House making changes to CISPA, but it's still
too dangerous

post from Daily Kos on 25 April 2012 12:54:50 PM. © Daily Kos

EFFGrowing opposition to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has forced sponsor Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) to make some amendments that he says will secure 218 votes. The vote on the legislation has also been postponed a day, and is expected to be held Friday?unless we stop it, like we stopped SOPA, because the proposed changes aren't enough to answer privacy concerns.

"A lot of them aren't substantive," Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU, told CNET. "They just put the veneer of privacy protections on the bill, and will garner more support for the bill even without making substantial changes."

There are amendments from Democrats that would make the bill less onerous, but still aren't adequate. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), has an amendment that would prohibit monitoring of protestors, but not other Americans. Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) has one that would make Homeland Security destroy personally identifiable data after a year has elapsed, but doesn't at all restrict the collection of that data in the first place. These amendments aren't bad, but they aren't good enough.

None of the amendments strike out the most dangerous part of the bill, where it says "notwithstanding any other provision of law," government agencies can collect our private data. That "notwithstanding" means this law trumps every other privacy law, federal and state, on wiretaps, educational records, medical privacy and more. That's unacceptable. And, of course, the bill still doesn't allow for the kind of regulation that could actually matter to national security: protecting key infrastructure like electrical grids and water systems from cyber threats.

Please, tell your representative to vote no on CISPA.

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What Do Springtime Polls Tell Us About the
General Election

post from FiveThirtyEight on 25 April 2012 12:45:06 PM. © FiveThirtyEight

In presidential campaigns dating to 1972, the national polling leader in late April has won the election only half of the time.

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I Went to School for This

post from The American Prospect on 25 April 2012 12:24:36 PM. © The American Prospect

For those who make the investment, college graduation is supposed to signify the transition from training for life to living it. But for many young adults in the class of 2012, this year?s ceremony will be more like an anticlimax. According to a new analysis of government data by the Associated Press, more than half of young college grads are either not working or working in jobs that don?t offer them enough hours, enough pay, or the promise of a future career.

The AP reports:

Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs -- waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example -- and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

The report reveals a harsh reality for students, their parents, and an economy that needs trained workers in high-skill jobs. Today, young people facing job and income insecurity put off decisions that were once the hallmarks of maturity, such as buying a home, starting a family, or moving out of mom and dad?s place. A higher portion of young adults are living with their parents than at any time in the last three decades, which has changed social expectations about the meaning of adulthood and led to this generation of college grads being labeled as ?boomerangs? who return to the nest. In a poll conducted during the fall of 2011, think tank D?mos found that 43 percent of all 18- to 24-year-olds delayed moving out of their parents? home, and 47 percent of 25 to 34-year olds delayed purchasing a home because of the economy (editor?s note: D?mos is the Prospect?s publishing partner). Since young people traditionally make up a significant portion of the real-estate market, these trends are not just an impediment to perceived adulthood, but a drag on markets as well.

Education has long been acknowledged as a key to upward mobility. Last fall, I co-authored a study of the economic prospects for this generation of young adults called the State of Young America. We showed that over the past 30 years, the only young workers to see any earnings gains were those with a college education. Still, while the overall unemployment rate for those with a bachelor?s degree?4.2 percent?is far lower than the national average, these workers are taking jobs that do not provide the same security, benefits, and opportunities for growth that their parents? generation enjoyed.

This group is also saddled with student-loan debt at levels unknown to college graduates in decades before. The most recent numbers from The College Board show that more than half of public university graduates take on debt, with an average debt burden of $22,000. Among the 54 percent of graduates who cannot find adequate work after graduation, student-loan payments eat a big chunk of their monthly budgets, further restricting their financial freedom and sending increasing numbers of graduates into default.

With a pace of recovery that puts the U.S. at full employment sometime around the year 2020, we?re looking at an entire generation left behind. And it?s not just a temporary blip. Studies of previous downturns show that college students with the unhappy fate of graduating during a recession experience lower earnings and delayed career development throughout the duration of their working lives. Beginning a career in an economy with lower starting salaries is part of the problem. Another part may be changes in the structure of the labor market as the economic contraction puts the squeeze on underperforming sectors. According the Associated Press article:

Any job gains are going mostly to workers at the top and bottom of the wage scale, at the expense of middle-income jobs commonly held by bachelor's degree holders. By some studies, up to 95 percent of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations such as bank tellers, the type of job not expected to return in a more high-tech age.

In other words, as the range of middle-income jobs narrows, workers who didn?t make it into the ranks of top earners sink to the bottom.

Today?s college graduates invested in education as a means to attain economic stability, and it is still the best bet we have for achieving a middle-class life. But the report from the Associated Press demonstrates that now and in the coming years, the opportunity to get a college degree is not enough to put young people on the path to prosperity. Part of the solution, as even our presidential candidates agree, is to alleviate the debt burden on young people as they start their careers. But a broader approach for planning for the future middle class is needed, one that addresses the problems of polarizing labor markets, the increasing cost of higher education, and the insecurity and wage stagnation among workers at the bottom. Until then, the generation that embodies our material future will be busy waiting tables.

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The Shroud of Secrecy in Bradley Mannings Legal
Proceedings

post from Firedoglake on 25 April 2012 12:20:32 PM. © Firedoglake

Legal proceedings in the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, resumed yesterday, with the defense arguing in the military court at Fort Meade that all charges should be dropped with[...]

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Beware of defensive stock advice

post from Jutia Group on 25 April 2012 12:16:56 PM. © Jutia Group

Before you rush out to buy stocks like McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Kraft Foods, Proctor & Gamble, or dividend paying utilities like Duke Energy, be aware of the actual history during market downturns

With the U.S. economic recovery stumbling again, the eurozone debt crisis back in the headlines, and ‘Sell in May and Go Away’ on the minds of many investors, Wall Street is beginning to put out advice on … [visit site to read . . . → Read More: Beware of defensive stock advice

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Secret Service Scandal: Some Agents Were Too
Drunk To Sleep With Prostitutes

post from TPMMuckraker on 25 April 2012 12:01:41 PM. © TPMMuckraker

With eight Secret Service agents out of the agency in the wake of the Colombian prostitution scandal, some additional details are emerging about the night in Cartagena that cost several agents their jobs as well as previous behavior by Secret Service employees during foreign trips.

Some of the agents caught up in the Colombian prostitution scandal "have said there was no sexual activity because the men were so drunk that they fell asleep immediately after bringing the women to their rooms," according to the Washington Post.

The paper also reports that members of Bill Clinton's protective detail went to a strip club during his 2009 visit to Buenos Aires.

"Of course it has happened before" one agent not implicated in the Colombian prostitution scandal told the Post. "This is not the first time. It really only blew up in this case because the [U.S. Embassy] was alerted."

The New York Times reports that the agency's policy about Secret Service agents picking up women during trips to foreign countries wasn't clear.

"They said, 'We teach all our agents that if they go to Amsterdam, they cannot smoke marijuana,'" an official was was briefed by the Secret Service told the newspaper. "But they couldn't tell us whether there was anything explicit in their rules and regulations that said anything about whether one of their personnel could spend the night with a woman in a foreign country. They said they would have to get back to us on that, and they haven't."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, meanwhile, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning that the agency had received no complaints about similar activity. Napolitano said there was no risk to the president but said the conduct was inexcusable.

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Shocked!

post from Talking Points Memo on 25 April 2012 12:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

What really shocked Jon Stewart in Secret Service prostitution scandal.Ed. Note: I believe Stewart taped that segment before reports that some of the agents were actually too drunk to sleep with prostitutes in Colombia.[...]

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Profoundly And Fundamentally Zombie

Newt Gingrich will make his withdrawal from the presidential race official next week, but to anyone with a brain it's been obvious for weeks that his campaign is over. Kaput. Finis. We've put together some data points to demonstrate what his zombie[...]

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fundamentally_zombie.php

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Obama Stays Right in His Grill

President Obama tells Rolling Stone he doesn't believe Mitt Romney will be able to walk back his "severely conservative" primary rhetoric. [...]

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