CHICAGO — A U.S. air marshal removed himself from a Southwest Airlines flight Thursday after dropping a clip of bullets on the floor just before the plane was to take off, an airline spokeswoman said…”Since he was no longer traveling incognito, he decided not to continue on the flight, … He picked the bullets up immediately.”
Category: Politics
Government Wants Internet Firms to Keep Online Activity Records for Two Years
Gonzales and Mueller asked Google Inc., Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and other companies to preserve the data at a May 26 meeting, citing their value to investigations into child-pornography distribution and terrorism. Internet companies typically keep customer histories for only a few days or weeks.
The Justice Department said Thursday that it was not seeking to have e-mail content archived, just information about the websites people visit and those with whom they correspond.
Beyond law enforcement, though, the trove also could be available to lawyers arguing civil lawsuits — including divorce cases and suits against people suspected of swapping copyrighted movie and music files online. Privacy advocates fear the user histories could be exploited by criminal investigators conducting inappropriate exploration or pursuing minor cases.
“This is not simply limited to kiddie porn or terrorism. It’s a real break with precedent,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Data retention is open-ended. The government is saying, ‘Keep everything about everyone and we’ll sort it out later.’ ”
Eyes in the West Are on Federal Land Sale
Its mild climate, stunning scenery and proximity to several national parks have helped make Washington County one of the five fastest-growing counties in the nation. But like many rural Western counties, it has little room to expand: 87% of its land is owned by the federal government.
Now, Utah’s congressional delegation has a plan to remedy the problem, one that is being closely watched by nearly a dozen Western counties with similar growing pains. The plan is also being scrutinized by conservationists who warn that it would set a dangerous precedent, making thousands of acres of public land available for private development as well as offering a windfall for local agencies and special deals for politically influential officials and property owners.
The Key Ingredients for a “Great City”
Paul Graham ruminates on the essence of a technology hub:
I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. They’re the limiting reagents in the reaction that produces startups, because they’re the only ones present when startups get started. Everyone else will move.
Do you really need the rich people? Wouldn’t it work to have the government invest in the nerds? No, it would not. Startup investors are a distinct type of rich people. They tend to have a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. This (a) helps them pick the right startups, and (b) means they can supply advice and connections as well as money. And the fact that they have a personal stake in the outcome makes them really pay attention.
Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors. The idea of them making startup investments is comic. It would be like mathematicians running Vogue– or perhaps more accurately, Vogue editors running a math journal.
Grahams words are a must read for local politicians. Madison’s (Wisconsin) biggest challenge with respect to new business development is it’s parochialism. Living in San Francisco years ago, I was impressed by the general willingness to try new things and take risks. We have a world class University, lots of bright citizens but not so many people willing to take financial and career risks.
Emerging Airline Industry Trends 2006 – 2011
The Boyd Group [pdf]:
Airline Industry Trends Updat Presentation To Regional Airline Association May 24, 2006
State Business Filing Data
Larry Ribstein has posted some fascinating state-by-state business filing data from the International Association of Commercial Administrators. Of the 35 states with filing data for the past four years, 32 reported increases in LLC filings and 21 reported decreases in corporation filings. In the six largest states. the growth in LLC filings from 2002 to 2005 ranged from 60.3% to 237.9%, while three of the states experienced declines in the number of corporate filings ranging from (11.4%) to (27.3%) and the three states with growth in the number of corporate filings ranged from 4.6% to 23.7%:
Wisconsin’s data:
- Business & Professional Corporations: 12/31/2004: 5,571 ($1,8M); 12/31/2005: 5,104
- Nonprofits: 12/31/2004: 1,927 ($73K)
- Limited Liability Copmanies (LLC): 12/31/2004: 25,268 ($3,484,515); 12/31/2005: 26,653
- Limited Partnerships: 12/31/2004: 203 ($20K); 12/31/2005: 203
Minnesota had more than twice as many corporate filings and about 1/3 less LLC formations than Wisconsin. Illinois has a significantly larger annual number of corporate filings than Minnesota or Wisconsin.
It would be interesting to see what the numbers look like over time, attrition rates and the correlation to taxes and jobs.
On the Pentagon
Dwight Eisenhower once said, “The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.” Some argue that the Pentagon (the epicenter of America’s defense) has evolved from a protective to a pernicious influence on the country’s international relations. After tonight’s 6:05 p.m. Cubs game, we will examine the role of the Pentagon in American history and in current American foreign policy—both positive and negative—with two experts: JOHN ALLEN WILLIAMS, professor of political science at Loyola University Chicago and an expert on the American military and national security, and National Book Award-winning author JAMES CARROLL, who tackles this very subject in his new book House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.
Is There an End Game Plan?
“During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, much was made of the fact that 2.4 million new jobs had been created that year. Omitted was the fact that close to 800,000 of those jobs went to Hispanics who had been here less than a year.”
We live in a world of obfuscation.
Yes, there are problems presented to our nation each and every day, but no real answers are provided and every interested party is blaming the other for what is wrong at the moment.
So, instead of offering another in-depth news story on Britney Spears’ latest pregnancy or Michael Jackson’s Bahrain hideaway, it might be more valuable to focus on the many issues that have not been resolved, the kind that impact and worry the average American.
2006 Political & Economic Risk Map
AON:
Political, economic and social environments can shift at a moment’s notice, disrupting business operations for anyone involved in international commerce. Companies can be subjected to discriminatory action – or inaction – of foreign governments and third parties, potentially leading to forced shutdowns, relocations and other unforeseen expenses.
The impact of these political and economic exposures is examined by Aon Trade Credit in its 2006 Political & Economic Risk Map, created in conjunction with Oxford Analytica, an international, independent consulting firm of more than 1,000 senior faculty members at Oxford and other major universities and research institutions around the world.
Whistle-Blower’s Evidence, Uncut
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications company, which alleges that AT&T cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program.
In a public statement Klein issued last month, he described the NSA’s visit to an AT&T office. In an older, less-public statement recently acquired by Wired News, Klein goes into additional details of his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T building in San Francisco.
Klein supports his claim by attaching excerpts of three internal company documents: a Dec. 10, 2002, manual titled “Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco,” a Jan. 13, 2003, document titled “SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure” and a second “Cut-In and Test Procedure” dated Jan. 24, 2003.