For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.
Lily Tomlin
Earlier One-Off Post: Jackass of the Year 2013
Images of the Day
 |
| Via the Economic Freedom group on FB |
 |
| Courtesy of Illinois Policy Institute |
It has absolutely nothing to do with my having anything to hide over any of my communications, records or metadata (e.g., duration of a call, source, targets, time/date, etc.) The government has no reason to track my movements (unless, say, I'm under house arrest). If and when there is a legitimate need for such information, there's a defined path involving due process to ensure my constitutional rights are protected. The government has been grabbing data about individuals without knowledge, consent or a right to know; their rationale is that there might be a need/use for those data someday. There has been no effective check on the government's data collection, which in my judgment is little more than a fishing expedition.
Reflect on the fourth amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
There is no doubt this is no exhaustive list of exceptions to the government's right to know/search; it's fairly clear that your cloud data (unless you have shared it publicly) is in concept no different than your papers (or an extension of your home into cyberspace). It is obvious that the fourth amendment says the government does not have an unfettered right to search your data, property, etc. The fourth amendment doesn't say the government has a right to duplicate your papers for possible use later with a warrant: it's very clear that the burden is on the State to specify in detail what and why the search is necessary. If the State's right to search personal data/effects was unconditional, the whole discussion of probable cause and warrants would be functionally useless. Judge Leon correctly noted that what the NSA is doing essentially amounts to a general warrant, the kind of thing we fought the Revolution over.
We've won the first battle, but not the war. The State will appeal. They'll eventually lose.
Illinois Pension Reform: Do You Believe in Magic?
There's an arcane discussion of pension funding: backloading vs. entry age normal.. In essence, the latter tries to level the cost of pension over the employee's career vs. start out with light contributions and accelerate contributions as the employee nears retirement. What this means in practice is that employers are arbitrarily deferring recognizing their liability; this basically understates liabilities to younger workers.
What does this mean? Well, the recent Madigan pension reform allegedly sheds about $20B (of a $100B liability), but in 2016 it will change to an entry age normal, under which $6-8B will be added back to an unfunded liability. Illinois Policy Institute rightly notes that pretending that $6-8B doesn't exist right now amounts to little more than accounting smoke and mirrors...
Facebook Corner
(Illinois Policy Institute). Insurers look at these next few years as a gold rush. Tens of millions of people will be buying private insurance of the exchanges. It's a swarm of customers like nothing they've ever seen. And they plan to capture them — even if they need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do so.
Insurers, actually more like medical gatekeepers, provide no intrinsic value. They are vampires. Single payer, like every other industrial country, is the way to go.
That's a grossly incompetent opinion. Health insurers, unlike State monopolies, have to negotiate prices, qualify providers, guard against fraud, underwrite prospective policyholders....
It's nice be nice to live as a mindless "progressive" troll. What better for a Statist than to reject the system that has brought the highest quality, most innovative health care on the planet, where most policyholders are very satisfied with their private-sector options, in favor of failed centralized planning, people waiting--often in pain, sometimes dying, battling bureaucratic inertia...
(Learn Liberty). Economic sanctions are ____________.
unduly provocative, typically ineffective, and anti-consumer.
My Greatest Hits: December 2013
Well, it looks as though the spamming of individual posts has slowed down. It does appear that daily post readership has taken a bit of a hit over the past week or so, which may reflect seasonal factors (or disagreements of readers with any of a number of opinions). I have focused on a relatively new feature based on Facebook posts, which I see as sort of a 'Dear Abby' of political questions/issues; I'm honestly proud of some of my responses, which I think are worthy of one-off posts on their own. I think the two posts from last year were pushed by foreign readers (say, from Russia and China): the December post deals with my conservative case for a more limited military (I have flirted with expanding that discussion into its own one-off post). The Voting Rights rant seems to be one of those posts that attracts a small but steady readership; "progressives" are obsessed with the decision and are perhaps curious, but I'm not ranting at the decision: it has more to do with lightweight, self-anointed political pundits and unrealistic reliance on failed government, political leaders and programs.
- SCOTUS, the Voting Rights Act and a Rant
- Miscellany: 12/02/12
- Miscellany: 11/30/13
- Miscellany: 11/29/12
- Miscellany: 12/06/13
 |
| Courtesy of Glenn Foden and Townhall |
Elvis Presley, "Blue Christmas"
