Conservative Contraptions

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Court Says No to Hemp

by Jordan Smith

 

More than a year after two farmers appeared before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to argue for their right to grow industrial hemp without the intrusion of federal narcos, the court ruled Dec. 22 in favor of the Drug Enforcement Administration and, by default, the ban on U.S. hemp farming.

According to the court's decision, industrial hemp, the non-narcotic cousin of marijuana, is nothing more than dope and thus is regulated by the federal Controlled Substances Act. And it matters not that hemp is grown for its seed, oil and fiber, and contains less than one percent tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in drug marijuana. "Under the CSA, marijuana is defined to include all Cannabis sativa L. plants, regardless of THC concentration," the court wrote. "The CSA likewise makes no distinction between Cannabis grown for drug use and that grown for industrial use."

Of course the CSA does exempt oil, fiber and nonactive seeds from regulation, but because all growing plants contain some level of THC, the court's reasoning is that the stated exceptions to regulation are, essentially, meaningless for farming purposes.

North Dakota farmers have been struggling with the DEA since the state passed a law to reintroduce hemp as a rotational crop in 1999. The law originally required state-licensed farmers to receive DEA approval, but after the agency made it clear it would make the farmers comply with regulations for drug manufacturing and would then also drag its feet in reviewing and deciding on the those applications, the state repealed that provision of the law. Wayne Hauge, a farmer from the northeastern part of the state, and David Monson, from the northwestern section and also a Republican state representative, were the first licensed in the state to grow hemp but have yet to do so because they face federal drug prosecution if they do so without DEA approval. The DEA has not acted on their applications to the agency for permission to grow the plant.

Now with the Eighth Circuit agreeing that the DEA has the power to regulate the cultivation of hemp, Hauge, Monson and the state of North Dakota have few options. They could appeal to the Supremes, as unlikely as that sounds, or they could go to Congress. That appears a more likely route, though how quickly that would result in any change is an open question: Texas Liberpublican Ron Paul has been trying to reauthorize hemp farming for years, but still hasn't gotten his bill a committee hearing. And last year the North Dakota delegation said it wasn't interested in pushing for hemp farming rights, even though the issue is a big one for constituents (there's representative government at work, thank you very little).

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/News/Blogs/index.html/objID932032/blogID/

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Palin’s “Death Panels” Charge Named “Lie of the Year”

By Susan Davis

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin's Facebook allegation that the Democrats' health-care overhaul would include "death panels" to decide whether seniors and disabled people were worthy of care was named "Lie of the Year" by fact-checkers at Politifact.com.

"Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest," writes Politifact.com, the non-partisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning site run by the St. Petersburg Times. Palin's "assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings."

"Opponents of health-care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink," Polifact.com says.

The "death panels" allegation accounted for 61% of about 5,000 votes cast at Politifact.com to determine 2009's Lie of the Year. It is the first year Polifact.com has held such a contest.

Politifact.com credits Palin for coining the phrase. Shortly after she first made the charge in August, fact-checkers rated the statement as "Pants on Fire" on their truth-o-meter.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/12/22/palins-death-panels-charge-named-lie-of-the-year/

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Iran:Nightly chants at Tehran Ashura 88

 

Andrew Sullivan: "The cries of freedom. They bring tears to my eyes and hope to my soul. The sound: it makes every human stop in their tracks and demand that this vicious oppression end."

Police in Iran shot at protesters today, killing at least 10, including the nephew of a prominent opposition leader. Today is the holiday of Ashura, a sacred observance in the Muslim calendar which honors the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. More: New York Times, BBC, and a statement of condemnation from the White House. Times Online: Is this Iran's Berlin Wall moment? I'm following Cyrus Farivar on Twitter for English-language pointers to updates, please share other links in the comments.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/27/meanwhile-a-revoluti.html

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Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen

  

By Yasha Levine

AP / Charles Dharapak

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government "handout" as socialism. What her followers probably don't know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That's right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she's not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama's attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is "reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom." 

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization's records, Bachmann's family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann's recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or "socialized"—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America's bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann's free-market dream world as Cuba's free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn't think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be "rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules." That's right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible. 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/michelle_bachman_welfare_queen_20091221/?ln

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Ben Nelson: Legislator of the Year

This is beggar-my-nation legislating.

By Rich Lowry

Too bad Barack Obama hasn't followed through on his promises of legislative transparency. Then we all could have watched Harry Reid live on C-SPAN handing an oversized Publishers Clearing House–style $100 million check to Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson. The highest-profile Democratic hold-out on Obamacare, Nelson said last week, "My vote is not for sale." He obviously meant that in the sense that he'd be righteously indignant at any suggestion that his vote could possibly be bought for anything less than the low nine digits. Nelson got the feds to pick up forevermore 100 percent of the additional Medicaid spending that will be imposed on Nebraska by the bill. In stereotypically Orwellian fashion, the provision is called "Equitable Support for Certain States." That, naturally enough, translates into special, inequitable support for three states, totaling $1.2 billion over ten years. Vermont and Massachusetts argue they are due the funds for prior expansions of Medicaid, but what's Nebraska's excuse?

 

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODJkZDU0M2ZjM2Y2YmExODllN2E2MDYyNDI1OThhNjQ=

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An Avatar Awakening

By David Swanson

Let's face it, if James Cameron had made a movie with the Iraqi resistance as the heroes and the U.S. military as the enemies, and had set it in Iraq or anywhere else on planet earth, the packed theaters viewing "Avatar" would have been replaced by a screening in a living room for eight people and a dog.

Nineteen years ago, Americans packed theaters for "Dances with Wolves" in which Native Americans became the heroes, but the story was set in a previous century and the message understated.

The Na'vi people of "Avatar" are very explicitly Iraqis facing "shock and awe," as well as Native Americans with bows and arrows on horseback. The "bad guys" in the battle scenes are U.S. mercenaries, essentially the U.S. military, and the movie allows us to see them, very much as they are right now in 177 real nations around the world, through the eyes of their victims.

People know this going into the movie, and do not care. For better, and certainly for worse, they do not care. Millions of people stand in lines, shell out big bucks, wear stupid-looking 3-D glasses, sit in the dark for three hours, identify with twelve-foot-high pointy-eared blue people, cheer as the credits roll, and simply do not care that actual human beings suffer the same fate as the computer-generated creations, albeit without miraculous happy endings.

Imagine if a tenth of the people who now sympathize with these bony blue beings were to take three hours to read a book or watch a movie about the people of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Iran. Our real planet would then be a different world.

When I saw "Avatar" in a packed 3-D theater in Virginia, and the crowd cheered the closing shot, I shouted: "And get out of Iraq too!" No one cheered for that. But no one called me a traitor either.

http://www.davidswanson.org/node/2373

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Bedridden

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Well, That Sure Sucked: Good Riddance To The Devil's Decade

 

by David Michael Green

As I understand it, certain pundits are struggling with finding an appropriate name for the decade now mercifully coming to an end.

What's the problem, I wonder? Are their word processor dictionaries redacted of all four-letter words? I mean, I could think of a few dandies, right of the top of my head.

Short of the 1860s or 1930s, this was perhaps the most disastrous decade in American history, and it deserves a good goddamed label to celebrate that fine achievement.

More on that below. Meanwhile, whatever the appropriate term, it's important to keep things in perspective. I think the most crucial notion to understand about our time - and perhaps the only way to make sense of it - is to see it as the point where the process of imperial decline shifted into third gear. That explains a lot. I like to think that even Americans wouldn't be capable of the sick stupidity we've witnessed over these harrowing years without the effects of rapid altitude decline and the loss of cabin pressure that the ship of state has been experiencing during this era.

Perhaps I'm too generous toward a people who don't deserve a lot of that sentiment, either because of their diminished intelligence, generosity, compassion, sophistication or all of the above. I imagine that would be the feeling on the streets of, say, Fallujah, where the attitude might well be confined to a lovely blend of schadenfreude and indifference, were it not for the fact that the paroxysms of the flailing elephant send so many fruit stands flying as the mortally wounded beast goes careening down the main street of the global village, toward inevitable defeat in its struggle with unforgiving gravity.

America probably must come down to earth again, its abortive 'century' of world dominance having anyhow been artificially fabricated from a toxic combination of circumstance and theft right from the beginning. I can even say that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it is, of course, all relative to what replaces Pax Americana. Anyone who assumes that it can only get better on the international front isn't thinking real clearly or real historically. Indeed, in all fairness, the US may well have run the most benign and least imperial empire in history - though not for lack of trying by the likes of, say, Paul Wolfowitz or John Bolton.

Thus it may well be that the next big thing is even less pretty. Watching the Chinese government in action at home, where they are unfettered, doesn't exactly inspire confidence in what a Pax Sinica would bring once they are also unfettered abroad. If the same cats who brought us Tiananmen Square and Tibet are next gonna be seeking planetary domination, for once in my life I may actually come to appreciate the value of nuclear weapons...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/25760

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I miss newspapers

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Elevator button of the week

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Whaddaya Mean Obama Hasn't Done Anything?

 

A blow-by-blow breakdown of the young president's first year reveals that today's frustration stems not from a lack of policy so much as a lack of common ground. The myth of the American center looms in this, the second part of a week-long series on our country since the 2008 election.

BONUS QUIZ: How Well Do You Know the News of 2009?

By: John H. Richardson

Read more of Esquire.com's "The Year of Obama" series with part one from Charles P. Pierce, part three from S.T. VanAirsdale, part four from Thomas P.M. Barnett, and part five from Scott Raab

I have figured out The Problem With America Today. My inspiration was the recent one-year-later cover of Newsweek, which encapsulates the current conventional wisdom about President Obama in a single headline: YES HE CAN (BUT HE SURE HASN'T YET). Or, as Saturday Night Live put it, President Obama's two biggest accomplishments thus far are "Jack and Squat." You can find other versions of this perspective from Matt Lauer and David Gregory on NBC, from thousands of obnoxious bloggers, even from the hapless governor of New York.

These days, the argument that Obama hasn't accomplished anything may be the only example of real bipartisanship in America.

Here's the conventional wisdom in a single paragraph: Three hundred and sixty-four days after he was elected president, Obama is still stuck in Iraq, hasn't closed Guantánamo, is getting deeper into Afghanistan, hasn't accomplished health-care reform or slowed the rise in unemployment. His promises of bipartisanship are a punch line (see above). And there's still no peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What a failure! What a splash of cold water in the face of all our bold hopes!

But the conventional wisdom is insane. Consider the record:

A week before he was sworn in, Obama jammed part two of the bank bailout down the throat of his own party — a $350 billion accomplishment.

Two days after he was sworn in, Obama banned the use of "harsh interrogation" and ordered the closing of Guantánamo.

A day later, Obama reversed George W. Bush's funding cutoff to overseas family planning organizations — saving millions of lives with the stroke of a pen.

Three days after that, Obama gave a green light to the California car-emissions standards that Bush had been blocking for six years — an important step on the road to cleaner air and a cooler planet.

Two weeks after that, Obama signed the stimulus bill — a $787 billion accomplishment.

Ten days after that, Obama formally announced America's withdrawal from Iraq.

A week later — we're in early March now — Obama erased Bush's decision to restrict federal funding for stem-cell research.

In April and June, Obama forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy.

In June, Obama reset the tone of our relations with the entire Arab world with a single speech — an accomplishment that the Bush administration failed to achieve despite a series of desperate PR moves (anyone remember Charlotte Beers?) and a "public diplomacy" budget of $1 billion a year.

Also in June, Obama unveiled the "Cash for Clunkers" program, a "socialist" giveaway that reanimated the corpse of our car industry — leading, for example, to the billion-dollar profit that Ford announced on Monday.

I haven't even mentioned Sonia Sotomayor, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the order to release the torture memos, Obama's push for charter schools, his $288 billion tax cut, or the end of Bush's war on medical marijuana. Or the minor fact that he seems to have — with Bush's help, it must be said — stopped the financial collapse, revived the credit markets, and nudged the economy toward 3.5 percent growth in the last quarter.

Oh, and one more thing: President Obama is now a month or two from accomplishing the awesome and seemingly impossible task that eluded mighty presidents like FDR, LBJ, and WJC — health-care reform.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/obama-timeline-110309

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How Progressives Can Move Obama to the Left

By Cenk Uygur

There are many debates among progressives now on the true nature of Barack Obama. Did he mean anything he said on the campaign trail? Is he really a progressive? Did he ever mean to challenge the status quo or was he using the word "change" as a campaign gimmick? Is he just a corporatist like most other politicians?

After talking about this with a great many progressives on our show, I've come to some conclusions. These are so self-evident that they will be viewed as obvious in hindsight.

Does he mean well or does he have bad intentions? Come on, don't be ridiculous. Of course, he means well. But in his own mind, George Bush thought he meant well, too (for the most part). I'm positive that Obama thinks that he is doing the best he can to bring about as much change as he can within the limits of this system.

Is he a true progressive or a corporatist sell out? Well, that depends on what you mean. Has he wound up helping corporate America tremendously through health care "reform," finance "reform," etc.? Well, Wall Street certainly seems to think so (and so do most progressives). Did he do that because he thought, "I can't wait to help corporate America and screw over the little guy"? No, I'm sure he thought he had to accommodate the powers that be in order to affect any change at all in this system. But the bottom line has been the same, either way - the system has been tweaked but corporate America chugs along with even more government largesse than before.

I'm sure Obama is a progressive that would help the average American if he thought he could. But apparently he thinks he can't. He can only bring them a small amount of change because of what he thinks the system will allow.

You can criticize him for lack of imagination, duplicity during the campaign, lack of spine and political miscalculation. And you might be right about some or all of that, but all of those aren't the essence of Obama. The core of Obama is a man who is a cautious politician. That is what he is at his center. He can't help himself. Asking him to be something else is asking a rock to be a little less hard. He is what he is.

So, what Obama does by his nature is find the middle ground. As an excellent innate politician, he will find the political center of any field and rush to it. That's where elections are won - the center. So, that's why he sounded so progressive during the primaries, because that was the center of the left. And why he sounded like such a reformer during the general election because the great majority of Americans desperately wanted change.

So, what happened to that Obama? The country is the same, so why did Obama drop the progressive reformer angle and go toward the right and corporate America? Because his field changed. He went from campaigning all across the country to being in the middle of Washington, DC. The center of Washington is very different than the center of the country.

The Washington bubble leans far more to the right than the rest of the country (poll after poll indicates this). The corporate media in Washington are pros at protecting the status quo and view people who challenge the system as fringe players. A natural politician would naturally move right to accommodate this new environment. Obama can't help himself. Why does a scorpion sting, why does a horse gallop? Because they were made to. Hoping Obama snaps out of it is hoping against reason and nature.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Progressives-Can-Move-by-Cenk-Uygur-091224-432.html

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Disqualified Christmas Decoration

Anonymous note:

Once again, I was disqualified from my neighborhood "Best Decorated House" contest due to my 'bad attitude'! Folks with tons of money to spend on decorations, lights, and utility bills in these hard times just don't appreciate simplicity.

http://artoftheprank.com/2009/12/25/disqualified-decorations/

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Holiday Cheer

The Guardian's Dan Kennedy has an intelligent piece about why the great newspaper collapse of 2009 didn't pan out as expected. If you remember, early this year there were dramatic closures in major markets like Denver and Seattle, along with threats of similar harsh medicine in San Francisco and Boston. But as 2009 comes to a close, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe are still alive and kicking and there have been no major newspaper shutdowns in nine months. Kennedy points out that publishers took strong action to reverse the tide after that scary first quarter, cutting back sharply on expenses, boosting subscription prices and finding novel new ways to generate revenue. They also had considerable success whittling down the debt that has paralyzed many of their operations

Most daily newspapers, in fact, operate in the black but massive debt accumulated during multiple rounds of consolidation earlier this decade were threatening their existence. The threat is still there, but it looks like there was more fat in newspaper operating budgets than many observers had believed. Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth has pointed out that her paper employs twice as many journalists as it did during the Watergate years, even after multiple rounds of cutbacks.

Time to celebrate? Hardly. This industry is not a growth story and probably never will be, but it does appear that publishers are finding ways to gracefully manage their print operations down to sustainable levels. Early experience indicates that online news publishers can the profitable at about 20% of the expense level of their print counterparts. It's likely that some publishers will figure out ways to get there without shutting down the brand entirely. Of course the price of advertising is also in decline, but that's a different problem entirely.

It turns out that shares a Gannett Corp. were a heckuva buy in March when they plummeted to $1.85. The stock hit $15.49 on Wednesday as a leading analyst upgraded his outlook for the newspaper industry, saying December could be the industry's best month in three years. Well Fargo Securities analyst John Janedis said the slide in advertising is slowing and that ad revenues could be down only 8% or 9% next year, compared to more than 30% this year. Janedis raised his rating on Gannett to "outperform" from "underperform" and on New York Times Co. to "market Perform" from "underperform."

Not in Our Back Yard

We continue to be amazed at how newspapers bury the lead when announcing bad news about themselves. Check out this press release from the Washington Times as reprinted on Talking Points Memo:

The Washington Times today announced that it will begin producing a more focused Monday through Friday edition designed to feature its most distinctive news and opinion content.

Offered as a combination controlled market and paid general interest newspaper at a price of $1.00, the new print edition will be available at retail outlets and newspaper boxes throughout the D.C. metropolitan area. The current newspaper's last Sunday edition will publish on December 27.

That's right: the news is that the Times is killing its Sunday edition. This is on top of laying off 40% of its staff a few weeks ago. The paper is also reportedly considering eliminating its sports section entirely. Perhaps the Times reporters wouldn't bury the lead on this particular story, but the PR department surely did.

http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/

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Taliban stalls key hydroelectric turbine project in Afghanistan

Convoy diverted British troops from front but generator may never be used

by Jon Boone in Kabul 

Two thousand British troops took part in the mission to deliver 220 tonnes of equipment to the Kajaki dam, pictured. Photograph: Bronwen Roberts/AFP/Getty Images

An enormous hydroelectric turbine dragged at huge cost by British troops through Taliban heartlands last year may never be installed because Nato has been unable to secure a 30-mile stretch of road leading to an isolated dam in northern Helmand.

The daring mission to deliver 220 tonnes of equipment to the Kajaki dam in Afghanistan in September 2008 was hailed as one of the biggest success stories of the British Army's three-year deployment in Helmand.

Two thousand British troops took part in the five-day convoy through enemy territory, which was launched because the main road leading to the dam was too vulnerable to Taliban attacks.

Senior British officers privately say the enormous diversion of scarce military resources for the operation allowed the Taliban to make major gains in other critical areas of the province, including Nad Ali, which subsequently saw some of the most intense fighting between British forces and insurgents.

Within a couple of months of the Kajaki operation, areas close to the British base in Lashkar Gah had deteriorated so badly that troops had to be resupplied by air drop.

The dam continues to be besieged by Taliban fighters and, 15 months after the mission by the UK troops, the turbine's components remain unassembled because huge amounts of cement that are required to install the equipment cannot be delivered safely.

Now the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the wing of the United States government which has so far pumped $47m (£29m) into the project, intended to electrify much of southern Afghanistan, says it is packing the turbine parts away and looking for other energy projects to invest in across Afghanistan.

"Our message is that until we have a secure road we cannot continue with the installation of turbine two," said John Smith-Sreen, head of energy and water projects for USAID in Kabul.

"When the turbine was moved in by British and American forces it was a huge effort and it was done in a point of time. But we can't move in the large quantity of cement and aggregate that we need in a point of time, we need a sustained effort," he said.

The road would need to be secured for about half a year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/13/afghanistan-turbine-taliban-british-army

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Top Ten Dinosaur and Fossil Finds: Most Viewed of 2009

Large, "lost," or simply unusual, a bevy of prehistoric beasts were brought to life in National Geographic News's most popular paleontology stories of the year.

10. Biggest Trilobite Sea Beasts Found ... in Swarms The "remarkable," yard-long, horseshoe crab-like arthropods roamed in swarms of up to a thousand animals, a May study suggests.

9. "Lost World" of Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction? An isolated group of dinosaurs may have outlived their doomed relatives by as much as half a million years, an April study suggested.

8. A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed? Young dinosaurs weren't Mini-Me versions of their parents, evidence presented in October suggests—meaning that up to a third of dinosaur species may be misidentified.

7. Tiny "T. Rex" Found —150-Pound Species Came First No heavier than a small man, Raptorex was Mini-Me to T. rex's dinosaur Dr. Evil. But in this case, the tiny gave rise to the titanic, researchers said in September. • See pictures

6. Five "Oddball" Crocs Discovered, Including Dinosaur-Eater A "saber-toothed cat in armor" and a pancake-shaped predator are among five strange, dinosaur-era crocodile cousins discovered in the Sahara, archaeologists announced in November. Meet BoarCroc, PancakeCroc, DuckCroc, RatCroc, and DogCroc. • See pictures

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091222-top-ten-dinosaurs-2009-fossils.html

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Obama Extends Diplomatic Immunity to Interpol by Executive Order

The Fifth Column

President Obama has issued an amendment to Executive Order 12425,  designating the international law enforcement agency Interpol as a "public international organization," thus extending diplomatic immunity to the law enforcement group

The amendment to the Executive Order -- which does not need to be put to the senatorial test of "advise and consent" -- reads:

"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words "except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act" and the semicolon that immediately precedes them."

The text of Section 2(c), which now applies to Interpol states:

"(c) Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable."

Because of this move by the Obama Administration any and all Interpol offices in the United States cannot be searched due to its status as a diplomatically protected organization. It's offices are considered sovereign and its files are not subject to legal request, be it by subpoena or discovery.

The website ObamaFile.com notes, "If any branch of government wants to keep documents out of the hands of the US court system, just hand them over to Interpol until the smoke clears." It added that Interpol can maintain files on US citizens.

 

http://www.newmediajournal.us/the_fifth_column/12222009.htm

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Verizon Responds to Consumer Complaints

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about two particularly nasty Verizon Wireless practices. First, Verizon doubled the early-cancellation fee for smartphones, the price you pay for canceling before your two-year contract is up (it's now $350).

Second, I passed along a note from a Verizon whistleblower who identified a really outrageous Verizon profit center: if you accidentally hit one of the arrow keys on your Verizon cellphone (which come premapped to various Verizon Internet functions), you're charged $2 instantaneously, even if you cancel instantly. (Verizon confirms that on many models, you can't remap those buttons to other functions even if you're tech-savvy enough to try.)

To my delight, the F.C.C. got on the case, even citing my original post. It formally asked Verizon for some answers about both issues.

Verizon hemmed, hawed, asked for an extension on the deadline, and finally responded on Friday. You can read the entire outrageous document here here.

Why is it outrageous? Because basically it denies everything. It says, in essence, "We've doubled the cancellation fee because we felt like it," and "We don't charge those $2 accidental-Internet fees. You must be mistaken."

O.K. Let's take these one by one.

First of all, Verizon explains the doubled cancellation fees like this: "Verizon Wireless incurs additional costs to sign up customers, such as advertising costs, commissions for sales personnel, and store costs. These costs are higher for Advanced Devices."

Huh? It costs more to advertise a BlackBerry than a regular flip phone?

Verizon also says that the higher fees help to recoup its expenses for building up its data network. Yet no other other carrier has felt the need to double the fee.

Here's what really gets me, though. Verizon justifies early-cancellation fees by noting the huge gap between a customer's purchase price and a phone's real cost. For example, you might pay $200 for a BlackBerry that, on the open market, would cost $500. Over your two-year contract, you're paying Verizon back the rest of the full price. That's how the American cellphone industry works.

O.K., great. We're with you so far.

But if I were the F.C.C., I'd have two big questions about this:

1. How come our monthly bills don't drop at the end of two years, once we've fully paid for the phone?

2. Verizon says that we, the customers, can avoid the early-cancellation penalty if we're willing to pay the full retail price of the phone up front ($500 or whatever). Fine. But then why do we have to pay the same monthly fee as somebody who got the discounted price?

What are we missing here?

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/verizon-responds-to-consumer-complaints/

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Decade of Doom

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