Facism - Electronic Privacy About To Be Thrown Out the Window

It looks like the sponsor of the Electronic Telecommunication Act of 2011 (S. 1011), Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) has "revised" the bill, caving to pressure from law enforcement lobbying groups, including the National District Attorneys Association and National Sheriffs' Association, according to a recent c|net article.

Among the revised provisions are a litany of privacy-reducing revisions:

• Warrantless access to Americans' electronic correspondence to over 22 federal agencies. Only a subpoena is required, not a search warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause.
• State and local law enforcement granted warrantless access Americans' correspondence stored on systems not offered "to the public," including university networks.
• Authorizes any law enforcement agency to access accounts without a warrant -- or subsequent court review -- if they claim "emergency" situations exist. 
• Providers "shall notify" law enforcement in advance of any plans to tell their customers that they've been the target of a warrant, order, or subpoena. 
• Delay of notification of customers whose accounts have been accessed from 3 days to "10 business days." This notification can be postponed by up to 360 days.

If your personal privacy for online activities is still important to you, contact your U.S. senators to voice your opposition to this Orwellian nightmare.

Hyperinflation - Even the Fed admits they're screwing up

A post today from zerohedge gives a preview of the endgame of QE1, QE2 and finally QEternity put forth by the Fed as an effort to stimulate growth. Apparently, even the Fed doesn't know what they are doing, by their own admission.

Here we are, $16 trillion in the hole, and the Fed is putting the pedal to the metal to the tune of $40 billion per month. Print a few trillion here, a few trillion there and soon you are talking about "real money", right?

I guess it is fortunate that the US Dollar is still the world's reserve currency, with oil and a whole host of other commodities being priced in dollars, so the demand for our fiat greenback is still strong. But boys and girls, let me assure you that as soon as that game changes, we are well and truly hosed. Demand for dollars will dry up in an instant and suddenly, there will be more dollars chasing fewer goods and services overnight. And there are some hints that the game is changing already, with the BRIC countries giving each other access to local currencies within their central banks.

So where does this leave us? By the Fed's own model analysis, if their zero-bound interest policy continues for 8 or 9 consecutive quarters, hyperinflation is all but inevitable. Since the Fed had committed publicly to this policy through at least mid-2015, it seems a deliberate attempt to destroy the USD. Add to that the international movements of currency outside of the current USD reserve and you have a recipe for greater disaster. I do and truly get the sense that the Fed is busy with the deck chairs on the Titanic, hoping that the iceberg we have hit is just a mirage.

Holding physical commodities is looking like a better idea as each day passes. Be careful out there.

Carrot and Stick: Enforcement of Biometric Screenings

Earlier this year, a Fortune 1000 company at which I am employed sent an innocent-looking email, inviting the associates to attend a "company-paid" biometric health screening and assessment. It seems that they are quite concerned about the health status of their employees and out of the goodness of their hearts, they decided to help us help ourselves.

The biometric health screening was defined as:

"...a short health examination that indicates your risk for certain diseases and medical conditions. This information is obtained in the strictest of confidence to help you understand your health risks so you and your physician can take appropriate action regarding your health. The screening is supplemental to the care received from your physicians, and we encourage you to share the results with them, if you choose."

But the examination does not end there. A further physical examination is performed during which:

"..a trained health screener will obtain certain body measurements and a small blood sample by a finger stick. The data collected will include systolic and diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, HDL (good) cholesterol, ratio of total cholesterol to HDL and glucose. Following the test, you will immediately receive your results and two to three minutes of counseling."

The email goes on to assure us that our personal information will NOT (their emphasis) be shared on an individual level within the company. The company will, however receive the aggregate results, which will ostensibly be used for "developing strategies to improving the overall health of the general employee population."

Sounds great so far right? What could be wrong with the company wanting to improve the health of its employees right?

So after the carrot comes the stick:

"We want to remind you that if you do not complete a Health Assessment and a biometric screening either through the onsite process or with your physician in 2012, you will pay higher health care premiums in 2013 than those how have completed these healthy actions."

So it has come to this: complete the biometric screenings or else it will cost you. Why such a heavy-handed tactic, if there is supposed no attention paid to the individual numbers, that these results are only used to report aggregate results?

Oh, I see, the personal information will not be shared within the company. Nice little loophole there. So exactly WHO will my company be sharing MY PERSONAL biometric screening data with, then? And why is it so important to do this that it is necessary to wield the threat of higher premiums in order to enforce these actions?

Obviously, the health insurance contracts they have signed compel these actions. So the likely recipient of MY PERSONAL biometric screening data would would be the health insurance company.

Fortunately for my personal situation, I do not purchase health insurance through my company (I am on my wife's policy).

But where does it end? Say for the sake of argument that the insurance premiums are not a sufficient stick to force these screenings. Is the next step to make my employment contingent upon completing a health assessment? Given how comfortable we all seem to have gotten with drug screening as a contingency for virtually any job in the corporate world, such a possibility doesn't seem so far fetched.

Welcome to the post-Affordable Care Act world. Unlimited possibilities for forced compliance with whatever our corporate masters deem to be a desirable lifestyle.

Fascism: NDAA and indefinite detention

At the end of 2011, President Obama quietly signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Buried within the text of this bill was a chilling codicil which would, in effect, permit the U.S. Military to indefinitely detain any individual, who:

"...was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces." (HR 112-329, Part 1, Sec. 1021(b)(2))

So what constitutes a "belligerent act"? Does it have to necessarily be have to be an act of terrorism, or merely speaking out in protest of an act of the U.S. Government? How should we interpret this?

For additional commentary on how this section of the bill might be interpreted, there is a fairly detailed breakdown of this section of this bill at the Tenth Amendment Center.

Greetings

Welcome to my new blog.

For some time now, I have been noticing that the country I have loved so much throughout my life is undergoing a disturbing set of changes. Little by little, the freedoms, privacy and basic fairness I had taken for granted as part of my experience of being an American citizen are starting to melt away. As I watch these developments, I have felt the need to chronicle and comment upon them, partially in order to try to make sense of them myself.

Periodically, I will post links that I have collected that I have categorized in the following ways:

• Political Corruption - Observations of how the rights of individuals have begun to lose ground in favor of the lust for power and cash.
• Corporate Corruption - Observations of how the corporate "Masters of the Universe" have so distorted the basic underpinnings of capitalism that we are about to become beggars upon our own shores.
• Religious Fanaticism - Observations on how religious fundamentalism have started a hegemonic push of agendas of ignorance and fear.
• Fascism - Observations on how the growth of governmental control at all levels (federal, state and local) may be pushing us towards that well-known Orwellian dystopia we have learned to fear for so long.

I don't make any guarantees about how long this blog will last. This is the first time I have done something like this. I don't normally have the attention span to put my thoughts down in print, so this may be a flash in the pan. But I will try to keep it going, as I said, if only for my attempt to explain to myself what, how and why our world seems to be going wrong.

I will intentionally keep the details of who I am fairly light. I don't have any illusions of perfect privacy, but I also don't see the point in making too easy to be persecuted for what I write here, in the event our world truly does begin to spin out of control.