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With the PROTECT IP (PIPA) bill out for revenge after the failure of COICA, Senator Ron Wyden stands out as a lone Congressional voice for calm and considered action on digital copyright infringement.
Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill move onto the floor with a stunning unanimous vote. Thankfully, Senator Wyden has kept his ear to the ground on issues of digital due process and copyright and immediately responded to put a hold on the bill.
While Wyden is in a tiny minority opposition amongst his colleagues, public outcry against the bill has been growing. Demand Progress has initiated a petition against the bill with over 60000 signing it already; join us by signing it here. And you can vocalize your opposition along with 3,000 Demand Progress members in calling your lawmakers here.
I'm Regan Bartley. My small business now has 39 stores in the region that employ 250 people. And I need your help.
Every day, over three-fifths of our customers use plastic, and when they do, we're charged a "swipe fee." We understand the principle involved in paying a small fee for this convenience. But with a credit card duopoly the fees have skyrocketed unaccountably, and small business has felt the pinch.
Small businesses are currently plagued with swipe fees. These swipe fees are accrued when customers use a debit or credit card for a purchase. Big banks and credit card companies charge an "interchange cost" on each purchase to process the transaction. Swipe fees can add up quickly, especially for small business owners.
I am one of these small business owners. Whenever someone comes into one of my stores and uses a debit or credit card to make a purchase, I - along with all other business owners - must pay a swipe fee. To add insult to injury, even if the item purchased is just a few dollars, the fee paid out to big banks can actually wipe out any profit I would have made on the purchase.
For most small business owners, swipe fees account for the largest expense right behind payroll and healthcare. The big banks and credit card companies that taxpayers bailed out just a few years ago have had a stronghold on the interchange system, enabling them to charge out-of-control fees that continue increasing. The situation has become increasingly grim for small business owners as these swipe fees have close-to tripled over the past decade.
Last summer, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Legislators took action to alleviate this unfair fee on businesses and passed common-sense swipe fee reform to rein in these excessive fees, and ensure that they are reasonable and proportional to the actual cost of each transaction.
These past couple weeks have been a strange and unsettling time in the ever-more-murky world of copyright and intellectual property. The most concerning development is the proposed PROTECT IP act, the easier to say but still difficult to swallow successor to COICA, has been submitted in Congress. Immediately following the bill's introduction a number of individuals, organizations and experts have expressed their discomfort with both the bill itself and the implications it has for the future of information exchange.
WASHINGTON, DC - The Internet Blacklist Bill is back -- and even worse than before. After it was introduced last year, over 300,000 Demand Progress members contacted Congress to protest COICA, leading the bill to be shelved. But new documents (available at: http://act.demandprogress.org/... show Senator Leahy plans to reintroduce it as the PROTECT IP Act.
(I know this is election season, again, but some other things are still unfinished...)
You have heard of Netroots for the Troops, right? I was the sober one at karaoke in Las Vagas 2010. SanDiegoDem has promised to help me with the bar stools this year.
The oldest daughter's plans for the wedding with family became a quick trip to a Virginia courthouse. Army orders to report to a foreign post are on the Army's timetable. They have known each other since high school. One chose the Big East to get a degree; the other an SEC college. Two deployments to Iraq, conversations on the intertoobs, and ten years later they found each other again: the career Army career officer and our local newspaper copy editor.
Now the American-made bridesmaid dresses are being nipped, tucked and pressed. The historic house for the reception one block south of where they will celebrate a Nuptial Mass has the locavore menu. (I did not know Art Nouveau started as a Czech style!). What may still be up in the air is whether the wedding toast is with the pilsner from Pilsen or a premium Budweiser lager (no, not that Budweiser, the real one), and whether my spouse will dance at the wedding.
Now that I have you laughing and crying, jump over the fold for some reality about The Boxes.
The Patriot Act is (again) up for renewal this month. Now remember, it was initially enacted as a supposedly-temporary measure in the wake of 9-11, but more and more of it keeps getting made permanent and the rest has been continually extended for the past decade. With the death of Bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was OK to toss out our civil liberties if the "bad guys" were scary enough.
Excerpt from Manchin's "Commonsense Solutions" tour at Bluefield State College Bluefield, WV on Tuesday night April 26th concerning the Cap Act as well as the Debt Ceiling. See Carnacki's diary Manchin Backs Horrible Idea. Not a whole lot more can be said about where Not Your Ordinary Joe is coming from. Carnacki's post is spot on. Manchin is in rapture with the so called Gang of Six which he claims includes far more Senators than 6. He just doesn't see or comprehend the damage he is doing to himself and our country.
The stock market is having a really bad day today thanks to Standard and Poor's concerns about the USA and our deficit. I'm sure they are also concerned about Republican wing nuts in Congress threatening to bring the world crashing down by failing to increase the debt ceiling for the US.
Already frightened by fears about Europe's debt crisis and China's latest tightening, financial markets got really spooked Monday morning when Standard & Poor's cut its outlook on America's AAA debt rating to negative from stable. The idea America could lose its AAA rating is not new but S&P's action makes it more likely as a real-world event; specifically, the outlook revision means a 33% chance of a rating change within 2 years, according to S&P. An actual debt downgrade would raise the cost of interest payments for the U.S. government, as well as raise borrowing costs for U.S. consumers and corporations. Higher rates would have a crushing effect on the debt-laden U.S. economy, which helps explain the market's reaction: Treasury prices fell, sending yields higher, while money flowed out of stocks and other "risk" assets.
Huzzah for Standard and Poor! They were the same dirt bags who helped destroy the stock market and banks by their totally criminal ratings of the mortgage based securities. See Matt Taibbi by clicking here...
So this system depended almost entirely on banks like Goldman finding ways to securitize these instruments, ie chop the mortgages up into little bits, repackage them as mortgage-backed securities like CDOs and CMOs, and sell them to unsuspecting customers on the secondary market, most of them large institutional buyers like pensions and insurance companies and workers’ unions, many of them foreigners. Most of those customers were snookered into buying this stuff because they had no idea what it was: in the case of pensions and unions particularly, a lot of these customers only bought this crap because the peculiar alchemy banks like Goldman used in devising their mortgage-backed securities made radioactive mortgages look like AAA-rated investments. (Or at least they were given these ratings by Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, ratings agencies that were financially dependent upon the very banks they were supposed to be rating — but that’s another story).
Emphasis mine.
Wonders never cease as now our major institutions are doing their best to prove that folks like Paul Ryan are right,
Read what James Fallows at The Atlantic has to say about the mrket event yesterday as well as Standard and Poor. He nails them.
We've heard that call even from the Tea Party faithful... Now the administration is going to examine ways to screw more gently with Medicare and likely Social Security than the Republicans as they attempt to demonstrate to the country that they too can be tough like the loser Paul Ryan in exploring every possible way to cut expenses. Check this article out in the Washington Post.
Contrasting the president’s approach with what Republican leaders have put forward, Plouffe said Obama will use a “scalpel” and not a “machete” as he seeks to preserve funding for education and other areas he considers crucial to the country’s long-term economic success.
Still, Plouffe said Obama is committed to doing more to slash the fast-rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid, to roll back George W. Bush-era tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 and to even discuss changes to Social Security.
For Obama, the political stakes are high. He will be trying to convince voters concerned about the growing debt that he is serious about cutting government spending and Democratic allies that he will protect key government programs, while also working to ensure spending is not cut so much that it impairs economic recovery.
I am pleased to hear that they are again looking at increasing taxes as a way to solve our deficit problem expecially since such a large part of our deficit is a direct result of the Bush tax cuts. All of these so called deficit hawks just don't seem to realize that each and every wage earner now pays the social security and the medicare tax on the first $106,800 of their income. Right now social security brings in more than goes out. I agree that the day is coming when more will be going out than comes in. The answer is tgo raise the top amount for contributions to social security and medicare, The sainted Ronald Reagan and our own Bill Clinton certainly had no problem doing this back in 1983 and 1993 respectively.
It is obvious to me that the answers our leaders seem to come up with eventually take away from those who can least afford the loss of benefits that come from what they continually refer to as entitlements.
It is also very obvious to me who the entitled are and they certainly aren't those making less than $106,800 per year.
Every day that goes by with budget and debt ceiling talk by the pundocracy and the government proves to me that we had all better make sure that 2012 reverses the gains made by the republicans in 2010.
None of this discourse would be so crtitical if more of the Democratic base had voted in 2010. We need to be sure that we all support Democrats from the President on down in 2012, and not make the mistake so many made in 2010. The entire Democratic base needs to show up on election day and do all they can to insure that folks like Ryan, Paul and their ilk don't get elected in 2012. I don't have any idea who the Republican candidate for President will be, but as Carnacki has frequently said... think about how bad things would be for us all if Raese had been elected to the Senate last November.
Imagine what it would be like with Donald Trump, Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin as President because we didn't support Democrats. The clock on 2012 is clicking now.
It looks like the GOP is attempting to drive our country towards programs that would privatize social security and change medicare to a voucher system. As we all know they have to some degree of success managed to get many folks to believe that the deficit has been caused by greedy school teachers, firemen, unionized job holders, postal workers or anyone that has a normal middle class income, decent health insurance, and retirement programs. A good example of this mentality is in this letter to the editor of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph that can be read by clicking here.
Remember when the residential carriers drove their own vehicles to their route, delivered part of it and picked up the next section of their route in a storage box on the corner? The drop off in the storage boxes was done by one person in one truck. Now, every carrier has a vehicle where they drive a block and deliver and drive another block and deliver again. It would be nice to know how much money is wasted each year by the postal service on all of these vehicles. Oh, and they are being paid union wages, which are much higher than the normal wages paid most jobs.
Like I said, it’s all about greed.
Those of us that are over 65 and are already receiving social security checks and medicare would continue to receive those benefits while everyone else will be forced into the no win proposals I mentioned above. Using current logic it won't be long before senior citizens now over the age of 65 will also be characterized as greedy selfish folks who are the cause of the massive deficit created by republicans over the last 12 years.
Personally I think medicare is a pretty decent program even though the cost of part B and supplemental policies continue to rise. Be assured that Social Security will never replace a normal working wage for anyone, but it is a welcome addition if your house and car are paid for and you have income from other sources.
I find it hard to believe that the republican party can find anyone who is a true member of the middle class to support their marriage with the tea party and the one percent of our population that seem to be calling all the shots. The next congressional election can't come soon enough, and we had better get ready to work harder than we ever have to achieve some sanity in our government.
Not much else to say as the headline sums it all up. From CNN.
Dem senator breaks with his party and Obama again...
(CNN) - Saying that "we must get our fiscal house in order," Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia says he'll vote against raising the nation's debt ceiling unless it's married to a plan that addresses the nation's broader fiscal problems.
The announcement Monday by Manchin is the latest example of the governor-turned-senator who's up for re-election next year being at odds with his party and President Obama on fiscal matters.
He is determined to prove to the folks he believes are "rubes" at home that he stands for the same reckless spending cuts as the Republicans.
"We must be honest about what we value and what we need to spend your taxpayer dollars on – not what just sounds good," Manchin will say in an address to students at the University of Charleston.
"I have never put together a budget – be it my family's or as governor – that was based on how much we wanted to spend, but on what we had," Manchin will add, according to excerpts provided to CNN. "That is why I will vote against raising the debt ceiling unless the vote is linked to a real budget plan that begins to fix our fiscal mess. We cannot make budgets based on the next election; they must be based on the next generation."
A Manchin aide tells CNN that the speech will kick off what is being called a "Our Values, Our Priorities" weeklong tour.
If you get a chance to see "Not Just Another Joe" while on tour try to let him know that we West Virginians aren't going to fall for his running for office as a Blue Dog Republican tactics.
ROCKEFELLER APPLAUDS NEW PLAN TO HELP IMPROVE QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE IN U.S.
Rockefeller Introduced Legislation Calling for National Health Care Strategy-
Provision Was Included in Last Year's Health Care Reform Law
WASHINGTON, D.C.- Senator Jay Rockefeller today provided the following statement on the release of the first national strategy to coordinate local, state, and national efforts to improve the quality of health care in the United States. The Affordable Care Act called for the strategy, which was released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The United States has never before had a common framework for measuring and prioritizing initiatives to improve the quality of care.
The National Quality Strategy will promote quality health care that is focused on the needs of patients, families, and communities. At the same time, the strategy is designed to move the system to work better for doctors and other health care providers - reducing their administrative burdens and helping them collaborate to improve care.
"As we approach the anniversary of the enactment of the health care law, I'm very pleased to see the release of a coordinated plan to improve health care for patients and their families in this country," said Rockefeller. "We have an excellent health care system, but not everybody gets the right care in the right place at the right time. This strategy will help hospitals, doctors and nurses coordinate care, and patients will have an easier time getting the care they need, when they need it. I look forward to following the rollout of this strategy."
"The Affordable Care Act sets America on a path toward a higher quality health care system so we stop doing things that don't work for patients and start doing more of the things that do work," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "American hospitals, doctors, nurses and other health care providers are among the best in the world. With this ground-breaking strategy, we are working with local communities and health care providers to help patients and improve the health of all Americans."
The National Quality Strategy is designed to be an evolving guide for the nation as we continue to move forward with efforts to measure and improve health and health care quality. HHS will continue to work with stakeholders to create specific quantitative goals and measures for each of the priorities outlined in its initial report. In addition, as different communities have various needs and assets, the strategy and HHS will empower them to take different paths to achieving these goals.
The National Quality Strategy will pursue three broad goals. These goals will be used to guide and assess local, state, and national efforts to improve the quality of health care for all Americans.
* Better Care: Improve the overall quality, by making health care more patient-centered, reliable, accessible, and safe.
* Healthy People/Healthy Communities: Improve the health of the U.S. population by supporting proven interventions to address behavioral, social and, environmental determinants of health in addition to delivering higher-quality care.
* Affordable Care: Reduce the cost of quality health care for individuals, families, employers, and government.
Learned that veteran Villager David Broder passed away today at the age of 81. This was in a Washington Post email received around 1:00pm.
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Breaking News Alert: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist David Broder dies
March 9, 2011 12:56:27 PM
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David S. Broder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, dies at age 81.
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