Class War

How public servants became our masters

Steven Greenhut from the February 2010 issue

In April 2008, The Orange County Register published a bombshell of an investigation about a license plate program for California government workers and their families. Drivers of nearly 1 million cars and light trucks—out of a total 22 million vehicles registered statewide—were protected by a “shield” in the state records system between their license plate numbers and their home addresses. There were, the newspaper found, great practical benefits to this secrecy.

“Vehicles with protected license plates can run through dozens of intersections controlled by red light cameras with impunity,” the Register’s Jennifer Muir reported. “Parking citations issued to vehicles with protected plates are often dismissed because the process necessary to pierce the shield is too cumbersome. Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that drivers are ‘one of their own’ or related to someone who is.”

The plate program started in 1978 with the seemingly unobjectionable purpose of protecting the personal addresses of officials who deal directly with criminals. Police argued that the bad guys could call the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), get addresses for officers, and use the information to harm them or their family members. There was no rash of such incidents, only the possibility that they could take place.

So police and their families were granted confidentiality. Then the program expanded from one set of government workers to another. Eventually parole officers, retired parking enforcers, DMV desk clerks, county supervisors, social workers, and other categories of employees from 1,800 state agencies were given the special protections too. Meanwhile, the original intent of the shield had become obsolete: The DMV long ago abandoned the practice of giving out personal information about any driver. What was left was not a protection but a perk.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/12/class-war/

Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen

The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure. He told The Times on January 22 that he had only known about the error for a few days. He said: “I became aware of this when it was reported in the media about ten days ago. Before that, it was really not made known. Nobody brought it to my attention. There were statements, but we never looked at this 2035 number.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece

Justice Dept.: Obama administration may take action on BCS

One of the key new initiatives in President Obama’s State of the Union speech is a three-year freeze on discretionary government spending, but voters overwhelmingly believe the freeze will have little or no impact on the federal deficit.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just nine percent (9%) think the freeze will reduce the deficit a lot.

Eighty-one percent (81%) disagree, including 42% who say it will have no impact. Another 39% say the freeze in nearly all areas except defense, national security, veterans affairs and entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will reduce the deficit a little.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/january_2010/9_expect_obama_s_spending_freeze_to_have_big_impact_on_deficit

WASHINGTON - Pressured by a growing clamor from New York, the Obama administration has decided to move the trial of Sept. 11 terror suspects away from Manhattan, where it had been scheduled to take place just blocks from the site of the twin towers attack.

Multiple media outlets, including NBC News, The Washington Post and The New York Times, reported on Friday night that the administration has abandoned its plan to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the city.

Senators on Abdulmutallab

The results of a week-long TWS survey of U.S. senators and their views on the Christmas Bomber.

BY Stephen F. Hayes and Daniel Halper

Authorities seek deal with Detroit suspect on cooperation, guilty plea

Authorities are inching toward an agreement that would secure cooperation from the suspect in the failed Detroit airliner attack, according to two sources familiar with the case, even as fresh details emerged about the intense and chaotic response to the Christmas Day incident.

Seizing on the near miss, GOP lawmakers have mounted a sustained attack on President Obama and the Justice Department, saying they may have lost out on valuable intelligence by charging Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in a federal court rather than under the military justice system.

But new details complicate that narrative, suggesting that Abdulmutallab, 23, clammed up even before he was informed of his right to remain silent -- a warning that could have come later had he been placed in military custody. He continued to speak to authorities before undergoing treatment for second- and third-degree burns below the waist that occurred during a bid to detonate explosives on Northwest Flight 253.

Doesn't the statement in bold that I bolded suggest that Press Secretary Gibbs was lying that the administration did not get all the information in the time that Abdulmutallab was questioned.

...

Negotiations could still collapse before the next scheduled court date, in April, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. But senior members of the administration's national security apparatus have publicly said that a plea deal is likely, given the virtual life sentence that Abdulmutallab could face on charges of using an airplane as a weapon of mass destruction.

So now we have to wait until April to get some information out of him. As Marc Thiessen points out in The Corner blog on National Review Online, so much critical intelligence will be lost if we wait until April.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012804135.html

California controller: State will run out of cash before April

SACRAMENTO — State Controller John Chiang issued a stern warning Friday about California's cash reserves, telling legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger they must act on nearly $9 billion in budget cuts the governor is seeking by March — or the state will run out of cash to pay its bills.

Without making those cuts — which Chiang says will pump $1.3 billion into the state's checking account — California would be broke by April 1, no fooling.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14249833?source=rss&nclick_check=1

Administration appears to drop plans to try alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in N.Y.

The Obama administration appears to have abandoned plans to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-conspirators on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration sources.

"It seems less and less likely" that the trial will take place in New York, according to a senior administration official.

He's in his second year as president, and he's discovered that even with all the powers of office, he can't do everything he wants to do, like remake America. Doing stuff is hard. In the past, prosaic work has held little appeal for Obama, and it's prompted him to think about moving on.

Begin with his first serious job, as a community organizer in Chicago. Obama got a little done, but quickly became frustrated with small achievements. "He didn't see organizing making any significant changes in things," Jerry Kellman, the organizer who hired him, told me in 2008.

What Obama wanted was political power, and that is what sent him to Harvard Law School. "He was constantly thinking about his path to significance and power," another organizer, Mike Kruglik, told me. "He said, 'I need to go there [Harvard] to find out more about power. How do powerful people think? What kind of networks do they have? How do they connect to each other?'"

Out of law school, Obama did some civil rights work in Chicago before running successfully for the Illinois Senate in 1996. Almost immediately, Obama began "chafing ... at the limitations of legislating in Springfield," in the words of a Washington Post profile. Easily bored, and with a growing sense of dissatisfaction, he set his eyes on the House of Representatives, unsuccessfully challenging Rep. Bobby Rush in 2000. In 2002 he began his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Has-Obama-become-bored-with-being-president_-82978332.html

Chavez’s Haiti Logic

Posted 01/22/2010 07:33 PM ET

Americas: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has gone off the deep end again, claiming the U.S. engineered the Haiti earthquake. It's a laughable malevolence, of course. But given the spectacular U.S. aid effort, it's also a threat.

Right now, the dictator's No. 1 foreign policy aim is to discredit the U.S. aid effort in Haiti. Shortly after Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake, Chavez, trying to whip up paranoia, accused America of seeking a "military occupation" there.

When that didn't work and U.S. aircraft carriers and hospital ships steamed in to rescue ravaged Port-au-Prince, Chavez told Spanish newspaper ABC that the earthquake was the product of a "tectonic weapon" launched by the U.S. Navy in a test-run for the U.S.' ultimate target: Iran.

As lunatic as it sounds, the Venezuelan dictator knows what he's doing: Haitians are vulnerable now and seeking to make sense of the catastrophe. Chavez's words try to tap into an existing Caribbean cultural undercurrent of paranoia about CIA influence to discredit U.S. help. That's important to Chavez because U.S. aid is building vast reservoirs of goodwill in Haiti and beyond and it will come at the expense of his own.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518904