Eeyore's News and View

Scary this person is a Supreme Court Justice and sadly it is not the one retiring.
May 04, 2009
Scalia: You Can Invade My Privacy—but I Don't Have to Like It
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn't think you have a right to privacy in most aspects of your life. But he doesn't care to have his own privacy invaded—although he admits it's perfectly legal.
Back in January, Scalia spoke at a privacy conference organized by the Institute of American and Talmudic Law. While his speech wasn't recorded (apparently at his own insistence), one of his remarks was a statement to the effect:
"Every single datum about my life is private? That's silly." Some information should remain private, "but it doesn't include what groceries I buy."
Scalia also said he wasn't bothered by anyone tracking him on the Internet. "I don't find that particularly offensive…I don't find it a secret what I buy, unless it's shameful."
Taking a cue from Scalia's remarks, Fordham Law Professor Joel Reidenberg decided to give the students in his Information Privacy Law class a special assignment: find everything they could about Scalia on the Internet, and compile a dossier on him. Among other findings, students discovered Scalia's home address and home phone number, his wife's personal e-mail address, and his food and entertainment preferences.
Scalia's reaction wasn't surprising. He didn't like having this information published. Said Scalia:
It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg's exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.
Well, well. Nothing like being dressed down by a Supreme Court justice!
But perhaps Justice Scalia should give the matter some more consideration. Not everything that should remain private, for instance, is shameful. Your bank account transaction data may not be shameful (well, perhaps it is…), but that doesn't mean anyone should be able to view it. Nor is your Social Security number shameful—but it's not a good idea to broadcast it to potential identity thieves.
Still, the most revealing portraits come from not just one or two data points, but the aggregation of volumes of data, all freely available to anyone who cares to gather it. Taken together, this information paints a remarkably detailed portrait of "you." And it's perfectly legal to compile, even if, as the good Justice Scalia reminds us, the person gathering it, or using it, may be exercising "bad judgment."
Copyright © 2009 by Mark Nestmann
http://www.sovereignsociety.com/

Why, unless it is about control
Documents: Paulson forced 9 bank CEOs to take TARP
May 14, 2009 - 9:08am By SARA LEPRO AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - The chief executives of the country's nine largest banks had no choice but to accept capital infusions from the Treasury Department in October, government documents released Wednesday have confirmed.
Obtained and released by Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan educational foundation, the documents revealed "talking points" used by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson during the October 13 meeting between federal officials and the executives that stressed the investments would be required "in any circumstance," whether the banks found them appealing or not.
Paulson also told the bankers it would not be prudent to opt out of the program because doing so "would leave you vulnerable and exposed."
It's no secret that some of the banks had to be pressured to participate in the program, with several bank CEOs saying they had been strongly encouraged to take the funds. But the documents are the first proof of the government's insistence.
"These documents show our government exercising unrestrained power over the private sector," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement.
A phone call to the Treasury for comment was not immediately returned Thursday morning.
The outcome of that fateful meeting _ which resulted in the government taking direct stakes in the banks through $125 billion in preferred stock purchases _ marked a shift in the government's strategy to fixing the financial system.
The Treasury had first decided to use a chunk of the $700 billion financial bailout package to pay for taking partial ownership stakes in banks, rather than using the money to buy rotten debts from financial institutions. The idea was that the investments would instill confidence in the system and get banks to lend again following the freeze of the credit markets.
The meeting was hosted by Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and current Treasury chief Timothy Geithner, who was then president of the New York Fed.
The banks that were initially required to accept the funds were Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., State Street Corp., Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America Corp., including the soon-to-be-acquired Merrill Lynch.
Paulson wanted healthy institutions that did not necessarily need capital from the government to participate in the program first to remove any stigma that might be associated with a bailout. He told reporters during a news conference that the intervention was "what we must do to restore confidence in our financial system."
The Treasury has since invested a total of $199.1 billion in more than 550 of the nation's banks, according to government data. Of that amount, $1.16 billion has been returned by 12 institutions.
Several other recipients of the funds, including JPMorgan and American Express Co., have stressed their desire to return the money as soon as possible. The funds have become burdensome for banks due to the increased government scrutiny and limits on compensation that are contingent with the investment.
http://wtop.com/?nid=111&sid=1675743

Gap between Baby Boomers, young minorities grows
The USA is developing a stark generation gap between aging white Baby Boomers and a young, growing minority population, according to U.S. Census data released today.
The minority population increased 2.3% to 104.6 million from mid-2007 to July 1, 2008, or just over one-third of the total population, the Census Bureau reported
Hispanics had the highest growth rate — 3.2% — during the 12 months.
Although immigration has slowed, higher birth rates among Hispanics make them the fastest growing group. Births, rather than immigration, accounted for about two-thirds of the 1.47 million increase in the Hispanic population in 2008, according to KennethJohnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. In addition, Hispanics are younger, on average, than the overall population. Births among Hispanics outpaced deaths by nearly 10 to one.
Forty-seven percent of children under 5 are minorities, as are 43% of young people under age 20.
"It's a cumulative effect of immigration," says Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center. "We've built up a population of Hispanics, and increasingly they're native born."
As the median age among non-Hispanic whites increases — it's 41.1 compared with 27.7 for Hispanics — so will the racial and ethnic generation gap, demographers say.
"A lot of these Boomers are going to be relying on this younger generation to take care of them in a lot of ways," says Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. "In another generation, this is going to be our workforce that is supporting Social Security."
Orange County, Fla., home of Walt Disney World, is one of six U.S. counties where the population became majority-minority in 2008: more than half the population are in groups other than non-Hispanic whites.
That's "not a surprise" to Orange County Mayor Richard Crotty, who says the county has always been "a snapshot of what America looks like." Nearly 10% of the nation's 3,142 counties have a minority population above 50%.
The demographic shift is most dramatic among "kids under 20," Mather says. "They really are the groups that are driving these changes."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2009-05-14-census_N.htm

Tincture of LawlessnessObama's Overreaching Economic Policies
By George F. WillThursday, May 14, 2009
Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.
In February, California's Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the state's fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that "loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester."
But the Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded, it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money.
Such a federal ukase (the word derives from czarist Russia; how appropriate) to a state legislature is a sign of the administration's dependency agenda -- maximizing the number of people and institutions dependent on the federal government. For the first time, neither sales nor property nor income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local governments. The federal government is.
The SEIU says the cuts violate contracts negotiated with counties. California officials say the state required the contracts to contain clauses allowing pay to be reduced if state funding is.
Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler's secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims -- and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors' contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.
Among Chrysler's lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler's lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.
The Economist says the administration has "ridden roughshod over [creditors'] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies'] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed." Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler's bankruptcy, asked that his clients' names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.
The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which has not yet been used for its supposed purpose (to purchase such assets from banks), has been the instrument of the administration's adventure in the automobile industry. TARP's $700 billion, like much of the supposed "stimulus" money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases. This is as lawless as it would be for Congress to say to the IRS: We need $3.5 trillion to run the government next year, so raise it however you wish -- from whomever, at whatever rates you think suitable. Don't bother us with details.
This is not gross, unambiguous lawlessness of the Nixonian sort -- burglaries, abuse of the IRS and FBI, etc. -- but it is uncomfortably close to an abuse of power that perhaps gave Nixon ideas: When in 1962 the steel industry raised prices, President John F. Kennedy had a tantrum and his administration leaked rumors that the IRS would conduct audits of steel executives, and sent FBI agents on predawn visits to the homes of journalists who covered the steel industry, ostensibly to further a legitimate investigation.
The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303014_pf.html

Here is an update from the April 2 post
Water Rights and Rain
Wildlife News on Jul 9, 2008
All she wants is the rain water that lands on her roof. She lives with her husband and two children in a solar-powered home in rural San Miguel County. Committed to promoting sustainability, Kris Holstrom grows organic produce year-round, most of which is sold to local restaurants and farmers markets. On a mesa at 9,000 feet elevation, however, water other than precipitation is hard to come by.
So Kris did what thousands of farmers before her have done: She applied for a water right. Except instead of seeking to divert water from a stream, she sought to collect rain that fell upon the roof of her house and greenhouse. To her surprise, the state engineer opposed her application, arguing that other water users already had locked up the right to use the rain. The Colorado Water Court agreed, and Kris was denied the right to store a few barrels of rainwater. If she persisted with rain harvesting, she would be subject to fines of up to $500 per day.
How could this happen?
Like other western states, Colorado water law follows the prior appropriation doctrine, of which the core principle is “first in time, first in right.” The first person to put water to beneficial use and comply with other legal requirements obtains a water right superior to all later claims to that water.
The right to appropriate enshrined in Colorado’s Constitution has been so scrupulously honored that nearly all of the rivers and streams in Colorado are overappropriated, which means there is often not enough water to satisfy all the claims to it. When this happens, senior water-right holders can “call the river” and cut off the flow to those who filed for water rights later, so-called “juniors.”
Overappropriated rivers are not unique to Colorado. Most of the watercourses in the West are fully or overappropriated. Yet other western states allow or even encourage rainwater harvesting. The obstacle for aspiring rainwater harvesters in Colorado is not the state constitution. It speaks only of the right to divert the “unappropriated waters of any natural stream.”
The problem arises because Colorado’s Supreme Court has given an expansive interpretation to the term “natural stream” and coupled that with a presumption that all diffused waters ultimately will migrate to groundwater or surface streams. And because most streams are overappropriated, collecting rainwater is seen as diverting the water of those who already hold rights to it.
How is a roof a “tributary”?
Applying this legal fiction to Kris Holstrom’s effort to grow food at home, the state engineer argued that her roofs were “tributary” to the San Miguel River. Because the San Miguel River is “on call” during the summer months, Kris’s rain catchment would, the state engineer argued, “cause injury to senior water rights.” The court agreed, even though there was no proof that the water dripping from Kris’s roof would ever make it to the river.
If Kris wanted to collect rainwater for her gardens, she’d have to pursue an augmentation plan and convince the state engineer and water court that she could replace 100 percent of the precipitation captured. Not only did she have to return to the stream every drop of rain she collected, she would have to pay for a complex engineering analysis to prove that her augmentation water would return to the stream in a timeframe mimicking natural conditions.
She didn’t even try. “The farm doesn’t make enough money to pay for an engineering analysis,” she said. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine a situation where it would make financial sense to harvest free rainwater that has to be replaced with another source of water.
The notion that you can’t utilize the rain falling on your roof might be easier to accept if you really were interfering with senior water rights, but in many situations it just isn’t true. In Kris’s case, most of the rain she collected would have evaporated or been transpired by native vegetation long before it ever reached the San Miguel River.
Hardly a drop in the bucket
A recent study commissioned by Douglas County and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has confirmed that very little precipitation that falls on an undeveloped site ever returns to the stream system. The study focused on an area in northwest Douglas County, where the average annual precipitation is 17.5 inches. In dry years, 100 percent of the annual precipitation is lost to evaporation and transpiration by vegetation. In wet years, a maximum of 15 percent of the precipitation returns to the stream system. On average, just 3 percent of annual precipitation ever returns to the stream.
Despite this hydrological reality, Colorado law requires anyone wanting to use rainwater catchment to send to the stream an amount of water equivalent to 100 percent of all precipitation harvested. That is, in effect, a gift to prior appropriators paid for by folks trying to live more sustainably.
An effort to address this problem stalled in the Colorado legislature this past session. A bill by state Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, would have allowed rural residents not on a municipal water system to store rainwater in cisterns up to 5,000 gallons. The bill also would have authorized 10 pilot projects where new housing developments could collect rainwater from rooftops and other impermeable surfaces. But even this tepid effort to update water law was sent to committee for further study.
The committee should use this study period to produce a bill that takes a more aggressive approach to water sustainability. The first thing is to make sure the benefits of rainwater harvesting are not dissipated into oversized yards filled with water-guzzling bluegrass. A serious effort would limit harvested rainwater to food production and Xeriscaped yards.
A resource down the drain
Even greater benefits could be achieved by promoting wide-scale rainwater harvesting in developed areas. Traditional land development practices typically direct runoff from roofs and other impervious surfaces to pollutant-laden streets and parking lots, and then toward storm drains.
Both of these problems would be ameliorated if all buildings were equipped to catch rainwater for later use. Additional benefits could be realized if the water collected from rooftops was brought inside for nonpotable uses. Rainwater that would otherwise be lost to evaporation or storm drains could be used in toilets and washing machines, and then sent to the treatment plant, thereby bringing more water into municipal water systems.
Colorado is expecting 3 million new residents by 2035. At the same time, climate change may be conspiring to exacerbate the water woes of all of the states served by the Colorado River. Rainwater harvesting is no panacea to deal with water shortages, but it should be part of a multifaceted approach to a looming crisis.
Fully utilizing precipitation where it falls reduces the demand on other water resources, leaving more water in streams or aquifers. The most important benefit of a legal change stimulating wide-scale rainwater harvesting may be its fostering of a new water ethic. People who make a personal effort to collect and utilize rain are less likely to waste water or tolerate public policies that allow waste by others, such as inefficient irrigation or inappropriate residential landscaping.
When people are maintaining gutters and cisterns to flush their toilets or grow their gardens, they are more likely to appreciate the importance and scarcity of water. They might finally say no to headlong growth that shows no regard for long-term availability of future water supplies.
Colorado should embrace rainwater harvesting. The legal fiction that all rain is tributary to a stream should be abandoned. Others should not be allowed to own the rain that falls on your roof before you can use it for reasonable domestic uses.
http://www.wildlifemanagementpro.com/2008/07/09/water-rights-and-rain/