Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Technology Law

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…will soon be reshaped by people who don’t use email:

as Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Parker Higgins convincingly argues, it’s not the justices’ lack of personal experience with technology that’s the problem; it’s their tendency to not understand how people use it. Returning to Justice Roberts’s concerns about villains with two phones: if he is in fact unaware of how common that behavior is – he certainly didn’t watch Breaking Bad – then that suggests a major gap in his understanding of society.

This lack of basic understanding is alarming, because the supreme court is really the only branch of power poised to confront one of the great challenges of our time: catching up our laws to the pace of innovation, defending our privacy against the sprint of surveillance. The NSA is “training more cyberwarriors” as fast as it can, but our elected representatives move at a snail’s pace when it comes to the internet. The US Congress has proven itself unable to pass even the most uncontroversial proposals, let alone comprehensive NSA reforms: the legislative branch can’t even get its act together long enough to pass an update our primary email privacy law, which was written in 1986 – before the World Wide Web had been invented.

So the future of our privacy, of our technology – these problems land at the feet of a handful of tech-unsavvy judges.

Kind of scary.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Deindustrialization Of California

Why both Nissan and Toyota left the no-longer Golden State.

I’ll bet if South California happens, they’d consider returning there.

In fact, that brings up a point that a lot of people miss when analyzing what the new states’ politics would be. They do so (as far as I know) by analyzing the current population of each region. But as I’ve said, if it really happened, I’d pull up stakes in LA County and head to Orange County. I’ll bet a lot of other people would as well. Which means that whatever sensible voters are currently in what would be West California would likely abandon it, making it even more socialist, and accelerating its fiscal collapse.

[Update a few minutes later]

I hadn’t read the whole piece when I posted the above, but this is an interesting point, in terms of why Nissan and Toyota were there in the first place:

As did the oil industry, the auto industry, and, particularly, its Asian contingent, came to Southern California for good reasons. Some had to do with proximity to the largest port complex in North America, as well as the cultural comfort associated with the large Asian communities here. Back in the 1980s, the expansion of firms like Honda, Toyota and Nissan seemed to epitomize the unique appeal of the L.A. region – and California – to Asian companies. Today, only Honda retains its headquarters in Los Angeles (Nissan left in 2005), while Korean carmakers Hyundai and Kia make their U.S. homes in Orange County.

First, note that the Koreans wouldn’t have to move — they’d already be in the new state. Also, the port is just a few miles north of the Orange County line. That is, just a few miles north of the new state line. So it would make a world of sense for the Japanese companies to move back to South California, and for Honda to head a few miles south. Particularly if the new state had no state income tax…

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Congressional Standing

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Can Congress sue the president for not faithfully executing the laws?

Sure seems like it to me. It would be nice to see what the Founders intended: checks and balances between the branches, instead of between political parties.

Apropos of nothing in particular, David Rifkin is one of my attorneys in the Mann suit.

[Update a while later]

Why are the House and Senate surrendering so much power to the Executive branch?

The American people do not understand what their congressmen and women are saying. Simply put, the legislative branch is legislating the American people out of their favor with bills that both they, and the American people, cannot understand. Legislators need to understand their own bills. The American people need to understand. The American people want to understand. The president is more appealing and more trusted than the Congress because his message is simpler. The president’s message, delivered in friendly, fatherly sound bites, is comprehensible to the people. It is clear, concise and easy to understand. Congress’ message with 2,700 page bills and 1,200 page bills is simply incomprehensible, unfathomable. Consequentially, legislators are deemed untrustworthy by the American people.

The legislators in the legislative branch need to act and they need to act quickly, very, very quickly. They need to pass rules that limit their own largess in order to prevent the progressives’ “legislators are corrupt” campaign from succeeding. They need to save our country by returning the people’s house to the people. They have let it be run by lawyers. They have leveled Americans’ trust with legalese.

The legislators need to simplify, simplify, simplify. They can start by reducing the number of pages in their bills and by summarizing their objectives. Comprehensive bills are compromising our republican form of government. The American people are turning to the wrong branch of government – the executive branch, the president, the branch that is most vulnerable to tyranny and corruption. Ironically, the American people are trusting the branch that can enact the most uncensored control over the people if left unchecked.

Maybe no so much any more, though, fortunately. At least judging by recent polling.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Dudes

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All the president’s dudes:

Let’s start with that ten p.m. phone call between Obama and Hillary on the night of the terror attack. (I’m sorry –video demonstration.) We don’t know what they actually said. And since it was only the two of them, we probably never will. But we do know this — they hate each other. But at the same time their futures were inextricably tied in this case. Talk about drah-mah…. all that gnashing of teeth and swallowing of emotion while being forced to agree on their farshtinkener story. The dialogue writes itself.

And speaking of the former secretary of State, how’s this for a scene — Hillary at the Benghazi victims’ funeral reassuring the grieving parents they’ll get that “evil filmmaker” who’s behind their sons’ murders when all the while she knows that’s baloney? Wow. Great stuff. Straight out of a vampire movie – Dracula or even the classic Nosferatu. Angelica is just made for it. (I know wrong hair color, but that can be fixed and she’s been there before. She killed as Morticia Addams. Just think what she would do with the scenery chewing iconic “What difference does it make?” scene? Ladies and gentlemen of the Academy, need I say more?)

Dude.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!