Category: Politics

Facebook Has Finally Grown Into a Mature Company

Although Facebook’s estimated market value is over $50 billion it still wasn’t a mature company in my eyes. In my opinion a company can’t be considered mature until the politicians start trying to crawl in and thus the company needs to resort to hiring lobbyist to protect itself from these government bureaucrats. Well Facebook is now looking for exactly that:

Until lately, Facebook has spent very little money in Washington, even by Silicon Valley’s frugal standards. The company’s outlays on lobbying totaled $351,000 last year, federal records show. That’s a fraction of the amount spent by other technology giants, including Google Inc.’s $5.2 million and Microsoft Corp.’s $6.9 million.

Facebook’s new Washington office, designed to look like a hacker’s lair, with walls of faux construction rubble, is a work in progress.

This is the price of running a successful business in America, you need to pay the politicians off twice. First you need to pay them taxes and then you must pay them in incentives in order to get favorable legislation passed and unfavorable legislation shot down. On a side note I found this funny:

President Barack Obama will travel to Facebook Inc.’s Silicon Valley headquarters Wednesday to hold a “town hall” meeting on the economy with users of the social-networking site.

Maybe the President should go down the the Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI) instead. Facebook knows how to function in our currently regulated economy so the advice they’re likely to give is going to be more of the status quo. The (LvMI) on the other hand could explain to the President how the only way to save our economy is to move to a free market where producers and consumers are able to make transactions without interference from government bureaucrats. Of course that would require the government to surrender some of it’s control and we know they don’t want to do that.

Doctors Who and Brown Banned from China

I guess the Chinese government has gotten sick of constant Dalek invasions and guys named Biff because they’ve made a move to ban references to time travel:

In a statement (available here in Chinese) dated March 31, the State Administration for Radio, Film & Television said that TV dramas that involve characters traveling back in time “lack positive thoughts and meaning.” The guidelines discouraging this type of show said that some “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.”

Isn’t socialism great? What other system of society has so much vested interested in controlling what its people think that it makes a rule prohibition the idea of time travel? Seriously Doctor Who and Emmet Brown never hurt anybody… OK maybe a few people. But those people all had it coming!

I Don’t Think Asking Nicely Will Work

Apparently Pakistan has the audacity to ask the United States to reduce the number of spooks (CIA agents) operating inside of their country and restrict the number of people being blown up with drones:

Pakistan has asked the US to reduce the number of CIA agents in the country and to limit drone strikes along the Afghan border, US media reports say.

The reports quote unnamed officials and come as US and Pakistani spy chiefs met at the CIA’s US headquarters.

An official spokesman described those meetings as “productive”.

By productive he meant he was allowed to leave with his life. I’m sorry but I don’t think asking nicely is going to work in this case.

White House Attempting to Bar Communications Privacy Act Reform

For those of you who believe the government requires a warrant in order to obtain your e-mails from an ISP’s server you would be partially correct. As the law sits now any e-mail left on a server for more than six months is considered abandoned and thus can be obtained without the hassle of a search warrant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been trying to change this law for a while now but the current critters in the White House are urging Congress to prevent such measures from being adopted. James A. Baker, the associated deputy attorney general, stated the following in relation to the subject:

Congress should recognize the collateral consequences to criminal law enforcement and the national security of the United States if ECPA were to provide only one means — a probable cause warrant — for compelling disclosure of all stored content. For example, in order to obtain a search warrant for a particular e-mail account, law enforcement has to establish probable cause to believe that evidence will be found in that particular account. In some cases, this link can be hard to establish. In one recent case, for example, law enforcement officers knew that a child exploitation subject had used one account to send and receive child pornography, and officers discovered that he had another email account, but they lacked evidence about his use of the second account.

First let’s hand Mr. Baker bonus points for using child pornography since we know anything to “protect the children” is good. Second don’t we see having to provide evidence in order to obtain a warrant just gets in the way? Hell we should all support legislation that would allow the government to just walk into our homes whenever the fuck they want. Not supporting such legislation simply means you have something to hide and thus are likely a terrorist.

I also love how law enforcement officers know a target was sending and receiving child pornography via one e-mail account but were upset that they couldn’t access the other e-mail account which they had no evidence against. Guess what? That’s what we call due process and at one time was believed to be the basis of our legal system.

This is probably the best reason to have your own mail server. If you own the mail server it doesn’t matter how old any e-mail stored on the system is as the government requires one of those pesky warrants in order to sieze it.

Fixing Our Budget

It appears as through we face the happy situation of our federal government shutting down for a while because they can’t agree if we should have a $1.23 trillion deficit or only a $1.21 trillion deficit:

US President Barack Obama has said it would be “inexcusable” for lawmakers to fail to reach a budget that would fund the government to September.

Mr Obama spoke after he and Congressional leaders were unable to reach a budget deal on Tuesday.

Without a new budget, the US government will shut down on Friday.

Ironically if our federal government were to shutdown they couldn’t spend any money and the deficit problem would be a non-issue. I think it would be smart to lobby the “representatives” to support shutting down the government as a means to fix the deficit problem this country is facing.

Fixing Bribery

What’s one way to fix the problem of bribery that has run rampant throughout… well everywhere? A policy pointed out by Bruce Schneier’s blog looks to be effective and simple, legalize the giving of bribes:

Under the current law, discussed in some detail in the next section, once a bribe is given, the bribe giver and the bribe taker become partners in crime. It is in their joint interest to keep this fact hidden from the authorities and to be fugitives from the law, because, if caught, both expect to be punished. Under the kind of revised law that I am proposing here, once a bribe is given and the bribe giver collects whatever she is trying to acquire by giving the money, the interests of the bribe taker and bribe giver become completely orthogonal to each other. If caught, the bribe giver will go scot free and will be able to collect his bribe money back. The bribe taker, on the other hand, loses the booty of bribe and faces a hefty punishment.

Not only does this policy take away the incentive of covering up the fact a bribe was accepted but it also tosses in motivation to rat the bribe taker out. I like it. Obviously such a proposal will never likely be passed into law anywhere as that would go against the self-interest of those creating laws but it’s still a nice proposal.

They Were Just Joking About Fixing the Deficit

Remember all that talk about reducing the deficit made by many of the Republicans during campaign season? Much like Obama these clowns were just kidding:

Republicans on Monday night introduced a measure to fund the military through September and government operations for one more week.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told his conference about the legislation — which contains $12 billion in spending cuts — during a Monday night meeting, his office said. The move is intended to prevent a government shutdown that would start after Friday unless Congress approves another measure to fund the government.

So we’re going to continue funding the military at our current levels until September? The Department of Offense Defense is one of our largest money sinks. Also you know how much $12 billions is to our $1.27 trillion deficit (not to be mistaken with our $15.1 trillion debt)? 0.9%. Yes that $12 billion cut is less than one percent of the yearly deficit. How the fuck can they justify that as cutting the deficit? I also absolutely love this quote:

“We’re serious about trying to prevent a government shutdown. We’re also serious about cutting spending,” he told reporters after the GOP meeting.

Shutting down the government would actually save us tons of money. Hell I’m going to go so far as to say shutting down the government would be the most effective plan for slashing our deficit. I think I’m going to start a “Shutdown the Government” campaign.

Using Obama’s Words Against Him

Remember when Obama was talking about the two wars Bush involved us in? If not he said, “The President does not have the power to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Of course this was before he decided to drag our force over to Libya to bomb targets in support of rebeles we know nothing about.

Thankfully Rand Paul is calling Obama on this:

The Rand Paul resolution, co-sponsored by fellow Senate Tea Party Caucus member Mike Lee (R-Utah), says: “The President does not have the power to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Senator Obama used precisely that language in a December 20, 2007 interview with the Boston Globe when he was campaigning for the presidency. President Obama neglected to mention any actual or imminent threat to the nation in his address to the American people on Libya March 18.

It should come as no surprise that various members in Congress aren’t happy with somebody calling out their leader on this. After all it was only bad to engage our forces in military action without Congressional approval when Bush did it. To this end Congress appears to be refusing to vote. According to Rand Paul:

Right now, my resolution has been basically taken off the table. For three days now, we’ve had no votes. And they’re not going to vote again today, maybe because I think they don’t want to vote on whether or not Congress should have this authority. They’re embarrassed that the President took them to war precisely with the same kind of reasoning that they’ve always criticized up here.

It is my belief that a majority of Congress is more than happy to let the President engage our forces without any overhead. This is a cowards move on their behalf as it is simply a way of avoiding blame when popular opinion moves against any of these engagements. Giving the President this kind of authority allows Congress to effectively say, “Don’t blame us we didn’t approve this engagement.” I also really like this quote by Rand:

There are some of us who have a respect for the Constitution who are worried about the precedent that is set by allowing a President to go to war with no debate, no discussion. He had time to go to the UN. He had time to go to the Arab League. He had the time to go just about everywhere in the world to ask for permission, except for down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Congress which the Constitution says he has to come here. And he went everywhere else but here.

Zing! So Obama went to everybody but Congress to get approval for this war? If nothing else I have to say I’m really liking the fact that Rand is willing to call the President on these types of things. For too long it seems members of Congress were unwilling to call the President on actions that shouldn’t have been taken or were embarrassing when taken.

Another Bad Idea by Obama

Obama is full of bad ideas and has a long history of broken promises (remember we were supposed to be out of Iraq and Gitmo was going to be closed by now?). I’m guessing these reasons are why his approval rating is so abysmal. Facing such a situation I’d avoid another run but Obama isn’t happy until he’s proven himself to be a complete moron who doesn’t have any comprehension of reality. This this end he’s announced his run for the next presidential race.

It’s it kind of early? I really don’t want to listen to presidential debates and ads from now until the elections in 2012. Oh well I’m sure the Republicans will put somebody equally stupid up and thus ensure no matter who wins we the people will lose for another four years. I know both political parties seems to be in a race to hit the bottom of the gene pool for their presidential candidates but in my eyes that’s not a race they should want to win.

The Government’s Attempt at April Fool’s

Must like everything the government tries they fucked up their April Fool’s gag as well. The United States government tried to get people to believe unemployment is at a two year low of 8.8%. That’s a good one! Wait… they’re serious? Oh, I thought they were trying to be funny.

The sad fact is unemployment isn’t nearly that low once you don’t use the government’s rigged scale that attempts to make them look better.