U.S. competes with China and Russia for title of “Endemic Surveillance Societies”

In 2007, Privacy International conducted a survey to determine the extent to which countries conducted surveillance on their citizens. The U.S. was in the same category as China and Russia. Glenn Greenwald supplements this image with some stunning data:

The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State that - in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment - monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part "Top Secret America" series, reported: "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications."

For more on the ever-increasing U.S. surveillance state, view this excellent video by Glenn Greenwald:

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Looking Forward?

As usual, Florida is still undecided, a mess. According to NPR, though, it is leaning heavily toward Obama, despite the shenanigans of the state GOP in suppressing the vote. I didn’t watch last night. Couldn’t. We went to bed early. But then Donna got up around midnight and woke me by a whoop of joy that I briefly mistook for anguish. To my small surprise and relief, Obama won. I will not miss the constant electioneering, the radio ads, the tv spots, the slick mailers. I will not miss keeping still in mixed groups about my politics (something I am not good at, but this election cycle it feels more like holy war than an election). I will not miss wincing every time some politician opens his or her mouth and nonsense spills out. (This is, of course, normal, but during presidential years it feels much, much worse.) I will not miss… Anyway, the election came out partially the way I expected, in those moments when I felt calm enough to think rationally. Rationality seemed in short supply this year and mine was sorely tasked. So now, I sit here sorting through my reactions, trying to come up with something cogent to say. I am disappointed the House is still Republican, but it seems a number of the Tea Party robots from 2010 lost their seats, so maybe the temperature in chambers will drop a degree or two and some business may get done. Gary Johnson, running as a Libertarian, pulled 350,000 votes as of nine last night. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, got around 100,000. (Randall Terry received 8700 votes, a fact that both reassures me and gives me shivers—there are people who will actually vote for him?) Combined, the independent candidates made virtually no difference nationally. Which is a shame, really. I’ve read both Stein’s and Johnson’s platforms and both of them are willing to address the problems in the system. Johnson is the least realistic of the two and I like a lot of the Green Party platform. More . . .

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Ten Principles of Romneyism

Robert Reich has distilled ten principles of Romneyism. I think he's compiled and articulated these accurately. Whether they SHOULD be guiding principles for the United States is an entirely separate question. Here are the ten:

1. Corporations are the basic units of society. 2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. 3. All factors of production -- capital, physical plant and equipment, workers -- are fungible and should be treated the same. 4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. 5. Individual worth depends on net worth -- how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. 6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. 7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. 8. Politics is a game whose only purpose is to win. 9. Democracy is dangerous because it is forever vulnerable to the votes of a majority intent on capturing the wealth of the successful minority, on whom the economy depends. 10. The three most important aspects of life are family, religion, and money.

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New cute bank trick

About two years ago, I took most of my money out of banks, putting it into a local credit union. I'm extremely happy with my credit union, which explains its procedures simply and doesn't hit you with dozens of tricks and traps. Well, maybe I should move my last account from Commerce Bank, a regional bank in the Midwest. Here's the latest trick/trap offered by Commerce. It offers online banking, but Commerce has decided that it will only let you SEE the past 6 months of your transactions online, unless you pay Commerce an extra fee of $6 or $10. Here's the notice that popped up on the Commerce website. You might be thinking what I'm thinking: They already HAVE all of the customer account data . It's not like it costs them anything more to display it ALL. But they would rather that you pay them something for nothing. After viewing the above page on my browser I took the above screen shot. I then tried to move forward by indicating that I would pay $0 for six months of displayed data. That's when I got the error prompt indicating that I still needed to make a "choice." Apparently, "Free" is not a valid choice. I had to log out and back in to circumvent this deceptive screen.

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