GOP attempts to turn US into France

In the past week I have been reading Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order. I was struck by some of the features of the French Ancien Regime:

• The state was constantly at war.
• The rich were exempt from taxation.
• The constant wars and tax cuts for the rich resulted in an enormous debt.
• Innovation was focused on moving money, not investments that generated wealth.
• The elite were entirely self-absorbed in their own interests, regarding the common people with contempt.
• Elections were corrupted and eventually eliminated.

Sound familiar? Read the rest of this post...

The Hill: Tea party group joins progressives in slamming online copyright bill

We're written before about Senator Leahy (D-Vt.) and the PIPA ("Protect IP") Act. (The actual name is long and noble-sounding — the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act". "Economic creativity" — that's code for "Big People's money".)

For a nice backgrounder, click here. PIPA is a second attempt to shut down websites that link to sites that show protected content. You got it — shut down the linking site.

That original bill was dubbed the Internet Blacklist Bill, for good reason. According to that original bill (quoting myself here):

Targeted sites could be placed on a required-to-block list via a court order, or on a suggested-to-block list by the Attorney General. You read that right; the exec branch gets to unilaterally "suggest" which sites to block.

Executive censorship, no appeal process (that I could find), and the "crime" is linking, not hosting. What do they call that in soviet-style national security circles? Mission Accomplished, of course.

Last week, in a seriously under-reported move, a large Tea Party group has signed on to oppose PIPA. The Hill:

The opposition to Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-Vt.) Protect IP or PIPA Act got a lot broader this weekend when the Tea Party Patriots came out against the legislation on Facebook. The conservative umbrella group has almost 850,000 supporters on Facebook and linked to an editorial from Demand Progress executive director David Segal and Don't Censor the Net executive director Patrick Ruffini on Saturday, arguing the coalition of political opposition from the right and left shows the bill is bad for consumers.

Is "bad for consumers" what the focus groups say to call it? I guess "bad for civil liberties" just doesn't have that zing.

The article goes on to note:

"This is very interesting. Left and right both opposing severe government overreach in the area of intellectual property. Have your own website? Maybe the government will shut it down tomorrow...without any notice to you," Tea Party Patriots posted to its profile.

Over 350 firms sent a letter to Congress urging that PIPA be passed. The letter was organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. However, the bill remains on hold.

Watch this one. The name is PIPA and Big Money wants it bad. So far, Sen. Wyden (D-Ore.), a real Democrat, is the choke-point.

Action Opportunity. You might want to thank him:

Washington, DC
223 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3703
Phone: (202) 224-5244
Fax: (202) 228-2717

Any bets the Chamber is sending lots of Thank You money to the bill's supporters? The Internet doesn't protect itself, you know.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Don't count on consumers to bring back the economy

The economic downside to a vibrant consumer society is that when you have an extended recession, they go into hiding. We're a few years into this economy and we're likely to be here for a few more years so there's nothing out there to give anyone enough comfort to freely spend. Even when the economy rebounds, should they really be spending like they did before the crisis? MSNBC:

Fresh data from the government Friday confirmed that American consumers are tapped out. Consumer spending in dollar terms rose 0.2 percent in August. But those extra dollars went to cover higher prices for food and gasoline; when adjusted for inflation, spending was flat.

Wages, meanwhile, slipped 0.1 percent -- the first decline in nearly two years. To make up the difference, American households had to dip into savings: the savings rate in August fell to its lowest level since late 2009.

"What you're basically getting is a scene where consumers are losing momentum, they're losing momentum on income and as a result of that they're slowing down on spending," said Steven Ricchiuto, U.S. chief economist at Mizuho Securities in New York.
That spending slowdown has rippled through the economy, creating one of the biggest drags on an already weak recovery.

Read the rest of this post...

Verizon sues to fight net neutrality

Of course they did. They paid their money to Washington and they want the normal end results. Even though the new rules were watered down, enough is never enough for the likes of Verizon.

The largest US mobile phone company has began legal action against new government regulations that protect the free flow of internet traffic in the latest twist on the "net neutrality" debate.

Verizon Communications is taking the action following the publication last week of new Federal Communications Commission rules barring fixed-line broadband companies from prioritising or blocking any legal content on their networks.

Some companies would like to charge content producers in exchange for delivering their material, such as movies, to consumers faster than other non-paying internet traffic.

Read the rest of this post...

700 arrested in #OccupyWallSt protest

Compare the numbers on the street yesterday to the early days of this protest. Wow. It really would be nice if the NYPD could start treating the protesters with more respect than we've seen so far. Reading stories about concussions and other physical abuse is not what we should expect from the police. We should expect and demand much more civility from public servants.

The protesters are making an extraordinary effort to raise public awareness on a subject that has been long ignored by the political class. Rather than kick in a few heads, teargas people and allegedly trick protesters into the wrong road and make a mass arrest, the police ought to show some respect. Fixing our broken system benefits everyone, including the police officers and their families.

Follow the latest updated on OccupyWallSt and check out photos from the protests here. Read the rest of this post...

Bank of America Web Site down, coincidence or hacked?

Nobody seems to know why the Bank of America Web Site has been down. Was it due to hackers irate at the new $5 debit card fee or is the timing of the outage merely coincidence?

From a security point of view it does not actually matter. If the site it down, it is down. For a major commerce site to suffer an unscheduled outage of this type is a major embarrassment no matter what the cause. That your Web sites are down because you did not plan enough capacity or redundancy does not make it OK.

As a security specialist, I have worked in the payments sector from time to time. The effort by the Fed to reduce the fees charged by banks to merchants was completely justified in my view. The charges that are made through the debit card network should carry absolutely no credit risk for the bank and the fraud risk is entirely the fault of the banks for their bad choice of security technology. Neither risk is sufficient to justify even the 22 cent per transaction fee that will be allowed after the Fed mandated cut. The 44 cents charged is utterly ludicrous.

The Chip and Pin system deployed in Europe and many other parts of the world has practically eliminated card present fraud at a cost of about $1 per card issued plus some infrastructure. There are technical flaws in the particular scheme deployed that I would prefer to see fixed, but it has proved more than sufficient to dramatically reduce fraud.

My email inbox is currently stuffed with mendacious emails on this topic from K-Street lobbyists and their astroturf fronts. Like many a campaign hatched on K-Street it seems to be more about furthering the interests of the lobbyists than their clients. The Republican shills running this campaign will win kudos in their party hierarchy and be rewarded with invitations to prestigious functions, but if they had an ounce of honesty they would have told their client that the effort is futile and will only damage them.

The change in the interchange fee only applies to banks with over $10B in assets. Thus it is unlikely that the smaller banks will be charging fees and the probability that BofA will actually follow through and charge the fee is practically nil. Read the rest of this post...

Obama blasts GOP prez candidates for refusing to defend gay soldier who was booed

Fighting words from the President last night about the gay soldier who was booed by the GOP debate audience last week, and how none of the Republican candidates on stage said a word in the soldier's defense.

This is actually quite remarkable. This is the second (or possibly third) time the President has brought this issue up, VP Biden has brought it up at least twice, and Nancy Pelosi once during the Ellen show a few days ago. Actually, two things are remarkable - first, that the Democrats got their act together and coordinated a counter-attack against the GOP on an issue on which the Rs are vulnerable (seriously, that's great). Second, and just as important, is the fact that the President is really letting the Republicans have it over this issue. He's fighting back, hard, and quite sharply as well. It's the new "fighting Obama," and I like it.

And actually, there's a third remarkable thing here: that gay rights is being used as a wedge issue (and effectively) against the GOP presidential candidates. So much for all that talk about gay rights being the third rail of politics - it turns out it is; the GOP's third rail.

If you haven't already, please check out the video of the gay soldier being booed, then read and sign the open letter to the GOP presidential candidates from former members of the military who are demanding an apology. Read the rest of this post...