Author: dm

The State Department spokesman has gone rogue

The Obama administration has gone nuts having everyone use twitter accounts, particularly in the State Department.  This obviously includes the State Department spokesman, who was fired last month for making a minor criticism of the administration’s treatment of Bradley Manning. It turns out that they didn’t take away his twitter account and has decided to… Continue reading The State Department spokesman has gone rogue

So much for Hollywood

Last year, the CFTC decided to allow trading in movie futures, enabling people to bet on how much major films will earn at the box office (either up or down) before they’ve been finished or even started for that matter. Businessweek, May 5, 2010: Even as lawmakers rail against impossible-to-understand toxic securities and Wall Street… Continue reading So much for Hollywood

More on the private intel stuff

LA Times: Hoping to win a lucrative agreement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, three data security contractors for federal defense and intelligence agencies developed a proposal to monitor and manipulate the chamber’s left-leaning critics, according to recently released e-mail correspondence. Employees of the firms compiled short dossiers on a few activists that included photographs,… Continue reading More on the private intel stuff

Bank of America hired private intel to target WikiLeaks

This is really creepy. It doesn’t look like there’s much on this story yet, but apparently Glenn Greenwald was contacted about it because he was mentioned in the leaked report (pdf).  There are also news reports being made right now downplaying the the BoA documents, which could be a PR effort on their part. The… Continue reading Bank of America hired private intel to target WikiLeaks

Deficit commission report 2

Part 1 here.  I’m going to consolidate mandatory and discretionary spending into one post so I can deal with the tax stuff separately. Discretionary Discretionary spending is spending authorized or re-authorized every year by congress.  See the summary of the 2011 budget by the National Priorities Project here. • 1% of the FY2011 discretionary budget… Continue reading Deficit commission report 2

Deficit commission report 1

Link (pdf).  This thing is 50 pages long so I’m going to do it in several parts. It’s absolutely terrible and full of lies.  Its guiding principle was explained by Marx in Vol. I of Capital: The system of public credit, i.e., of national debts, whose origin we discover in Genoa and Venice as early… Continue reading Deficit commission report 1