BUT OF COURSE: FBI Happy That NSA Revelations Are Distracting People From How Much Spying FBI Does. “Like the NSA, the FBI seems to have interpreted its terrorism-prevention mandate as license to collect and retain as much information as possible. It sweeps up massive amounts of information and retains it in giant databases—regardless of whether the information indicates any threat or wrongdoing. This broad collection and retention raises the same concerns about impacts on privacy and First-Amendment-protected activity as the NSA’s programs. In fact, in the case of the FBI, some of these concerns have already proved well-founded.”
Archive for 2014
March 11, 2014
MONEY IN POLITICS: Feds say DC Mayor Vincent Gray (D) knew of illegal campaign contributions.
Ever wake up with a crippling hangover and think “never doing that again”? Most people who have had the experience end up drinking again before too long—if they didn’t, there probably wouldn’t be much of a market for all the vintners, brewers, and distillers currently in business. Still, you might think that a bad hangover would cause people to exercise a bit more caution with their alcohol intake.
If you thought so, you’d probably be wrong, at least according to research that went out last week. Some researchers set up a few hundred young Missouri relatives with electronic diaries and asked them to track their drinking and hangover experiences. (In academic jargon, this approach is apparently termed an “Ecological Momentary Assessment.”) Twenty-one days and a hefty 2,276 “drinking episodes” later, the researchers looked at whether incidents of hangover—of which there were 463—had little effect on how long it took participants to have their next drink.
It initially looked like hangovers scared people off, with an average increase of six hours until the next drink among those who suffered from one. But many other factors affect drinking frequency, so the authors had to do a multivariate analysis, taking into account things like a history of alcohol abuse, the day of the week, typical drinking frequency, and so on. When these other factors were considered, the impact of hangovers largely went away.
Of course, some people respond to a hangover by taking a drink as a cure — I used to do that in college, a habit that I outgrew along with drinking enough to be hung over — so that may affect things. Science also says that “hair of the dog” trick doesn’t work, but it sure seemed to . . . .
READER BOOK PLUG: From Kevin Rattan, Elementary.
CANADIAN PORN CHANNELS in trouble for not showing enough Canadian content. I saw a Canadian porn film once in law school. It featured lascivious shots of the woman removing her knee-high wool socks. No, I am not joking.
POPULAR MECHANICS: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: How Can an Airliner Just Disappear? “A system that would use satellites to beam an airliner’s position and other vital information is not only possible—it’s already being used on some planes. In fact, on long-haul routes that fly over the North Pole or the Pacific Ocean, where radar coverage can be iffy, the latest models from Boeing and Airbus are using data link communications to transmit GPS coordinates and status updates. Even if the bandwidth wouldn’t allow large amounts of information, such as those contained in the black boxes, it could be vital to tracking down the aircraft itself.” But not this one.
NEW DISCOVERY: How To Get Dianne Feinstein To Support The Fourth Amendment: Snoop On And Intimidate Her Staff. Well, we’ve already got Lois Lerner supporting the Fifth, so just 8 amendments to go!
IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: House Releases Report on Lois Lerner’s Role in the IRS Scandal. 141 pages, summary at the link. Full report here. Some key bits:
Lerner broke IRS rules by mishandling taxpayer information: While Lerner told Congress under oath, “I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations,” e-mails show Lerner handled protected 6103 taxpayer information in her nonofficial e-mail account. In a November 2013 letter from Daniel Werfel, Werfel notes, “We do not permit IRS officials to send taxpayer information to their personal email addresses. An IRS employee should not send taxpayer information to his or her personal email address in any form, including redacted.” – p. 33
Lerner planned to retire in October all along: While House Democrats have pushed that Lerner was forced out by the IRS as a result of the TIGTA report; new e-mails indicate that Lerner had planned an October retirement long before TIGTA released its report. Her paid leave amounted to a paid vacation preceding her retirement – it does not appear that the IRS penalized her in any way for her conduct. – p. 40-41
Despite knowing about improper scrutiny, Lerner had IRS blame victims: An IRS document bearing Lerner’s signature shows that in March 2012, despite knowing about improper scrutiny at that time, Lerner reviewed and signed off on a response to Congress that blamed applicants for heightened scrutiny. “[T]he IRS contacts the organization and solicits additional information when the organization does not provide sufficient information in response to the questions on the Form 1024 or if issues are raised by the application …. The revenue agent uses sound reasoning based on tax law training and his or her experience to review the application and identify the additional information needed to make a proper determination of the organization’s exempt status.” – p. 36
Concern Citizens United hurting Democrats: Lerner believed the Executive Branch needed to take steps to undermine the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. A senior advisor to Lerner e-mailed her an article about allegations that unknown conservative donors were influencing U.S. Senate races. The article explained how outside money was making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to remain in the majority in the Senate. Lerner replied: “Perhaps the FEC will save the day.” – p. 21
Much more at the link.
BECAUSE ENVY AND RESENTMENT ARE WHAT KEEP THE LEFTY COALITION TOGETHER: Joseph Malchow: Those Nonsensical ‘Google Bus’ Attacks: Why declare war on the tech workers who pour $14.5 billion of income tax into California? And because extortion is what funds it. These groups, like Jesse Jackson in his glory days, are just looking to be bought off.
IN THE MAIL: From Scott McEwen & Richard Miniter, Eyes on Target: Inside Stories from the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 306.
REDISTRIBUTION: Investor’s Business Daily: 70% Of U.S. Spending Is Writing Checks To Individuals. “In 1991, direct payments accounted for less than half the budget and 10% of GDP. What’s more, the cost of these direct payments is exploding. Even after adjusting for inflation, they’ve shot up 29% under Obama.”
MORE RUBES SELF-IDENTIFY: Unions Suffer For ObamaCare:
The first problem is that Obamacare regulations are already pushing up the cost of multiemployer insurance plans. Moreover, many of the regulations don’t really fit the plans — for example, many multiemployer plans do not distinguish between single and family policies, offering everyone the same insurance at the same cost.
The second problem is that the 40 percent excise tax on especially expensive plans — the so-called Cadillac tax — is going to hit union plans especially hard. Unlike most people negotiating compensation, union negotiators make an explicit trade-off between wages and other benefits, and the benefit that they seem most attached to is generous health plans. Union plans are made more expensive still because union membership is heavily skewed toward older workers. They are thus very likely to get hit by the Cadillac tax, which takes effect in 2018.
And the third problem is that Obamacare undercuts one of the key benefits of being in a union. Take a low-wage service worker who is currently insured through her union’s multiemployer plan. If she went to work for a nonunion shop, she could get a substantial wage hike, use part of it to buy a heavily subsidized exchange policy, and still be better off. As I heard one expert say, Obamacare turns health insurance from an organizing tool to a disorganizing tool.
Oft evil will shall evil mar.
#WARONBOYS: Body-Image Pressure Increasingly Affects Boys. Perhaps, along with “average Barbie,” we need pressure for “average GI Joe?” I’m guessing that won’t get as much traction. On the other hand, this isn’t unhealthy: “Of the boys who were highly concerned with their weight, about half were worried only about gaining more muscle.” Send ’em to the weight room with a copy of Rippetoe.
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RUNNING ON EMPTY: UK Shale Struggles A Reminder Of Why America Succeeded.
America remains the sole state to capitalize on its shale oil and gas resources, and difficulties in countries like the UK and China remind us that the shale revolution was more than just the result of applying the dual techniques of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling to underground hydrocarbon reservoirs. Rather, the US energy revolution was the product of a mature oil and gas drilling industry, replete with robust supply chains. The boom depended on a unique set of mineral rights that provided landowners with a financial incentive to invite drillers on to their land, on a deep pool of capital, and on a variety of small wildcatting firms willing to take on the risk of drilling exploratory wells. . . .
This isn’t to say that shale can’t be tapped elsewhere, just that it’s going to be a more difficult process than many world leaders not named Obama might like. But the race to produce even a pale imitation of America’s experience is more important to European energy security now than ever, given the situation in Ukraine. Europe sources nearly a third of its natural gas from Russia, and that’s a lever Brussels is keen to rid itself of as it maneuvers against Moscow. Lawmakers in Washington have made the case that American LNG could help on that front, but so too could the continent’s significant domestic supply of shale gas. The Crimean crisis may be the strongest incentive yet for Europe to frack.
Frack now, or regret it later. By the way, I recommend Gregory Zuckerman’s The Frackers on this. I interviewed him here.
RIP: Joe McGinniss, the journalist who harassed Sarah Palin, dead at 71. “Too bad to put in a life’s work and have something creepy that you did be the #1 thing many or most people attach to your name when they see that you died.”
RESULTS IN YESTERDAY’S INSTAPUNDIT STRAW POLL, WITH JUST UNDER 15,000 VOTES: Rand Paul 26%, Scott Walker 21%, Ted Cruz 20%. Rick Perry & Sarah Palin 5% each, Marco Rubio & Chris Christie 2% each.
JAMES TARANTO: 1930-Something: Old-school leftists are unhappy with Obama’s America.
Reed disdains what he calls “the cult of the most oppressed,” the idea “that there’s something about the purity of these oppressed people that has the power to condense the mass uprising. I’ve often compared it to the cargo cults. . . . As my dad used to say, ‘If oppression conferred heightened political consciousness there would be a People’s Republic of Mississippi.’ ” (This all seems a bit out of place in Salon, whose usual stock in trade is exotic identity-based grievances. Last week the site ran an article by Randa Jarrar, an Arab-American novelist, titled “Why I Can’t Stand White Belly Dancers.”)
Conservatives share Reed’s and Frank’s aversion to identity politics, though of course for different reasons. They (we) see it as anathema to the classical liberal ideas of individual freedom and equality of opportunity. Reed pointedly rejects what he calls “a neoliberal understanding of an equality of opportunity.”
What Reed wishes for instead, in his Harper’s article, is a radical “redistributive vision,” which “requires grounding in a vibrant labor movement.” There’s more than a bit of nostalgia here: He opens by observing that the left “crested in influence between 1935 and 1945, when it anchored a coalition centered in the labor movement,” and that “at the federal level its high point may have come in 1944, when FDR propounded what he called ‘a second Bill of Rights,’ ” including “the right to a ‘useful and remunerative job,’ ‘adequate medical care,’ and ‘adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.’ “
What we actually have is a coalition of Wall Street — they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing — and gentry liberals, with enough minorities included as electoral fodder to provide key votes. But look who’s getting richer these days. It’s the .1 percent. A few rubes are just starting to catch on.
IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: The Silence Of The Tax Lamb.
Just what was Lerner doing on the taxpayer dime that she doesn’t want to share?
Lerner’s silence is especially unsettling given that her attorney, William Taylor III, told reporters that Lerner had given a full interview to the Department of Justice with no grant of immunity. Lerner’s lawyers, he said, have confidence that prosecutors, unlike Issa, are open-minded. Thing is, also unlike Issa, the Department of Justice is in a position to prosecute people.
“It does strike me as a little odd,” Rutgers law Professor George Thomas III told the Wall Street Journal. “One explanation is the one given by her lawyer. The other, darker explanation is that she and her lawyer think that DOJ is not interested in a serious investigation of the IRS treatment of these tax-exempt groups.”
Could it be that Lerner’s lawyers do not fear the often-terrifying Justice Department precisely because President Obama already signaled there is no cause for concern because the IRS story is a “phony scandal”?
Similarly, the president signaled his disdain for conservative nonprofits during the 2010 and 2012 election seasons. Lo and behold, the IRS started to put conservative tax-exempt organizations on the slow track and under a microscope.
Who will rid me of these turbulent Tea Party groups?
IN CALIFORNIA, STANDING UP AGAINST RACISM:
Asians in the San Gabriel Valley and beyond joined forces Friday to rally against a proposed Senate constitutional amendment that they said would punish their children for working hard to achieve the American Dream.
Olivia Liao, president of the Joint Chinese University Alumni Association, said Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 5 is racist because it allows public education institutions to give preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.
Well, that’s basically correct.
CULTS ARE IMPREVIOUS TO DEMOCRATIC INPUT: Reaction Inside DOJ to Debo Adegbile Defeat: ‘Sacred Mission’ Continues.
BYRON YORK: Dems can’t run on Obamacare and can’t hide from it either.
Some Democrats hope to minimize the importance of Obamacare as a political issue by focusing on other topics in this November’s midterm elections. Some hope to win by promising to fix the flawed national health care plan they passed in 2010. And others hope to turn the issue on Republicans by appealing to voters who have been helped by the law.
The problem is, none of that will work. The importance of Obamacare as an issue in November 2014 cannot be controlled by either political party. It will be determined by just one thing, and that is the performance of Obamacare as a law in the months preceding the election.
The Obama administration obviously understands that. There is no other explanation than political expediency for its announcement last week that it is extending the “keep your plan” fix until 2016 for Americans who have coverage that doesn’t meet Obamacare’s minimum standards.
The administration knows that the same kinds of cancellations that happened to holders of individual policies over the winter will happen later this year to people insured in the small group market. That could be a lot of newly-angry voters. So the White House put it off until after Election Day.
The administration did not take action because it feared Republicans might gin up some fake health care controversy to be used against Democrats. It took action because it knew Obamacare was going to impose new burdens on millions of Americans with an election approaching.
It’s train wrecks all the way down. But if Obama has his way, they’ll be post-election train wrecks.