Egregious News of the Day: even less privacy for Americans, even more corporate dominance
In light of all the recent massive identity-theft cases in private industry, this can't be good.
Pentagon Creates Database of Personal Info on All 16-18-yr-olds, Hopes to Curb Failure in Wartime Recruitment (WaPo)Privacy advocates said the plan appeared to be an effort to circumvent laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen information by turning to private firms to do the work.
Uh, like, DUH.
In other egregious news, the Supreme Court just decided Kelo. THE WRONG WAY. The most recent and far-reaching eminent domain case resolves the lower-court split in favor of the Michigan model, by condoning government seizures of private residential property for the benefit of private developers. (WaPo write-up here.)
The interesting thing is that the 4 dissenters were O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas: not your usual anti-business campaigners. Of course, the ruling also stands for a vast expansion of government power against private individuals, and bears only a very attenuated relation to the Constitution's limitation on eminent domain for PUBLIC good, not private gain. (To wit, private-benefit ED is justified because private development creates jobs, or offers to "clean up" a neighborhood, etc.) It bears mention that O'Connor is the one who kicked off this whole spate of eminent domain cases twenty years back, when she wrote the Hawai'i Housing Authority opinion that legitimized government's forcible redistribution of private property for the sake of resolving a crisis in disparate home ownership. All the same,O'Connor, who has often been a key swing vote at the court, issued a stinging dissent, arguing that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
Cousin J said this is like something from the later days of the Roman Republic. Legitimate government being corroded by sweetheart/interest politics? The more I learn about how quickly it's happening, the faster this civilization seems to be in decline...
Pentagon Creates Database of Personal Info on All 16-18-yr-olds, Hopes to Curb Failure in Wartime Recruitment (WaPo)Privacy advocates said the plan appeared to be an effort to circumvent laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen information by turning to private firms to do the work.
Uh, like, DUH.
In other egregious news, the Supreme Court just decided Kelo. THE WRONG WAY. The most recent and far-reaching eminent domain case resolves the lower-court split in favor of the Michigan model, by condoning government seizures of private residential property for the benefit of private developers. (WaPo write-up here.)
The interesting thing is that the 4 dissenters were O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas: not your usual anti-business campaigners. Of course, the ruling also stands for a vast expansion of government power against private individuals, and bears only a very attenuated relation to the Constitution's limitation on eminent domain for PUBLIC good, not private gain. (To wit, private-benefit ED is justified because private development creates jobs, or offers to "clean up" a neighborhood, etc.) It bears mention that O'Connor is the one who kicked off this whole spate of eminent domain cases twenty years back, when she wrote the Hawai'i Housing Authority opinion that legitimized government's forcible redistribution of private property for the sake of resolving a crisis in disparate home ownership. All the same,O'Connor, who has often been a key swing vote at the court, issued a stinging dissent, arguing that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
Cousin J said this is like something from the later days of the Roman Republic. Legitimate government being corroded by sweetheart/interest politics? The more I learn about how quickly it's happening, the faster this civilization seems to be in decline...