http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle453-20080127-03.html
South Wins!!
by Russell D. Longcore
***Begin Quote***
Over 150 million people are not killed by governments and wars during the 20th century. All because Jefferson Davis did not hesitate to act on a day in July of 1861.
One Man Can Make A Difference.
***End Quote***
Interesting observation.
But like shoulda, coulda, and woulda probably not overly useful.
However, I do like alternate history better than what we’ve got!
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Posted by reinkefj
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080131/D8UGR23G0.html
Katrina Lawsuit Vs. Army Corps Dismissed
Jan 31, 6:26 AM (ET)
By CAIN BURDEAU and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
*** begin quote ***
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Saying his hands were tied by law, a federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina, but rebuked the agency for failing to protect the city.
*** end quote ***
Sovereign Immunity?
“Rebuked” — big deal. They got there paychecks and pensions. The folks get screwed!
The gooferment is just here to protect and serve … … itself!
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2 Comments | Political | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/25/0625206&from=rss
Big Delays, Small Laptops: OLPC XO Recipients Mad
Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 25, @08:15AM
from the give-one-get-one-if-you-are-lucky dept.
Portables Hardware
***Begin Quote***
PCWMike writes to tell us about the growing concern over the failure of OLPC to deliver laptops to some of its customers. PC World editor-in-chief Harry McCracken notes that record-keeping was poor for some of the people who paid via PayPal. A report on LinuxJournal also suggests that customer information was lost due to errors in the database software used by OLPC. Quoting PC World: “OLPC spokesperson Jackie Lustig acknowledges problems with the ordering and the fulfillment process, but says the biggest challenges are a short supply of XO laptops and the organization’s ability to meet consumer demand for the XO laptop. Some also wonder whether chronic delivery problems for Give One, Get One donors may bode poorly for the 15 countries slated to receive nearly 500,000 XO notebooks. Lustig says delivering in bulk to just over a dozen countries is infinitely simpler than processing and delivering 80,000 individual laptops.”
***End Quote***
Guess I wasn’t lucky. Now the “early January” date has slipped to “maybe April”. Argh! What did these guys take lessons from Dell? They should have outsourced it to Amazon!
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Posted by reinkefj
MONEY: Creating a ladder
***Begin Quote***
You walk in on January 2nd with your 16k$ and buy A one year, two year, three year, and a four year cd for 1k$ each. You also buy a Ninety day, One Hundred Eighty day, and a Two Hundred Seventy day cd for 4k$ each.
***End Quote***
MONEY: Deploying a CD ladder isn’t easy
*** begin quote ***
And, if your account goes over the FDIC insurance cap, I’ll set up the overflow with my competitor down the street.
*** end quote ***
Well, picking up from where I left off, it’s very easy to flow over the FDIC 100k limit. So one has to plan ahead to avoid this problem. For example, in the example of a five year quarterly cd ladder, one has 20 slots to fill. Assuming the 100k limit, then one is limited to 100,000/20 or 5k$. If you do a five year twelve month cd ladder, then the limit is $1,666.66. So, you’ll be using different banks to avoid that.
Now if one wants to have say 100k in retirement income, that’s 5% of 2M$.
(Before you do a Redd Fox — clutching your heart and exclaiming this is the big one — recognize that this is not much in terms of inflation and costs in retirement. Not when a ride on the NJ Turnpike is going to cost 50$! Argh!)
So, how does one develop a 2M$ ladder? And, how do you grow into your own “annuity”?
2M$ across a 20 rung (4 Quarter by 5 years) comes out very neatly to 100k$.
So you need 20 DIFFERENT FDIC banks for your CDs at full capacity. You are always taking the interest, so you never rollover the entire cd.
Since most folks I know don’t start with 2M$, how do you do this organically?
I suggest that you start with one bank and target your deposits with an eye to the magic 100k five year cd. So assume that you can “save” 5k/year, then it’ll take you 20 years to get to that 100k target. (Don’t be discouraged! Make a game of it.) Each year you buy a five year cd for your 5k, rollover interest, and as you “range in” on your goal tune your maturity to have it all come due at the same time.
Do it in your IRA and it’s tax deferred.
The more you save the faster you get there.
Seem “easy” in terms of the financial injineering!
:-)
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Posted by reinkefj
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20080126/D8UDG2N00.html
Photo Clues Lead to Camera’s Owner
Jan 26, 4:43 AM (ET)
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
***Begin Quote***
At dusk on New Year’s Eve, Erika Gunderson got into a taxi in New York City and entered a digital-age mystery. Sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera. Gunderson asked the driver which previous passenger might have left it, but the cabbie didn’t seem to care. So Gunderson brought it home and showed it to her fiance, Brian Ascher. They decided that the only right thing to do was to find the owner.
***End Quote***
I won’t spoil the story by revealing the ending, but …
… why don’t electronic devices have a return address?
… why don’t all cell phones suggest an ICE (In Case of Emergency)?
… why don’t more people try harder like these folks?
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Posted by reinkefj
http://www.covenantnews.com/abortion/archives/037719.html
January 26, 2008
Driver Charged in Crash That Killed Woman’s Unborn Child
***Begin Quote***
KITTANNING, Pa. — An Armstrong County woman has been charged after a car she was driving crashed into another vehicle, killing the other driver’s unborn child. Fifty-three-year-old Sheila Marlene Altman of Ford City has been arraigned on charges of vehicular homicide, drunken driving, homicide of an unborn child, involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault.
***End Quote***
What I find interesting is that the gooferment picks and chooses when someone becomes a person deserving of its protection. The Constitution does cite the “right to life” as one of the principle reasons for the existence of any government. In this story, it’s an “unborn child”; if they were talking about abortion, it would have been a fetus. I’m confused.
Please don’t think I’m for driving carelessly, negligently, or stupidly. I am for a little consistency.
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Posted by reinkefj
Another lesson that I didn’t get in school.
(I’m learning even at my advanced age that there are many!)
I read some “patriot fiction” from the above link. Mostly TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) stuff.
(Amazingly good, Some surprisingly long. Interesting twists. Some technical stuff obviously cut ‘n’ pasted.)
The interesting part of it is that one quickly realizes that humanity can’t survive without the cooperation of all the folks.
That’s clearly a lesson that the politicians have “forgotten”. As you listen to how they pander, pontificate, and prevaricate in their speeches and debates, one realizes how they miss the essence of society and how “short” the fall on the “leadership standard ruler”.
That’s clearly a lesson that the people have never learned.
That’s a lesson that “big business” has to relearn. Management gurus like Tom Peters and the quality guys have been stressing for ages to no avail. Having come thru layoffs many times, it’s clear that some organizations don’t value their “human resources”.
People first; you can’t succeed without them. Heck, you can’t survive without them. You need to find the ways to align interests.
Another lesson that I didn’t get in school.
Sigh!
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Posted by reinkefj
http://davidmaister.com/blog/548/Compensation-Systems
Passion, People and Principles
post # 493 — Friday, January 25, 2008 — a Managing, Strategy post
Compensation Systems
***Begin Quote***
I’m thinking of writing a monograph or a book on compensation systems. As part of it, I began a list of some of the things a compensation system needs to accomplish. It’s a long potential list of objectives – too long, since no one system can accomplish all too many objectives – and many of them are contradictory!!
***End Quote***
The compensation system should not be “game-able” by the company. You’ve focused all on what the company needs; what does the employee need? A “crystal’ box process that can’t be “past posted” by the company. Two of the most demoralizing experiences I’ve had was when I did hit a “home run” which should have paid a multi-million dollar bonus the rules changed AND, another time, they decided what they wanted to pay and “backed in” to that by tinkering with the formula. Argh!
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Posted by reinkefj
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/can_the_gop_reframe_the_illega.html
January 25, 2008
Can the GOP Reframe the Illegal Immigration Issue?
By Lee Cary
*** begin quote ***
One major task facing the eventual Republican presidential nominee will be to reframe the debate toward the real issue: the negative ramifications, to both illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens, that stem from mass uncontrolled immigration from Mexico.
*** end quote ***
IMHO
“Illegal” versus “legal” immigration is a smoke screen in front of the real issue.
The Mexican “invasion” of illegals across the border is more smoke.
The real issue is welfare!
I’m against welfare. For anyone. Period. Exclamation point. It’s socialism, (or worse), to steal from one person to dole it out to some one else, after extracting a large “handling fee” (i.e., pay a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats to steal and dole).
Under the heading of “welfare”, I include “free public education”, “free medical care”, and all the other “services” that gooferment at all levels provides.
(As a side note, there is another moral hazard with “free public education” provided by the gooferment, it’s propaganda; not education. When the communists setup reeducation camps for political prisoners or when they remove children from their families for education, Americans were horrified and deservedly so. When our own gooferment does it, that’s different. How? That escapes me. But, it’s no surprise at how poorly we are doing education wise in terms of results or costs. The continued reelection of the same hacks can be directly attributed to the “reeducation camps” here in the USA.)
So get rid of welfare, and the only “good” immigrants that will want to come. They will be the ones we want. People who want to work, improve their lot, and that’s good for all of us. And, when the “illegals” who are here to collect find life tough, they will take themselves home or get to work.
Either way — come to work or get to work, I don’t give a damn!
The side benefit of fixing “welfare” is that those USA citizens, who have been gaming the system and “collecting”, will also have to start “earning”. They need to pull their own weight in this lifeboat. They are no better than the “illegal immigrants” collecting.
We should remember the lessons of the Pilgrims in 1620. They nearly starved under socialism until they discovered “capitalism”. Once, everyone was rewarded for their labors, the community prospered.
Socialism kills; “greed” (i.e., enlightened self-interest) is good.
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Posted by reinkefj
***Begin Quote***
========================================================================
[4] National Identification Plan Announced
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On January 11, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff released the agency’s final regulations for REAL ID, the
national identification system. The proposal has drawn sharp criticism
from state governments, members of Congress, civil liberties advocates,
and security experts. The law was passed in 2005 and will require
significant changes to the state driver’s license if such ID cards are
to be use for “federal purposes.”
REAL ID was appended to a bill providing tsunami relief and military
appropriations, and passed with little debate and no hearings. The REAL
ID Act repealed provisions in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004, which contained “carefully crafted language —
bipartisan language — to establish standards for States issuing
driver’s licenses,” according to Sen. Richard Durbin.
In the final regulations, Secretary Chertoff scaled back some of the
requirements, reduced the cost, and extended the deadline for state
compliance. As part of the cost-saving effort, Homeland Security has
decided not to encrypt the data that will be stored on the card, leaving
the data open for download by third parties, such as clubs and bars. The
agency said that it would make $360 million available to the states to
implement REAL ID — $80 million in dedicated funding and the agency
will allow the states can use up to $280 million in homeland security
grant funding. States argue that those grants are apportioned to first
responder training, port security, and other homeland security programs,
and that funds should not be diverted away from these programs to pay
for the national identification system.
Homeland Security says that states must apply to the agency for an
extension and promise to implement the REAL ID national identification
system or else the states’ driver’s licenses and ID cards will not be
“accepted for federal purposes” beginning on May 11, 2008. Currently,
“federal purposes” is defined as entering federal buildings, boarding
commercial flights, and entering nuclear facilities. However, Secretary
Chertoff also indicated that the REAL ID card would be used for a wide
variety of purposes, unrelated to the law that authorized the system,
including employment verification and immigration determination. He also
indicated that the agency would not prevent the use of the card by
private parties for non-government purposes.
The states are rebelling against the national ID scheme. On January 18,
Montana governor Brian Schweitzer wrote to the governors of 17 states
asking them to join him in rejecting the REAL ID system. Montana is one
of 17 that has passed legislation against REAL ID. “Today, I am asking
you to join with me in resisting the DHS coercion to comply with the
provisions of REAL ID,” Gov. Schweitzer wrote. “I would like us to speak
with one, unified voice and demand the Congress step in and fix this
mess.”
Congress is considering legislation to repeal REAL ID. Sen. Patrick
Leahy, who co-sponsored legislation to replace REAL ID with the
negotiated rulemaking process originally enacted in the 2004
Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act, criticized the final
regulations. “The Bush administration’s REAL ID program will not only
lead to long lines at every DMV across the country, it will impose a
massive unfunded mandate on state governments while offering absolutely
no federal privacy protections to our citizens,” Sen. Leahy said. “It is
unfortunate that instead of addressing the fundamental problems this law
poses for the states, the Administration appears content merely to
prolong a contentious and unproductive battle to force the states to
comply.”
The Department of Homeland Security has also been criticized for its own
poor security practices. In May 2007, a Homeland Security office lost
the personal data of 100,000 employees. According to security expert
Bruce Schneier, “Measures like REAL ID have limited security benefit.
Identification systems are complex, and the unforgability of the plastic
card is only a small part of the security equation. Issuance
procedures, verification procedures, and the back-end database are far
more vulnerable to abuse, and — perversely — a harder-to-forge card
makes subverting the system even more valuable. Good security doesn’t
try to divine intentionality from identification, but instead provides
for broad defenses regardless of identification.”
Department of Homeland Security’s Page on REAL ID (including links to
Final Rule and final Privacy Impact Assessment):
http://www.dhs.gov/xprevprot/programs/gc_1200062053842.shtm
Sen. Patrick Leahy, Press Release about REAL ID Final Regulations (Jan.
11, 2008):
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200801/011108a.html
Letter From Montana Governor to 17 States (Jan. 18, 2008) (pdf):
http://governor.mt.gov/brian/RealID_080118.pdf
Stop REAL ID Campaign:
http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/
EPIC’s Press Release: Homeland Security Department Announces Deeply
Flawed Regulations For National ID System (Jan. 11, 2008):
http://epic.org/press/011108.html
EPIC’s Page on National ID Cards and REAL ID Act (includes links to
states’ anti-REAL ID legislation):
http://epic.org/privacy/id-cards/
***End Quote***
We just don’t need this bunch of boobs!
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Leave a Comment » | LIBERTY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
You are currently browsing the Reinke Faces Life blog archives for January, 2008.
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FJohn Reinke
Consultant at Technology Legacies LLC
Advisor, Computer Governance Committee at Manhattan College
Editor / Publisher at Jasper Jottings
Greater New York City Area
JJ Positraction JJ Endnotes Downsize DC
Philosophy of Liberty
I have NOT received any gagged governmental information requests
Reinke Faces Life 
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