For Tennessee, the extra cost could reach $1.2 billion, according to Sen. Lamar Alexander.

Set aside for a moment my I’d-lay-you-even-money suspicion that these Medicaid cost increases appear nowhere in the administration’s “reform” cost estimates.  Let’s just look at the numbers.

Indiana has a population of about 6¼ million.  Governor Mitch’s $724 million/year estimate, evenly-divided (which you know it won’t be), works out to an annual state tax increase of $115 per capita ($460 for a family of four).  For Tennesseeans (population roughly 6 million), it’s worse: $1.2 billion parcels out at $200 a piece.  Factor in the people who won’t pay these taxes (anybody below poverty+33%, for one), and if you’re one of the productive you can probably double these numbers.

Or how about a back-of-the-envelope calculation, starting with a SWAG estimated annual cost of $750 million per state.  The magic number= $37.5 billion - per year.  Not on the federal books.

And if the states pay only 1/3 of Medicaid’s total cost, doesn’t that mean the federal share goes up $75 billion, too?  Hey, I thought once healthcare got reformed, the existing federal programs were supposed to cost less!  (I know, silly me!)

And of course none of this accounts for all the folks who will be forced below the poverty line by Obama’s new energy taxes!

The Obama promise:  I won’t raise your taxes (well, yes I will, but... Look! Unicorns!), but somebody else will!

-----
And that’s not all...!  (Heh! You wish!):
Crucis has the Americans for Tax Reform’s “List of All Tax Hikes in the Baccus Draft.”  Read ’em and weep.


CityPaper link via Instapundit.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 17:32:58 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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How it goes...

Bill Quick on the latest Rangel:

It’s hard to recall just how many times accusations of wrongdoing have been leveled at lefty politicians, after which the MSM “investigates” the matter by interviewing the accused pol and then reporting “nothing to the accusations, the accused says the charges are ridiculous, untrue, and motivated solely by politics.”

The the MSM labels the matter closed.

It never seems to occur to these hacks and flacks that the motherfarkers are lying.

No Bill, it’s just step 10 of the usual process:

• What charges?  There aren’t any charges.
• None that we know about, anyway.
• La-la-la-la-la-la-I-can’t-HEAR-you!
• What, you believe those guys?  That bunch of nuts?
• It’s just x’s usual liberal-bashing.
• It’s just y, trying to stir up a stink.
• It’s just the usual Beltway infighting.
• Amplified by the Right Wing Noise Machine.
• And it’s of no importance, anyway.
• Well you might think its important, but that doesn’t matter because Our Buddy says it’s “ridiculous, untrue, and motivated solely by politics.”
• Hey, he said it was all lies: Go away.
• “Despite Repeated Denials, Wingers Rehash False Accusations”
• Okay, we “looked,” and there’s nothing to see there.  Happy?
  
• Hey, who’s gonna believe somebody in pajamas?
• Hey, who’s gonna believe Glenn Beck?
  
• Hey, who’s gonna believe The Washington Times?
• Whaddaya mean, “The Wall Street Journal found something?"
• Whaddaya mean, “Drudge linked it with a bulletin”?
• “Right Wing Media Creates Issue Out Of Thin Air”
• Our Buddy says he was “told it was O.K.”
• Our Buddy says “everybody did it.”
• Our Buddy says there was “no controlling legal authority,” anyway.
• Our Buddy says that “errors may have been made.”
• But that it was “all the fault of Turbotax.”
• Hey, it was an honest mistake.
• Don’t-cha understand honest mistakes, you mean-spirited right-winger?
• All right, yes, that one was another honest mistake.
• Whaddaya mean, “...and he didn’t even use Turbotax”?
• Hey, why investigate? He fixed it, didn’t he?
  
• “Committee Members Choose Partisan Politics Over Statesmanship”
  
• “Political Witch Hunt Continues”
  
• “Investigation Stalls Vital Childrens’ Legislation”
• Editorial: “Committee Members Neglect Their Responsiblilties”
• “Our Buddy Stands Tall Against Partisan Sniping”
  
• “Portrait of a Political Vendetta”
  
• The special prosecutor is corrupt.
• It’s not really about the charges; it’s about “getting” the accused.
• And prosecutorial abuse.
• This is all too complicated to understand, so we’ll just report it as a horse-race.
• “Endless Investigation Takes Toll On Our Buddy’s Family”
• Editorial: “A Waste of Time and Money”
• Editorial: “Time To Rein In Rogue Prosecutors”
• Oh look!  A Republican is screwing someone who’s not his wife!
• Oh look!  A Republican might be gay!
  
• Oh look!  An outbreak of shark attacks!
• Oh look!  Michael Jackson is dead!
• “America Mourns Michael Jackson”
• “World Mourns Michael Jackson”
• The MEDIA mourns Michael Jackson!
• “Is the media overdoing it with Michael Jackson?”
• Go away, we’re busy.
  
• What prosecution?
• Oh, you mean that old story?
• Editorial: “Justice Must Be Tempered With Mercy”
• Editorial: “Sad Ending For a Faithful Servant”
• Editorial: “Questions Remain In Our Buddy Conviction”
• “Washington Veterans Find Today’s Climate More Partisan, Mean-Spirited”
• Editorial: “Why Good Men Shun Politics”
• (time passes)
• What conviction?
• (repeat from beginning)
  

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S.773 cybergrab bill resurfaces; changes only cosmetic

And it’s nice to know others are finally noticing.

First, the latest from Declan McCullagh:

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt [Note: contains Title 2 only - o.g.]), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
...
Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.”  The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government.  (“Cyber” is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF's Tien says.  “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...  The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review.  That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”

Translation:  If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

And a reminder: The Democrats’ favorite RINO, Olympia Snowe, has signed on as co-sponsor.

I’ve been following this one since April.  My first post was largely snark about the cluelessness of the bill’s sponsors, but it also spotlighted the measure’s less-noted licensing provisions.  Work on a network the government (not your employer) says is “critical”?  Get federal certification, or get unemployed!

My next two posts looked at a pair of suspiciously-timed front-page articles in The Wall Street Journal.  A little consent-manufacturing?:


Elsewhere:

Bill text at THOMAS (at this writing, may not incorporate latest revisions)

Credit where due:

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Hold on, maybe we’re wrong about Congressional Airlines...

RollCall had the early report:

Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.

But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel:  At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.

The Air Force had asked for one Gulfstream 550 jet (price tag: about $65 million) as part of an ongoing upgrade of its passenger air service.

But the House Appropriations Committee, at its own initiative, added to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill another $132 million for two more airplanes and specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials.

So the story is: “Three private jets (two extra): $200 million,” right?

Well, no.  There’s more...

The Wall Street Journal digs further:

Congress plans to spend $550 million^[1] to buy eight new jets...

The Pentagon [had originally] sought to buy one Gulfstream V and one business-class equivalent of a Boeing 737 to replace aging planes.  The Defense Department also asked to buy two additional 737s that were being leased.

Lawmakers in the House... added funds to buy a total of three Gulfstream planes and two additional 737s on top of the Pentagon’s request...

In summary:

	Pentagon	$	House	$
Gulfstreams ($66m each)	1	$66m	3	$99m
737s ($70m each)	3	$210m	5	$350m
	4	$276m	8	$449m[1]

Demonstrating that, despite record deficits and economic crisis, the members of Congress still have their priorities in order:  Protecting their phoney-baloney perks.  To the tune of half-a-billion dollars.

Ellis Brachman, a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, said the changes were part of “Congress’s normal oversight responsibility” to make sure “the troops have everything they need,” upon which his nose sprouted to six feet long, and was promptly struck by lightning.

Oh, I added that last bit.


Elsewhere:
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Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 17:06:05 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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