This is depressing. By upholding corporations rights as individuals, a new class of person is being created. No long will we think of the poor, middle class, and the rich; we’ll add three new classifiers on top: poor corporations, middle class corporations, and rich corporations.

Does this pave the way for other amendments to protect corporations? You betcha. Next we’ll be dealing with Blackwater Xe‘s right to bear arms.

Now that they’ve got the right to free speech, how long before corporations gain the right to vote? Does slavery apply to corporations (i.e. is it against the constitution to even own a corporation since it is an individual)?

Corporations have won over citizens in this country; it’s been happening behind closed doors for a long time now, the SCOTUS just decided to remove the need for formality.

Seriously though, if I could at all believe in an overarching, long-term strategy to weaken an enemy, this would be a doozy of one. (please note, I do not endorse any arguments about women being a “weaker gender” by the previous statement, I only imply that a potential enemy of the West could)

One of the reasons I voted for Obama was so that our nation would stop justifying torture (and hopefully to prosecute those sorry souls that sullied my country’s reputation by doing so). I have great hope in Eric Holder’s prerogatives regarding the latter.

I’ve got some issues with both what happened, how this has been reported, and what I expect the aftermath of this to be.

First off, the individual security contractor should lose his/her job over this immediately. That was egregious and should be punished. Digging into the details of what happened yielded that the contractor reconfigured Gnutella (the peer-to-peer software involved) to share more than the default folder, causing the plans to be shared online. That was beyond dumb given the classified information on that hard disk.

Secondly, whoever was in charge of security for the contractor’s company totally dropped the ball. Congress should request an audit of the security procedures for all of its defense and security contractors immediately, before the next loss of important documents occurs.

Thirdly, why wasn’t encryption used at the file level? If something is a secret, treat it like one. If the software in use doesn’t offer encryption, our government should have a policy that mandates the boycott of said software for the purpose of secret documents. In other words, if AutoCAD doesn’t have an encryption option, AutoCAD should never be used for a sensitive project. This one is a no-brainer! What if that person’s laptop was stolen? The security breach is the same. Encryption at the file level helps here. I also think that government (and affiliate) laptops should only use encrypted filesystems as well in the case of physical theft, but that would not have helped here.

Fourthly, the news coverage of this is essentially blaming file-sharing for the breach. The breach was caused by either a lack of understanding of what a tool does, or a purposeful ignoring of what a tool does. If I shoot a nail gun into my hand, I have only myself to blame for the nail. Either I did not understand the purpose of the nail gun, I did not understand the risks involved with using a nail gun, or else I chose to ignore those risks. This was a people problem that should have been avoided.

Finally, the aftermath of this will likely involve some ridiculous agency sifting through p2p traffic looking for state secrets. Just like using child pornography as a reason to filter regular net traffic, state secrets will be used as a red herring to make the federal government sift through p2p traffic. I smell the stink of Big Copyright at work. Congress, take note: preventing future slippage of secrets does not involve sifting traffic, it involves mandating encryption and having workable security policies. It will be a huge waste of taxpayer dollars if p2p traffic becomes the target of government snoops.

One of the underlying tensions in the “Big Three” loan issue was the fact that this would be a federal loan. The opposition to this loan came from several representatives from Southern states, which paid incentives for foreign-owned automakers to build factories in their states. Since these states had already paid one set of auto manufacturers to build there, they were less than cordial to the idea of using federal dollars to essentially do the same to another state’s corporations. This wasn’t openly talked about, but I suspect was an underlying cause of the resistance to federal help.

Another issue with the opposition to the “Big Three” loan was the idea of this being a blank check akin to the bank bailout earlier in 2008. This was simply a terminology issue that was leveraged in order to maintain opposition i.e. a red herring. It’s easy to oppose a loan when the bank bailout (arguably) flopped; another bailout would similarly flop. However, this wasn’t quite what was being asked (though I’m sure GM et al wouldn’t have said no to a blank check).

And here’s a difficulty: these Southern states did what I’m sure Michigan and Ohio did a long time ago: paid incentives to establish those industries in their state. There’s nothing wrong with a locality investing in a corporation in order to lure it in to an area. In essence Michigan tied its success to the rising star of the U.S. automotive industry. It’s main failing was not diversifying its industry enough. Hence, Michigan had no spare revenue to loan these corporations that are its lifeblood. Michigan’s constitution requires it to have a balanced budget so these corporations couldn’t ask it to go into debt in order to provide a “bridge loan.” For GM et al this was a real rock and a hard place.

However, instead of debating about whether or not Michigan could afford to lose a major revenue stream, much of the debate was about unions and accurate portrayals of how much an auto worker gets paid. This was another red herring created to give the lawmakers something to rally behind and debate about.

In my opinion the state of Michigan should create a referendum allowing it to temporarily run a budget deficit for the duration of the Bush-era recession. This would hopefully allow Michigan the ability to provide capital to GM, Chrysler and Ford without needing to beg the federal government for it. At the same time, I think it would be wonderful for Barack Obama’s administration to mandate that all automobiles used by the federal government be replaced during the next four years with new vehicles from the “Big Three.”

If my beloved home country had reservations against the text of the bill, we should have fought for it to be changed, not voted against it. I wonder just how low our reputation will become in the world. We unabashedly torture humans and prevent them to any due process of law, we invade countries in an effort to prevent them from becoming strong enough to ever wage war against us, we reject insuring our own nation’s children so they can get whatever health care they need, and now we think it should be tolerable for kids to starve. (I use the word “tolerable” since the text of the U.N. statement used this phrase “the Assembly would ‘consider it intolerable’ that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday”)

In case you didn’t read the whole thing, here’s the explanation of why my representative voted against starving children:

Speaking in explanation of vote, the representative of the United States said that, while agreeing with the sentiment expressed in the resolution, his delegation could not support the text as drafted. The United States felt that the attainment of the “right to adequate food” or the “right to be free from hunger” was a goal that should be realized progressively. The current resolution contained numerous objectionable provisions, including inaccurate textual descriptions of underlying rights. The United States was the largest food donor in the world of international humanitarian food aid and it would continue to work towards providing food security to all. In the future, he expressed hope that the co-sponsors would work to address his delegation's concerns, so the United States could join other countries in adopting the draft.

In essence, the delegate said “let's be realistic about this and not expect to end hunger any time soon; thus saith the country that will be donating most of the food.” As one can guess, I disagree with the methodology used by my delegate in this process. If the text was disagreeable, the delegate should have brought up such concerns before a vote was called (unless the U.N. prohibits such active involvement which would be surprising), not after it was up for consideration.

Come on, United States, we can do better than this.

Romney essentially makes the claim that it is the American worker who is to blame for the current failure of our automotive industry. Those greedy sons of bitches, wanting a five day work week, a livable wage, and healthcare are the reason that American automakers cannot compete with Asian automakers. He’s right in that the American worker’s desires are a big reason our cars are more expensive than foreign automakers but he’s incredibly inhumane and oblivious to the moral issue at hand.

God bless the unions that have allowed the American worker to have the luxuries that only a few dozen years ago was reserved for the rich. In response to this, a push for cross-country markets was made creating the so-called global economy. What is now unethical and wrong for corporate masters to do to the American worker has been off-loaded to those workers in Asia. American consumers should feel shame that our desire for cheap goods causes Chinese factories to push workers seven days a week for hours on end. These people are just as dignified as we are, worthy of the respect due all people. To turn a blind eye to them is wrong.

So how do we fix our problem without ruining things for everyone else? (Unions, I’m talking to you here.) We must start by writing our Congress and demanding that a progressive system of tariffs be created. For countries that protect their workers similarly to how we do, perhaps there is no penalty. For countries that choose to not look after the well-being of their worker with similar laws and protections, a high tariff is imposed. This is the only way to ensure fairness. If such a system is not created and if the unions of this country do not use their influence to ensure this happens, our country will continue to decline as other “emerging markets” consistently produce goods of increasing quality for far cheaper than we can produce ourselves.

Mittens, the issue isn’t the cost of healthcare, it’s the cost of being a good neighbor. We’re overlooking the working classes of other countries to serve our own greedy whims and it’s wrong. I’m all for a global economy, but not at the cost of the American working class.

Now, I like Al Gore. I’m inclined to believe that his plan is something we as a nation should work towards, but I’m dismayed by the way his piece reads. Gore ignores the plight of the millions of Americans who currently work in various parts of the United States that produce coal and oil. While I agree that we must refurbish our grid to make it possible for wind and solar to be feasible, Gore seems to have forgotten about the American workers. What are they to do? Should we ask millions to move West to work in the new wind and solar facilities we’ll build?

I believe that any comprehensive plan runs the risk of offending people; we are discussing the change of the status quo here. However, I also believe that compromise is the heart of democracy and a middle ground can be found. To wit, I think that our nation should invest heavily in the gasification of coal. While Gore dismisses “clean coal” as a pipe dream, a pragmatist must include a coal strategy in an effective energy plan for our country. Gasification of coal is not the most practical use of coal of course, but it does address two major concerns that middle Americans like me have: foreign oil and concerns for existing jobs. If we convert our coal industry into a gasoline/diesel-producing industry we have a major source of leverage with regards to foreign oil producers (e.g. Middle Eastern countries, Russia, and Venezuela). One must realize that it may be decades before the last gasoline-based car leaves the road (let alone a diesel truck), so we must provide a way to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil without asking all citizens of America to instantly change. By producing coal-based gasoline we can move in the right direction.

Regarding hybrid vehicles, I invite the Obama administration to charge Congress with a radical idea: put your money where your mouth is. By mandating that all future purchases of vehicles for civilian use by the federal government produce zero emissions (or radically lower emissions) the “Big 3″ will respond in kind. If instead we continue to purchase gas guzzlers from Ford while saying “you really need to create more efficient, lower emission vehicles” we effectively become hypocrites. I know Mr. Gore has himself been criticized (in my opinion unfairly) about his use of an energy inefficient cars while promoting his ideology. Our government needs to start using clean vehicles to do its work; everything from driving Senators to work to delivering our mail should be done in a low-emission vehicle. This is real trickle-down economics, for this follows an old principle: if our government mandates that they themselves use lower emissions, higher efficiency vehicles the consumer-class of America will follow in their footsteps.

Finally, a comprehensive energy package needs to involve and address the air-travel industry. This is an area that demands further research; how can air travel become more efficient without risking safety? I’m certain the engineers at Boeing and Lockheed will do our nation proud by following the examples defined above.

This campaign is demonstrating so many misinformation techniques. Earlier in the week, Political Lunch (my favorite political podcast) described the “150 strategy” whereupon person A makes a specious point feasible by saying something even more ludicrous. Why it works is a mystery to me, but I suspect it has something to do with the short attention span of cable news

Congratulations to Senator McCain for winning the debate. Since it’s a foregone conclusion, will he even bother to show up?