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The blotter: Week ending 5 June 2011
BusinessA day after Groupon chief executive Andrew Mason gave Kara Swisher what’s come to be known as the “death stare,” at the Wall Street Journal‘s D: All Things D conference, Groupon announced (bit...
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Piecemeal privacy legislation won’t work
US Senators Al Franken (D-Minnesota) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) introduced a bill, the Location Privacy Protection Act (.pdf; 82KB), that would require platform vendors and app developers...
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The blotter: Week ending 3 July 2011
BusinessCheyenne, Wyoming has become the new standard for corporations seeking to hide assets or other nefarious deeds. To be more specific, 2710 Thomes Avenue in Cheyenne is the new haven for...
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The blotter: Week ending 17 July 2011
BusinessFor my generation’s entire life we were told in no uncertain terms that home ownership was the bedrock of responsible personal finance. Now, of course, we’ve all learned — the hard way — that...
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The blotter: Week ending 7 August 2011
BusinessChristina Larson, writing for Foreign Policy, has a devastating take-down of Apple’s operations in China, specifically the company’s indifference to “labor rights and environmental...
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The blotter: Week ending 14 August 2011
BusinessBarbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 Nickel and Dimed surveyed the poor in the best of times. In a column for the Guardian, 10 years later she doubts she’d be able to repeat her “experiment” of trying to...
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The blotter: Week ending 28 August 2011
BusinessMatt Haughey reveals the utter bullshit that is the credit scoring system in the US. While in college, Haughey racked up debt because he was amazed that anyone would give him credit. His...
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On knowing which side your bread is buttered
Once again demonstrating that it knows exactly on which side its bread is buttered, the New York Times has attempted to alter its coverage of history to make its benefactors look oh, so much better....
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Google caves on secret order for user’s information
The US government has obtained Jacob Appelbaum’s user information and private data from Google without a search warrant. Applebaum works on the Tor project and is a WikiLeaks volunteer. The Obama...
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Divine rights and personhood-in-perpetuity
A former Reagan administration financial regulator and author, William Black, in a Democracy Now! interview on the ongoing financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement, appears to be one of...
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Maybe the revolution will be televised
The producers of the television show Law and Order Special Victims Unit painstakingly recreated a simulacrum of the original Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Zuccotti Park encampment in Foley Square for an...
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AT&T plans wireless network double-dipping
AT&T has a plan for a “pay to play” program for developers whereby the telecommunications giant would be allowed to double-dip: Publishers would pay for bandwidth consumed by their customers.This...
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May Day general strike scheduled in US
The Occupy Wall Street movement has finally hit upon a sure-fire way to garner widespread attention to itself. The United States has never had a full-blown national general strike. Ever. All that...
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Ehrenreich takes down Conrad’s “inequality is good”
Barbara Ehrenreich, writing for TomDispatch, has penned a most excellent takedown of Edward Conrad’s notion that inequality is good. Following on the heels of Wall Street‘s Gordon Gekko’s 1980s mantra...
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Unnamed telephone company challenges FBI national security letter
In early 2011, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation did something it had done hundreds of thousands of times before: It sent a national security letter (NSL) to an unnamed telephone company,...
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What I need to hear from Barack Obama
The youngs don’t yet realize that political choices in the US have narrowed to moderate Republicans and right-wingnuts. We’ve never had a left-wingnut choice in this country outside of small pockets...
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Equitably reducing all three US deficits
What’s wrong with this picture: The right-wingnuts are saying the US is financially broke and deep cuts must be made to core safety net programs — food stamps, Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare, and...
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It’s not fascism when we do it
Mike Lofgren, a former congressional staffer, makes a non-compelling case in the Atlantic for voting for Barack Obama in tomorrow’s US presidential election. Basically, Lofgren’s argument boils down...
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I’ll meet you at the Jubilee
Shake it up now, Sugaree I’ll meet you at the Jubilee If that Jubilee don’t come Maybe I’ll meet you on the run — Robert Hunter and Jerry GarciaAccording to the Bible (Leviticus 25), Jubilee occurs...
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ITU/WCIT threatens open internet
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a tiny agency within the United Nations hosting the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) 3-14 December in Dubai. The...
View ArticleNCTC free to surveil and datamine the US citizenry at will
Last March, US intelligence officials met at the White House to debate a proposal to “create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about US citizens — even people suspected of no...
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The troubling death of Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz recently hanged himself. Like most suicides, we’ll never know, absolutely, why — although severe depression almost certainly played a major role. He was 26. What we do know is that in...
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FBI failed to warn of assassination plot against Occupy
Buried within a heavily redacted document dump response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund is an acknowledgment by the US Federal Bureau of...
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Time for pitchforks, torches, and heads on pikes — investigate Lanny Breuer...
The US Justice Department is out of control. Underlying the wildly overzealous prosecution of Aaron Swartz is the abject failure of a single bankster to be indicted, let alone convicted and jailed for...
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Obama claims broad preemptive cyberattack powers
President Barack Obama, so far as is known, has only used cyberweapons once: A series of attacks against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities under the auspices of the National Security Agency (NSA)...
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3-D printing of human stem cells
3-D printing has been at the top of every member of maker culture’s wish list for at least the past few years. It just reached the top of mine with news that the technology could be widely used with...
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US entertainment cartel gets a pimp
The US entertainment cartel has finally found a pimp, however inadequte it may be: Your internet service provider. After more than four years of navel-gazing and arm twisting, the Copyright Alert...
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More hidden corporate subsidies: Qualified private activity bonds
Maybe you’ll be ok if you’re poor, and you’ll definitely be ok if you’re rich; but God help you if you’re middle class because no one else will.When American taxpayers unknowingly fund (via tax exempt...
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DaVita creates US$300 million reserve fund for legal investigations
DaVita Healthcare Partners, Inc., one of the globe’s two largest dialysis providers, has created a US$300 million reserve fund to settle criminal and civil investigations into the company’s alleged...
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Verizon’s share everything plan isn’t what you think it is
The US National Security Agency (NSA) is siphoning the telephone records of Verizon’s US customers under a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order issued last April. Glenn...
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Bernie Sanders offers reasonable and actionable tax code reform
Over the course of his current term, US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has been regularly proposing legislation to reform the US tax code for simplicity and fairness. In response to the blanket...
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Streetcars may return to Twin Cities
After a few pretty wild missteps, the Twin Cities had one of the best public transit systems in the US from 1890-1954. Consisting mostly of streetcars (running on electrified track), but also seven...
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IKEA begins selling solar panels
IKEA, the Swedish flat-pack furniture manufacturer, will soon begin selling solar panels at 17 of its stores in the UK, recognizing growing customer demand for sustainable home furnishing products....
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The beast that is Amazon
Two months ago, Amazon very publicly began trying to force pricing concessions from Hachette, the fifth of the “big five” publishing houses in the US: Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster,...
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The blotter: Week ending 8 May 2011
Ed. note: I’m publishing this a day early because I spent all day today at minnebar and I’ll be spending all day tomorrow at the Dalai Lama’s Minnesota Visit 2011. Next week’s going to be pretty light...
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