Governing Ourselves

Okay, this is kind of interesting. This story in the Washington Free Beacon talks about the political decision to not sell our gubmint held shares in GM; to do so would mean the amount of loss is made public:

http://tinyurl.com/6wt5dnq

So then I did a little research. We the peeeeple hold 500 million shares of GM. Per a Feb.14, 2012 CNN article, if they were sold at the then current price of $25.40 per share, we would show a loss of $12.7 billion. That is on top of the $7 billion we are already in the hole on the deal. Source:

http://tinyurl.com/7jckre3

So what is the current share price? $23.57

So gee, at 500 million shares that's another $750 million loss. The stock will have to reach $51 per share for us to break even.

Sigh.

Dodd-Frank... gives dictatorial power to new agencies and allows unlimited collecting and sharing of your information. The agencies have no accountability to congress or voters. [Video]

Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national TV about NSA surveillance. Starting with his pre-9-11 identification of the world-wide-web as a voluminous problem since the NSA was 'falling behind the rate-of-change', his success in creating a system (codenamed Thin-Thread) for 'grabbing' all the data and the critical 'lawful' anonymization of that data (according to mandate at the time) which as soon as 9-11 occurred went out of the window as all domestic and foreign communications was now stored (starting with AT&T's forking over their data). This direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country was why Binney decided he could not stay (leaving one month after 9-11) along with the violation of almost every privacy and intelligence act as near-bottomless databases store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data. [Emphases in the original.

...going into poll locations in DC on April 3, being offered ballots for one Ben Jealous; one Bill Maher; and David Brock. ... also depicts Project Veritas going to a polling place and asking about Alicia Menendez, daughter of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez (D) and a political commentator on MSNBC; a poll worker asks to see ID, preventing Project Veritas from being offered Menendez’s ballot. The point: voter ID works in preventing voter fraud. ...

The First Amendment applies to all Americans. Our nation affirms the truth of inalienable rights for all, working for more than 200 years to make the ideals expressed in the First Amendment a reality in the lives of all Americans. These rights were so important to early citizens and their leaders, many states refused to ratify the Constitution of the United States without the promise of amendments that would protect individual rights.

A senior government official resigned Monday after a report concluded her agency improperly paid for an 'over-the-top' training session near Las Vegas that allegedly featured a mind reader, a clown, a comedian, bicycle giveaways and lavish after-hour receptions in resort suites for federal workers.

The White House accepted General Services Administration chief Martha Johnson's resignation after she dismissed two deputies and suspended other career federal employees over the $820,000 conference.

The 300-person event at the M Resort Spa and Casino in Henderson, Nevada, included $3,200 for a mind reader, $6,300 on commemorative coin sets, and $75,000 on a training exercise to build a bicycle in 2010.

Samsung’s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition. While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.... And while there is no current evidence of any particular security hole or untoward behavior by Samsung’s app partners, Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.”...
[h/t samzenpus on SlashDot, c/o Ace of Spades\

Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.... secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.... Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
[h/t The Blaze]