California passes location privacy bill

For those who are not already familiar with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you need to check them out. They're the best digital rights advocacy group out there and they sponsored this new privacy bill in California. We need to see more states adopt legislation like this that actually benefits consumers.

Location privacy scored a victory today when the California Assembly overwhelmingly passed an EFF-sponsored location privacy bill, SB 1434, on a bipartisan vote of 63-11.

The bill would require law enforcement to obtain a search warrant anytime it requests location information from an electronic device. It codifies the Supreme Court's decision from earlier this year in United States v. Jones, which ruled that the installation of a GPS device for purposes of law enforcement investigation requires a search warrant. Having passed both chambers of the California legislature by a combined vote of 93-17, and assuming the Senate concurs with the version of the bill passed by the Assembly, the bill will soon land on the desk of Governor Jerry Brown.

The last EFF supported California privacy bill -- SB 914, which would have required police to obtain a search warrant before searching the contents of an arrested person's cell phone -- was vetoed by Governor Brown in 2011. In his opinion vetoing the bill (PDF), he wrote "courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizures protections." But when it comes to location data, legislatures play an important part in protecting privacy for all of us.

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Fish near Fukushima 258 more radioactive than legal limit

The problem seems to be the worst with fish that eat along the bottom of the sea, but this is still a significant problem.

Radioactive cesium measuring 258 times the amount that Japan's government deems safe for consumption has been found in fish near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported Tuesday.

The Tokyo Electric Power Co. found 25,800 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in two greenlings in the sea within 20 kilometers of the plant on August 1 – a record for the thousands of Fukushima-area fish caught and tested since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to a nuclear disaster at the plant, Kyodo reported.

Japan's government considers fish with more than 100 becquerels per kilogram unsafe for consumption. A becquerel is a measurement of radioactive intensity.

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Romney's energy 'plan' is government by magic pony, and higher prices for you

Mitt Romney has just announced his energy plan, a "bold" scheme to make the US self-sufficient in oil by 2020 by increasing domestic production and building the XL pipeline. There will mean even bigger subsidies for the oil industry, while tax credits for wind power will end.

There is only one small problem with Romney's plan, it can't possibly work because the US doesn't have enough oil reserves to meet demand:

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that’s the question. We are drilling at a record pace but we’re doing so in a way that protects the health and safety and the natural resources of the American people. (Applause.)

So that’s point number one. If you start hearing this “drill, baby, drill; drill, drill, drill” -- if you start hearing that again, just remember you’ve got the facts -- we’re doing that. Tell me something new. (Applause.) That’s problem number one.

Here’s the second problem with what some of these politicians are talking about. There’s a problem with a strategy that only relies on drilling and that is, America uses more than 20 percent of the world’s oil. If we drilled every square inch of this country -- so we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up those rigs everywhere -- we’d still have only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. Let’s say we miss something -- maybe it’s 3 percent instead of 2. We’re using 20; we have 2.

If Romney's plan for energy independence were possible we would be doing it already. George W. Bush was in the oil business. The GOP had eight years to implement the Romney plan for self-sufficiency. They invaded Iraq instead.

That Keystone XL pipeline isn't the answer to 'North American' oil self sufficiency either. The real point of extending the pipeline through to Texas is so that Canada can then have the option of loading the crude onto tankers and selling it to China. It is a good move for Canada and for oil speculators but a terrible one for US consumers. At present, Canada can only sell the oil shale to refiners in Cushing Oklahoma, and they have to accept the market price there. With the XL expansion, Canada will be able to charge the US refiners what China would have paid for the oil, meaning "more."

This is the sort of business detail that slick money men like Mitt Romney make their fortunes from.  For the rest of us, it means higher energy prices.

During the Iraq war, Atrios satirized this type of thinking as 'wishing for a magic pony'. Romney has expanded the Bush approach to turn it into a complete theory of government, a general theory of magic ponies. Per Romney, all the US need do to become self sufficient in energy is to believe that the oil reserves exist and they will miraculously appear out of thin air (like WMD in Iraq).

Belief in that type of thinking is perfectly fine for authors of trash self-help books and religious types. But we tried eight years of the Magic Pony approach to governance under the last Republican President, and we are still cleaning up the mess that pony left behind. Read the rest of this post...

Eurozone eyes second recession in two years

For those who are eager to see how austerity plays out, pay attention. Cutting spending and services will not help an economy grow as we're seeing in the UK and Europe. What will hurt the most in Europe is the slipping economy in Germany.

The euro zone now looks destined for its second recession in three years, according to business surveys that showed the economic rot is even spreading through Germany, the region's largest and strongest economy.

The 17-nation bloc's economy will contract 0.5-0.6 percent in the current quarter as orders for new business decline again, Markit's Purchasing Mangers' Index (PMI) suggested — far worse than the consensus in the latest Reuters poll.

A debt crisis which began in the euro zone's smaller economies is now hammering business and consumer confidence across the bloc, putting pressure on policymakers to take radical steps to help vulnerable countries such as Spain and Italy.

After spending the last four weeks in Southern France, my circumstantial evidence also pointed towards recession. Besides those from Northern France, people from Northern Europe love spending summer vacation in France but business owners were all concerned with lower numbers this year. More Americans are traveling (thanks to better exchange rates and stronger economy) but those numbers will always be small compared to home grown tourists.

Even upon my return to Paris, the usual empty streets of August were suddenly full. Europeans see the slowing economy and are putting the breaks on spending. It's possible that EU governments have learned a few lessons from the failed austerity programs, but not likely. With a fragmented political system in the EU, it won't be easy to climb back out of recession any time soon. Read the rest of this post...

This just in... Gawker gets, publishes, 1000 pages of Bain documents

They still need to be gone through.  More from Gawker here:

Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren't made until years after he left the company.

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Fox News: "We titillate, you decide."

I've read that 16% of Americans have blonde hair. On Fox the percentage sure seems higher.  And funny, most are women.

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Catholic cardinal to give benediction at his church's convention (that'd be the GOP)

Like this is new. The Catholic church hopped in bed with the Republicans long ago.  I'm surprised we haven't yet heard of them cutting off communion to Democratic lawmakers - election year is their usual cue to try to swing the election to the Republicans.  It's like they don't even try anymore to pretend they're non-partisan, let alone simply an appendage of the Republican party (the religious equivalent of Fox News - all spin, little truth).

We always joke about how the Republican party would freak out if Jesus "that socialist hippy" actually came back.  But I'm starting to wonder if the reaction from the Catholic church, or their buddies in the religious right, would be any different.  Because last time I checked, Jesus never took hostages.

He never turned a blind eye to the rape of children either. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman on extracting a price for intellectual dishonesty (climate scientists, take note)

Just a small point, but with it I want to make a larger one.

■ The small point is about Paul Krugman and his slow path to calling out his professional fellows who ... lie. Used to be, professional courtesy seemed to quiet his tongue, making him assert his "disagreement" even as he says the facts are in another direction.

Let's say that differently. In the past, when fellow credentialed economists and related professionals misused their credentials to mislead — when they acted like lying right-wing operatives with an agenda — he would point out their errors but not their obvious motives.

That's been changing, however, and in "state of the Krugman" posts I've been taking note. Here's one of those posts from 2011:

In addition, [Krugman has been] getting to the point ... where he sees "Republican-leaning economists" as not just confused, but actual bad actors who "lend their credibility" to the party's delusions, and by extension, to the party's bad-faith ... political behavior.

That's quite an admission for a professional academic — to accuse your peers of intellectual dishonesty, not just idiotic (but forgivable) disagreement.

At that point Krugman wasn't ready to kick these people out of the profession, but he was getting close, sneaking up on it.

This week he got even closer in his discussion of Niall Ferguson's lies in the Newsweek cover-story take-down of Barack Obama (my emphases):

We’re not talking about [Ferguson's] ideology or even economic analysis here — just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers.

And:

[M]aking false claims about readily checkable facts ... was unethical on his part[.]

"Unethical" is a strong accusation, PhD-to-PhD.

But Ferguson lent his professional cred to Newsweek to further a lying and cynical political hit. "Unethical" is a mild world for that; "hackish" would be closer.

The next step would be to kick Ferguson out of the profession so you don't have to keep debunking him, time after painful time. How do you accomplish that? By removing the one thing he needs to do cloaked operative work — his professional reputation.

If he's no longer in the profession, simply say so (it's not a crime; I'm no longer in many professions). Then just say what profession he is in.

My fun version goes like this:

"For a while now, Niall Ferguson has been making counter-factual assertions, all of which tend to produce political results, not intellectual ones.

"I can only conclude that he's decided to leave the academic profession under which he writes and enter another — that of 'Say-Anything Political Operative.'

I honor that change and wish him well in his new career. He is no longer a member of mine."

Following this, all references by me to Ferguson would be accompanied by a standard Homeric epithet. Instead of "grey-eyed Athena" he'd be "Ferguson the political operative." For example:

"I see that Ferguson the political operative has published another factless diatribe in The Economist. I counted seven attempts to mislead. Have I missed one?

"In other news, zombie-eyed Paul Ryan has cited Ferguson the political operative in support of raising taxes on kittens and dogs. How nice."

I joke, of course, but it's really pretty simple. If a so-called "professional" won't act like one, say so. It's only the truth, which is more than you're getting from them.

■ Which leads me to fact-challenged climate-denial "scientists" on the take. Why should they not get the same treatment I would give Ferguson (above)?

It's one thing to constantly debunk them; this is happening now. But that pretends they're honest actors. Why not just say, in words of your choosing:

"You're not a professional scientist; you've become something else. The discussion no longer includes you."

If the grown-ups in the climate profession take this advice, they'll get two benefits. One, they'll clear the fog from the room, allowing for honest scientific debate. How helpful is that?

And two, they will hasten work that needs to be done before a life-changing deadline occurs — 12°F baked-in warming and no way back. It will be a whole lot easier to "unconfuse the people" about their choices without all that faux-science noise.

The way to remove that noise (I'm using the term in a "signal-to-noise ratio" sense) is to discredit them professionally, marginalize them, within the community and in the media they so depend on to do their damage.

This executes prong four of our five-pronged solution. They keep their money from Heartland, but you take away their lab coat, their place at the table.

After all, it was their choice to leave the profession for better pay; all the reputable scientists need do is ... say so.

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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GOP Texas judge predicts civil war if Obama wins

Don't tempt us. Nothing would make my day like watching Texas join Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and any other racists they can find and try to form a new country. Be my guest. Texas will be so busy subsidizing all the other backwards poverty cases it won't know what hit it.

[Obama] is going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN. Okay, what’s going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking worst case scenario here. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington-Concord take up arms and get rid of the guy.

Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops — with the little blue beanies. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. Okay. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’. “And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him, I said ‘you gonna back me’ he said, ‘yeah, I’ll back you.’”

And I was able to confirm that he is in fact a Republican judge.

It's amazing how much Republicans hate our country. After all, they're the only one who keep talking about leaving? Hell, Mr. Romney's family did leave. They hate our system of government (they can't stand the separation of powers, especially an independent judiciary). They can't stand gays, women, blacks, Latinos. Other than the Second Amendment, they don't seem to like the Constitution much either.

They do like the flag, but that's only when they don't have to think very hard about what it actually stands for.

They claim to like the military, but they don't - just look at the way they treated John Kerry for winning a medal for saving his fellow service members. And the way they use our service members without much thought given to the lives they're putting at risk (Iraq comes to mind, and don't forget Bush's unwillingness to give our troops the body armor they needed). And they mock the commander in chief for having caught bin Laden.

So it figures Texans keep talking about leaving the US.  They and their party left America behind a long time ago. Read the rest of this post...

China's hard landing?

Somehow there are still a number of economists who can't (or don't want to) see that China is starting its hard landing. Believing in the next quarter, or the one after the next, is not facing the reality that all is not well in China. The economic growth is still well ahead of any Western country but that is completely irrelevant. China needs to maintain even higher growth in order to keep up with internal jobs demand or else things start to turn ugly.

The other problem that won't go away is that China needs buyers in the West and that market is not returning any time soon. China has the problem of 70% of its wealth concentrated in the hands of 1% so they do not have enough middle class buyers to fill in the gaps.

Each month another new sign shows problems and now it's more bad factory activity.

A key private sector indicator on Thursday - which showed Chinese factory activity slumped to a nine-month low in August against expectations of a modest seasonal pickup - throws up the question when the world’s second largest economy will finally hit a bottom.

The second quarter, during which growth slowed to 7.6 percent, was regarded by many economists as the bottom for Chinese economic growth. However, experts say this view may have been overly optimistic.

“(While) we still believe the Chinese economy will pick up steam in the fourth quarter, this idea that the bottom has already passed in May-June is optimistic,” Frederic Neumann, Co-Head of Asian Economics Research at HSBC told CNBC after the release of the data.

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Antibiotics to babies linked to obesity?

The US certainly has an antibiotic problem as well as an obesity problem and perhaps the two are linked according to this new study.

Giving babies antibiotics before the age of six months could cause them to be chubby children, according to a study published Tuesday.

"We typically consider obesity an epidemic grounded in unhealthy diet and exercise, yet increasingly studies suggest it's more complicated," said co-author Leonardo Trasande of the New York University School of Medicine.

"Microbes in our intestines may play critical roles in how we absorb calories, and exposure to antibiotics, especially early in life, may kill off healthy bacteria that influence how we absorb nutrients into our bodies, and would otherwise keep us lean."

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Arctic cap set for record melt due to warming

Brace yourself for the "climate change isn't real" week in Tampa. This is where we will have the opportunity to listen to people discuss the benefits of rape, talk about the world being created in seven days and ignoring science. The Republican Convention ought to be another mind numbing event. AFP:

The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet's temperatures rise, US scientists said Tuesday.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder said that the summer ice in the Arctic was already nearing its lowest level recorded, even though the summer melt season is not yet over.

"The numbers are coming in and we are looking at them with a sense of amazement," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the university.

"If the melt were to just suddenly stop today, we would be at the third lowest in the satellite record. We've still got another two weeks of melt to go, so I think we're very likely to set a new record," he told AFP.

Also brace yourself for keynote speaker Chris Christie as he talks about the benefits of austerity days after his state reported the worst unemployment levels in thirty five years. Read the rest of this post...