Not Only Will You Do What We Tell You To...

... and where to do it and with whom and when and where, but now, we are removing even the smallest semblance of control you thought you had! That's right, it all starts with making voting harder to do... machines are better at choosing the most corporate compliant right candidate, right? And if all else fails, you can always turn to the well-paid Supreme Court. Before you know it, you won't be able to vote at all unless you've donated more than a million Ameros dollars to the "appropriate" candidate.

Carded at polls: No photo ID, no vote
Voters who use mail-in ballots are not required to show photo ID

updated 12:08 p.m. PT, Wed., Jan. 23, 2008
There's the poor, 32-year-old mother of seven who says it would cost her at least $50 to vote in person. There's also the 92-year-old woman who's voted for decades in the same polling place, but now can't vote there because she let her driver's license expire when her eyesight began to fail.

These folks live in Indiana, home of the country's most restrictive photo-identification voter law. The U.S. Supreme Court is now scrutinizing whether that statute violates the first and 14th amendments, in the most contentious legal battle over voting since the high court issued a bitterly divided decision eight years ago that stopped Florida's recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush.

If the law is upheld, voting rights advocates fear it will encourage conservative lawmakers across the country to enact equally restrictive measures. The high court's decision is expected in the summer - leaving time to impact November's general election.

Opponents, most of them Democrats, say requiring photo ID at the polls disproportionately affects the poor, the elderly and minorities - the most likely to lack photo identification.

But supporters, most of them Republicans, say such requirements are necessary to prevent voter fraud.

In states that narrowly lost fights that would force voters to produce this kind of identification, efforts are already underway to resurrect those more restrictive laws - in anticipation of a favorable ruling from the high court.

In Kansas, for example, GOP legislators announced Jan. 11 that passing such a law was a top priority for its 2008 session. The announcement came two days after oral arguments in the Indiana case.

[...]
Since Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002 - a measure designed to avoid a repeat election disaster - seven states have passed photo ID laws. Six became mired in bitter legal battles: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri.

Appellate courts have upheld ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan. Court rulings are pending in Indiana and Ohio. Missouri's regulation was struck down by that state's top court.

In the seventh state, Florida, voters may present signature-bearing ID if they don't possess photo identification.

No state goes as far as Indiana's 2005 regulations, which stipulate that every voter must present an ID issued by the state or the federal government. The document must contain:

The voter's photograph.
The voter's name (which has to exactly match the voter registration record).
A current expiration date.
In Jan. 9 oral arguments, several members of the Supreme Court appeared reluctant to overturn the Indiana law.

"You want us to invalidate a statute on the ground that it's a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters?" asked Justice Anthony Kennedy, traditionally the swing vote between the court's conservative and liberal members.

This worries voters' rights groups. "If it's upheld, we're certainly concerned that these same issues will resurface" in other states, said Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

One state where it can't resurface, unless the governor declares an emergency legislative session, is Texas.

Last year, an ugly fight over photo ID raged throughout the legislative session, complete with expletive-filled shouting matches and an ailing Democrat who promised to cast a dissenting vote while lying in a hospital gurney outside the Senate chambers. The measure died after Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst declined to force it to a vote.

The biannual legislature doesn't reconvene until next January.

Can I Have A Peek At Your E-mail?

That's what the government is asking to "protect us." My question: why not just enforce our current immigration laws - which would keep terrorists out - rather than infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans? because that's what they're doing. I have it on good authority that the government is taping our telephone conversations already (have been since - at least - the 1970s)... guess that enforcing already-present laws doesn't get the huge telecom corporations any more of our tax dollars that were supposed to be used to "protect" us. Ha.

Cheney prods Senate to extend surveillance law
Republicans block stopgap extension, instead seek immunity for telecomms

updated 7:49 p.m. PT, Wed., Jan. 23, 2008
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney prodded Congress on Wednesday to extend and broaden an expiring surveillance law, saying "fighting the war on terror is a long-term enterprise" that should not come with an expiration date.

"We're reminding Congress that they must act now," Cheney told the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The law, which authorizes the administration to eavesdrop on e-mails and phone calls to and from suspected terrorists, expires on Feb. 1. Congress is bickering over terms of its extension.

[...]

Seeking immunity for telecomms
Administration allies in Congress not only want the expiring law made permanent but amended to give telephone companies and other communications providers immunity from being sued for helping the government eavesdropping and other intelligence-gathering efforts.

Cheney said such providers "face dozens of lawsuits."

"The intelligence community doesn't have the facilities to carry out the kind of international surveillance needed to defend this country since 9-11. In some situations, there is no alternative to seeking assistance from the private sector. This is entirely appropriate," Cheney said.

At the White House, press secretary Dana Perino defended the proposal to protect phone companies from liability. "These are companies who helped their country right after 9-11," she said. [...]

Lawmakers may work overtime on measure
At the heart of the controversy is whether the government's wireless surveillance program violated provisions of the original FISA law that requires warrants for wiretaps whenever one of the parties involved in the communication resides in the United States.

[...]

The original FISA law requires the government to get permission from a special court to listen in on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States. Changes in communications technology mean many purely foreign to foreign communications now pass through the United States and therefore require the government to get court orders to intercept them.

The Protect America Act, adopted in August, eased that restriction. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say it went too far, giving the government far more power to eavesdrop on American communications without court oversight.

935

Or, the number of lies told by the Bush administration to get us into a war in Iraq.

Study: Bush led U.S. to war on 'false pretenses'
Hundreds of false statements on WMDs, al-Qaida used to justify Iraq war
President Bush, seen at the White House on Tuesday, and officials in his administration made 935 false statements on Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to a new study.

updated 11:30 p.m. PT, Tues., Jan. 22, 2008
WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

[...]
WMD, al-Qaida links debunked
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

Media 'validation'
The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

[...]

Too Much BS For Words

It appears as though, in addition to keeping track of every move we make, the powers that be want to be in control of our health.

A news item on MSNBC reveals that the credit companies responsible for the FICO score on credit reports are now building a similar model for the ability to pay medical bills.

Here is the story as I read it on MSNBC.com, but I don't know how long it will stay up at that URL. Therefore, I've pasted the story below. So, whatever happened to being able to get health care regardless of your ability to pay? What about "first, do no harm?"

The doctor will see your credit now
Posted: Friday, January 18 at 04:32 am CT by Bob Sullivan
The folks who invented the credit score for lenders are hard at work developing a similar tool for hospitals and other health care providers.

The project, dubbed "MedFICO" in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient’s ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive.

Fair Issac Corp., developer of the FICO credit score, is one of several investors in Healthcare Analytics, the Massachusetts start-up that is developing the hospital risk tool. Another investor is Tenet Healthcare Corp, one of the nation's largest hospital operators. Stephen Farber, who resigned as chief financial officer of Tenet in 2004, is the CEO of Healthcare Analytics.

Several published reports have described Healthcare Analytics product as a MedFICO score, computed in a way that would be familiar to those who've used credit scores. The firm is gathering payment history information from large hospitals around the country, according to a magazine called Inside ARM, aimed at “accounts receivable management” professionals. It will then analyze that data to predict how likely patients will be to pay future medical bills. As with credit reports and scores, patients who've failed to pay past bills will be deemed less likely to pay future bills.

The idea sounds ominous to Pam Dixon, who runs the World Privacy Forum, which studies medical privacy issues.

"This is a bad idea and I don't think this benefits the consumer at all," Dixon said. "And what about victims of medical ID theft? Are we going to deny treatment to these people because they have a terrible MedFICO score?"

Firm says product's not ready yet

Tim Hurley, a spokesman for Healthcare Analytics, said criticism of the firm's work is purely speculative, as its product is still in development. Even the term MedFICO is inaccurate, he said.

"MedFICO does not exist," he said, adding that the name "will very likely not be used when we bring our tools to market."

He refused to confirm other published details about the company's work, saying it was too early given the “premature nature of our product development cycle.” Farber, the Healthcare Analytics CEO, is not granting interviews to discuss the product, said Hurley. Farber did speak to a Chicago Tribune reporter earlier this year.

Hurley did say, however, that hospitals will not use the Healthcare Analytics product before patients receive medical treatment, and it will have no impact on medical decisions.

He also pointed to federal law that makes it illegal for hospitals to refuse treatment to patients in their emergency rooms, regardless of a person’s ability to pay.

The Healthcare Analytics tool will be used after patients receive care and after a bill is generated to help hospitals make better financial planning decisions, Hurley said. It will also help health care providers sort through patient records and potentially make it easier to write off some unpaid bills as charity cases, rather than delinquent accounts, which would offer the hospital some accounting benefits, he said.

The firm "is particularly focused on finding ways to help hospitals systematically allocate charitable resources, to make sure that patients who need financial assistance the most receive it on a consistent basis across the industry," he said.

Impact could reach beyond the ER

Dixon, however, was skeptical. While she didn't suspect the so-called MedFICO would be used to turn patients away in emergency situations, she said it could impact patients during follow-up visits or other non-emergency situations.

"If you had a poor score, you could be denied a hospital stay, for example," she said.

Linda Foley, who runs the Identity Theft Resource Center, also said any kind of medical risk scoring would run into a thicket of federal laws designed to protect consumers. It's not clear if such a score would be covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act and other credit-related laws that grant consumers the right to see their own credit reports and scores. The information may also be covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which restricts the use of patients' private information.

"The problem we see is: Who is regulating this?" she said. "How do we know it will never be used before treatment?"

She also pointed to the problem of Medical ID theft, which now hits 250,000 people each year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Identity theft victims frequently find it difficult to clean their credit reports of errors; she feared medical ID theft victims might face the same fate.

Foley also said that a health care score, even if it was initially designed only for use in post-treatment billing issues, could end up being used in unforeseen ways.

"That’s happened with credit scores. Now they are being used for all kinds of things like setting auto insurance rates. What else could a MedFICO be used for?" she said. Perhaps an employer might access the scores and use them to predict which workers might be expensive to insure, she speculated.

Since the invention of the credit score in the 1980s, risk scoring has become a valuable tool in many industries. Auto insurers have created their own scoring system, for example. Many Web sites buy software that assesses the risk that any individual credit card purchase may be fraudulent.

A crowded field

Meanwhile, Fair Issac's core business of selling credit scores to lenders has recently become a more crowded field. Some banks now use their own formulas to generate risk scores, and the nation's three main credit bureaus have developed their own scoring formula.

Scoring risk in the health care industry could be a valuable business, given the rising rate of unpaid bills. American hospitals face $40 billion in unpaid bills every year and 47 million Americans did not have health insurance last year. Others face rising out-of-pocket costs.

That means hospitals need more tools for collecting debts from private individuals, Hurley said.

"Hospitals have historically worked primarily with insurance companies and government programs like Medicare to arrange for payment," he said. "It is a recent trend that individual patients, including insured patients, have assumed significant individual responsibility for paying for care."

Fair Issac did not immediately return a request to be interviewed. A spokesman for Tenet directed all questions to Healthcare Analytics.

While published reports said the new patient scoring system could be in place by this spring or summer, Hurley denied that, saying the firm didn't even have plans to test the system for another six months and it wouldn’t be sold commercially until the end of the year.

More Info On America's National ID Cards...

I've mentioned before about how, in May of this year, the goverment is requiring states to re-issue millions of driver's licenses to comply with a Congressional bill for the Department of Homeland Security. While the following article from the Associated Press claims that they've re-thought the computer chip in the ID card idea, I wouldn't put it past them to say that they aren't going to require it, and then do it anyway.

Another thought: aren't the states in this country supposed to be pretty much "self governing?" I mean, they make their own laws, right? Why not just give Big Brother the ol' middle finger on this? I am glad to see, however, that my state is one issuing complaints... although, it's about money, not the fact that the government will be able to track Idaho's citizenry anywhere at a distance.

The article is located at MSN.com as I read it, and as I have copied it here, in part:

17 states stuck in license showdown
By DEVLIN BARRETT

WASHINGTON - Residents of at least 17 states are suddenly stuck in the middle of a fight between the Bush administration and state governments over post-Sept. 11 security rules for driver's licenses _ a dispute that, by May, could leave millions of people unable to use their licenses to board planes or enter federal buildings.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who was unveiling final details of the REAL ID Act's rules on Friday, said that if states want their licenses to remain valid for air travel after May 2008, those states must seek a waiver indicating they want more time to comply with the legislation.

Chertoff, as he revealed final details of the REAL ID Act, said that in instances where a particular state doesn't seek a waiver, its residents will have to use a passport or a newly created federal passport card if they want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport security.

[...]

Chertoff spoke as he discussed the details of the administration's plan to improve security for driver's licenses in all 50 states _ an effort delayed due to opposition from states worried about the cost and civil libertarians upset about what they believe are invasions of privacy.

Under the rules announced Friday, Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years.

[...]

The American Civil Liberties Union has fiercely objected to the effort, particularly the sharing of personal data among government agencies. The DHS and other officials say the only way to ensure an ID is safe is to check it against secure government data; critics such as the ACLU say that creates a system that is more likely to be infiltrated and have its personal data pilfered.

In its written objection to the law, the ACLU claims REAL ID amounts to the "first-ever national identity card system," which "would irreparably damage the fabric of American life."

The Sept. 11 attacks were the main motivation for the changes.

The hijacker-pilot who flew into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, had four driver's licenses and ID cards from three states. The DHS, created in response to the attacks, has created a slogan for REAL ID: "One driver, one license."

By 2014, anyone seeking to board an airplane or enter a federal building would have to present a REAL ID-compliant driver's license, with the notable exception of those more than 50 years old, Homeland Security officials said.

The over-50 exemption was created to give states more time to get everyone new licenses, and officials say the risk of someone in that age group being a terrorist, illegal immigrant or con artist is much less. By 2017, even those over 50 must have a REAL ID-compliant card to board a plane.

So far, 17 states have passed legislation or resolutions objecting to the REAL ID Act's provisions, many due to concerns it will cost them too much to comply. The 17, according to the ACLU, are: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington state.

Among other details of the REAL ID plan:

_The traditional driver's license photograph would be taken at the beginning of the application instead of the end so that if someone is rejected for failure to prove identity and citizenship, the applicant's photo would be kept on file and checked if that person tried to con the system again.

_The cards will have three layers of security measures but will not contain microchips as some had expected. (Ed: emphasis mine. AT) States will be able to choose from a menu which security measures they will put in their cards.

Over the next year, the government expects all states to begin checking both the Social Security numbers and immigration status of license applicants.

[...]

A few states have already signed written agreements indicating they plan to comply with REAL ID. Seventeen others, though, have passed legislation or resolutions objecting to it, often because of concerns about the cost of the extra security.