Yesterday, the president continued to lambast Congress for not doing what he wants. The position he's in is understandable: from January 2001 to January 2007, President Bush has had essentially complete control of Congress. He has always been able to have it do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Once the Democrats became in charge of Congress last January, Bush has had to compromise.

Unfortunately, that's not his style. No, Bush's style is not to give in even an iota. If anyone disagrees with him, it's the other person who is wrong. Bush knows, in his heart, that what he's doing is right, even if others don't share his vision.

To that end, Bush said, "It's hard to imagine a more cynical political strategy than trying to hold hostage funding for our troops in combat and our wounded warriors in order to extract $11 billion in additional social spending." Yes, what could be "a more cynical political strategy" than trying to tie social funding to war funding? Offhand, I might say that "starting an unjustified war on knowingly false pretenses with the express purpose of making boatloads of cash for you and a few of your friends, resulting in the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops, the wounding of thousands more, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, all the while professing that you care about those same troops while forcing them to scrape by with substandard equipment and healthcare" is more cynical. But then again, I didn't look up "cynical" in the dictionary. Is it some kind of motorcycle engine?

Yes, it's Congress' fault that things aren't getting done in Washington. After six years of scandals piling up on scandals, we don't need investigations into where $9 billion -- in cash -- of your taxpayer money went once it was flown to Iraq in a cargo plane. We don't need investigations into whether or not our government is torturing people in the name of fighting the War on Terr'. We don't need to know whether or not U.S. telephone companies, in explicit violation of federal law, handed subscriber information to the Bush administration without a court order and without the knowledge of anyone outside the administration. And we certainly don't need to look into the possibly intentional intelligence failures that led to this war in Iraq, the very war that President Bush wants more money to fight, framed as though it were a just, inevitable war that the Scrooge McDucks of Congress don't want to pay for. After all, it clearly wasn't the Republican Congress -- the one that has been in charge for six years -- that decided not to give our troops adequate armor all in the name of funding this war on the cheap. Clearly, that must have been the work of Democrats. Republicans Support Our Troops. (If it's a bumper sticker, it must be true.)

For Congress to exercise its constitutional power of the purse and attach conditions to presidential spending is mind-boggling! To think that Congress would want to exert power and attempt to check the president in a time of war! Do they want al-Qaeda to win? Or Saddam Hussein? Who are we fighting, again? Anyway, whoever we're fighting, it's clear that the Democrats are on their side. They should step aside and allow the president to exercise the explicit wartime powers granted him in the Constitution: powers like warrantless wiretapping, permitting torture and extraordinary rendition, and suspension of habeas corpus. I could go on, but these are very technical constitutional matters that the American people wouldn't understand, so just trust me when I say that these powers are all there. I mean, President Bush wouldn't assert that he has powers that he really doesn't! That would violate the oath he took to uphold the Constitution!

But help is on the way. The president will be enacting some policies by Administrative Order, allowing him to bypass this "do-nothing" Congress and get the people's work done. What that work is, exactly, is classified, but no doubt it's very important and will in no way benefit a small cadre of very wealthy, very connected constituents.

If Democrats were serious about compromising with the president, they'd do whatever it is that he wants. If that isn't the very definition of "compromise," then waterboarding is some kind of torture. (But even if it is, it must not be, because We Do Not Torture. I saw that on a bumper sticker, too.) Just ask Michael Mukasey: so what if the Army prohibits waterboarding? It's a trifle! So what if the president believes that he has implied, extra-constitutional wartime powers? Why shouldn't he? In a time of war, the executive trumps everyone; he knows best how to lead us, and trying to assert gobbledygook about "checks" and "balances" and "abuse of power" only serves to strengthen and embolden our enemies. What's really cynical is the belief that, if we destroy our Constitution, then there has been no point in allegedly defending our freedoms.

I mean, c'mon! That was only half the reason for the War on Terr'. The other half was the money! So even if the Constitution does get shredded, then at least Halliburton, Northrup Grumman, and United Defense have made outrageous amounts of cash. And isn't that worth dying for?

Posted by Mark at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Because if he isn't, he should be. Read his column today in The New York Times in which he dispels the myth of "Islamofascism," a philosophy invented out of whole cloth by the neoconservatives "because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t."

Much like we envisioned communism during the Cold War as a monolithic philosophy operated from an underground bunker in Moscow, Muslim extremism is all the same no matter where you go. All Muslim terrorists want the same things, they should be treated the same way, and are, in all significant ways, the same. A nuanced view of foreign relations -- one that takes into account the individual histories, geographies, economics, and politics of the countries involved -- is for pussies.

Krugman also points that bombing Iran wouldn't do very much good, and points to last year's week-long war between Israel and Lebanon as an example. "Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead," he says. The news stories out of last year's war were not that Israel successfully defended its territory, "winning" the war. The stories instead focused on how much Hezbollah was able to resist the Israeli attack and defend itself. Everyone in the international community was surprised that Hezbollah wasn't as damaged as they thought it would be. Hezbollah itself even declared a strategic victory, since they were able to take everything Israel threw at it. The international community would respond with super condemnation if the United States attacked Iran.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believes in diplomacy in Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney wants to nuke 'em. Thankfully, it appears that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is on Condie's side. The United States couldn't handle a war with Iran; every one of our military brass has said that we're stretched too thin to afford another war -- unless we held a draft, which no civilian and no military commander wants.

In his excellent and oft-cited (by me) essay, "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell condemns the use of the word "fascism," since its meaning has been so diluted by people who throw it around at anyone they dislike. "Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different," Orwell writes. This is particularly true of words used in politics. Though the word theory has a technical definition among scientists, it can just as easily have a pejorative meaning among like-minded creationists for whom the "private definition" of theory is "something that hasn't been found to be true," as in, "It's just a theory." Orwell offers examples of words like "democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice." All these words have technical definitions, but are manipulated so as to allow the maximum amount of demagoguery to be extracted from them.

Krugman correctly points out that "Islamofascism" is something made up by the Right to justify a continued War on Terr' -- including a War on Terr' that has nothing to do with al-Qaeda, the people who originally attacked us on September 11, leading to this War on Terr'. In fact, thanks to our neglect, al-Qaeda is now just as powerful as it ever was. As we have spent the last four years alternatively fighting in Iraq and then cleaning up the mess we caused, we have ignored al-Qaeda and Afghanistan.

The truth is that terror, as Mark Jurgensmeyer can tell you, doesn't come from a particular religion, or even a particular desire. People are motivated to terrorism in all religions, and for different reasons. It's too bad the American people aren't smart enough to understand that they're being duped. Thanks, Paul, but I fear that you're preaching to the choir. The people who read NYT already know this!

Posted by Mark at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You really know how to steal my heart. You know that I find it adorable when you suggest, like you did last month in your Senate confirmation hearings, that the president can ignore laws passed by Congress, based on national security.

Okay, you didn't say that. But you did a great runaround by saying, according to The Wall Street Journal, the president "'does not stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution.' And that Constitutional authority, he said, includes the President's power to defend the country."

What a quandry! The president has to uphold the law, but to uphold the law, sometimes, apparently, he has to break it. But when he does break it, it's for our own good. Just trust us.

Because you'll have to trust us. Because we won't tell you how the president is breaking the law, whether or not he is breaking the law, and what plots have or haven't been foiled. Because we, as the American people, have no right to know how the Constitution is being broken by the officials we elected, or whether or not that breakage is even warranted.

You know all the right words!

There are some people who might suggest that the president is never, ever allowed to break the law, under any circumstances, because the Constitution never allows the president to break the law, and makes absolutely no distinction whatsoever between the president's powers in times of war or in times of peace, lending no credence to bogus theories that the president somehow has brand-new powers in wartime.

Those same people might use the conservative straw man of "activist judges" against you, suggesting that you might turn George W. Bush into an "activist president" who looks to non-existent laws and poorly-reasoned theories to overturn actual laws passed by Congress.

But that would be shameful of them. They don't know that you're really trying to protect the country, and that keeping us in ignorance serves only to keep our innocence about how our Constitution is being thwarted so as to prevent the terrorists from thwarting the Constitution that you already thwarted.

I love you, Mikey.

Posted by Mark at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The cover story of last week's Time magazine dealt with a topic near and dear to my heart: the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts' aristocratic visage graced the cover, alongside the words, "Does the Supreme Court Still Matter?"

Does the Pope like schnitzel?

Of course the Supreme Court matters. The author of the piece, David Von Drehle, says that "the Court's ideology is playing a dwindling role in the lives of Americans," insisting that the issues with which the Court deals every day -- abortion, segregation, prisoners' rights -- are being relegated to the realm of interesting philosophical discussions. "[T]he left-right division will matter mainly in the realm of theories and rhetoric, dear to the hearts of law professors and political activists but remote from day-to-day existence," he writes.

Except that he's wrong. Now, more than ever, the Court's opinions strike at the heart of Americans' lives. Von Drehle confuses the Court's deference to the states -- a project undertaken by the late Chief Justice Rehnquist and now continued by his successor -- with a court that takes a pass on deciding important issues. In the Court's last term, we saw an abortion ban without an exception for the health of the mother upheld, something that Justice Ginsburg, writing for the minority, called "alarming." More alarming was the dubious reasoning and evidence that led to the opinion: government witnesses claimed that there was never a medical necessity to perform an intact dilation and extraction ("partial birth") abortion, even though the medical evidence was overwhelmingly to the contrary. The right of women to have abortions is not theoretical. As an issue of discrimination, it is important to women: men will never, ever have to be told that they cannot do something to their bodies. As an issue of privacy, it is important to all Americans: what else will the state be able to prevent us from doing to ourselves in the comfort of our own homes, in the name of morality? (The War on Drugs comes to mind, but thus far, how we choose to alter our minds has been the only place where the government has stepped in to declare that it knows better than we.)

When Roberts was before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said that he wanted consensus as much as possible on cases, so as to increase the authority of the decisions. A 9-0 or 8-1 decision has, legally, the same standing as a 5-4 decision, but as a practical matter, the former decision holds up better to scrutiny. The future will regard as more "correct" an opinion reached by all nine justices than a fractured opinion. Several important decisions in the last term were decided by 5-4 majorities, with The Usual Suspects on each side and Justice Kennedy breaking the tie. The notion of consensus is no longer an option, and it appears that, for the foreseeable future, we will have 5-4 decisions and a fractured court.

Justices Roberts and Alito also voiced their support for stare decisis, the philosophy that, all things being equal, contemporary justices should defer to past opinions and doctrines rather than re-invent them. In this term, however, we have seen precedents overturned in Gonzales v. Carhart and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The former case overturned one of the requirements of Roe v. Wade; namely, that there must always, in any abortion-restriction law, be an explicit exception for preserving the health of the mother. In the latter case, the majority altered affirmation action jurisprudence to suggest that it is not the government's job to facilitate racial integration.

The justices' theoretical opinions will have far-reaching consequences. Take, for example, the decision in Morse v. Frederick, the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case. Chief Justice Roberts, in his theoretical analysis of the case, posits that one of the missions of a public school is "deterring drug use." This has very little support within the law, but now that it has been set in Supreme Court Stone, schools must necessarily make "deterring drug use" one of their goals. The justices attempt to create theories, which they apply to their opinions. I expect that this school of legal reasoning is supposed to make the process of adjudication more "scientific," but since each wing of the court (and, indeed, each justice) has its own theories about how the law works, this attempt to make the law more objective ends up creating 5-4 decisions.

It's alarming to suggest that, because the Supreme Court is out of touch with the people, it's irrelevant. The Supreme Court isn't elected by the people, and the justices will never be directly answerable to the people, so what's irrelevant is the notion that the Supreme Court's being out of touch makes it irrelevant. Regardless of what the American people feel about abortion, the Supreme Court will continue to interpret the law as it sees fit.

What is really important is for Congress to tidy up the law in such a way that the Court's opinion becomes irrelevant. The Court does not exist to provide relief in cases where Congress should act; the Court merely interprets the law in the absence of an explicit explanation in a law. Where the Supreme Court has decided "wrongly," it is up to Congress to step in and change the law. The Court's job is not to write legislation, merely to fill in the holes that Congress left in a law. If Congress fills in the holes, then the Court's opinion becomes moot. It is difficult to say that one branch of government is more important or unimportant than another; ideally, they would all work together.

Posted by Mark at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

According to local news station ABC 7, the city of San Francisco is considering installing safe injection sites, where IV drug users can shoot up under the supervision of medical profesionals who will be provide safe injection supplies and nalaxone for overdoses, if necessary. The sites will most likely be modeled after sites in Europe and Vancouver.

When I saw this on the news, Jared said that the only problem he could foresee would be crime. He said that injection sites would attract drug users, which would attract drug dealers, which would attract crime and "turf wars" among different gangs selling drugs. Conventional wisdom might dictate that crime would go up, but a 2006 study of Vancouver's first safe injection site reveals that crime around the safe injection site remained the same one year after the site opened, compared to one year after the site opened. The study tracked three different kinds of crime: drug trafficking, assults and robberies, and vehicle thefts. The first two categories of crime remained the same. Vehicle thefts actually decreased.

The probable location for a safe injection site is the Tenderloin, the home of seedy residential hotels and crack smokers in the city. Mayor Gavin Newsom has said that he is against the idea of a safe injection site, to say nothing of the legality of such a place. Heroin is classified as a Schedule I narcotic under the Controlled Substances Act, and as such, it's illegal -- even for medical uses (which, according to the government, there are none; that's the definition of a Schedule I narcotic). That would be the first -- and maybe the last -- hurdle, but it's a good idea.

Posted by Mark at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While President Bush would like Congress to allow phone companies to remain complicit in breaking the law, they're having none of it. In a rare exercise of its power, Congress has refused to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the illegal, poorly-justified, warrantless wiretapping program. The companies voluntarily provided information to the administration without a warrant, in violation of FISA, the Fourth Amendment, and 18 U.S.C. 2511, which explicitly prohibits phone companies from disclosing subscriber information without a court order.

According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, the Democrats want to amend FISA to permit more court oversight of wiretaps. The administration opposes this. Naturally, we all know that the administration's real reason for not wanting court oversight is due to Vice President Cheney's desire for total control of the government. But they obviously can't say that this is their reasoning. So, then, what is their public reasoning for permitting phone records to be searched without a warrant? Let's look to President Bush's speeches.

In an Oct. 10 speech, Bush offered the following reasons for extending the Protect America Act, which is in itself an extension of several USA PATRIOT Act provisions:

It must give our intelligence professionals the tools and flexibility they need to protect our country. It must keep the intelligence gap firmly closed, and ensure that protections intended for the American people are not extended to terrorists overseas who are plotting to harm us. And it must grant liability protection to companies who are facing multi-billion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend our nation following the 9/11 attacks.

Bush never explains how non-PATRIOT Act regulations don't "give our intelligence professionals the tools and flexibility they need to protect our country." How does requiring a warrant from a secret court hamper intelligence officials? Furthermore, FISA explicitly provides for 72 hours' worth of surveillance while a warrant is pending. If the Bush Administration feels that surveillance needs to be conducted right now, such surveillance can be done for three days while a warrant application is reviewed. What surveillance is so urgent that it must be done not only sooner than "immediately," but must be done without a warrant ever being issued at all?

Keeping "the intelligence gap firmly closed" is a function of both our spying regulations and the competency of our intelligence community. Since Bush will not tell us how warrants hamper intelligence-gathering, we must assume that our ability to gather intelligence (and here, the phrase "intelligence gap" evokes the old trope of the "missile gap" between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was itself a lie, as there was no point when the Soviet Union ever had more missiles than we did) is limited only by our intelligence community itself. Such activities as firing Arabic translators for being homosexual definitely adversely affect "the intelligence gap," but those activities are actively pursued by the Bush Administration and are not a result of the limitations of warrants.

Note how Bush phrases his last justification: he doesn't want "protections intended for the American people" to be "extended to terrorists overseas." But terrorists overseas are not at issue, and they never have been. Our government is free to monitor communications that occur completely overseas however they want. What is at issue is when terrorists overseas communicate with terrorists in the United States. Then, the long arm of surveillance turns its magnifying glass back upon the United States, and it is at that point that FISA kicks in, to ensure that the mechanisms of surveillance are not used upon what FISA calls "United States persons." FISA exists to ensure that our intelligence mechanisms are neither (1) accidentally used upon American citizens; nor (2) intentionally used upon American citizens. It is for the latter reason that FISA was created in the first place: President Nixon abused the government's surveillance powers and spied on Americans for his own reasons. FISA was created in response to make it very clear that the government was not to spy on American citizens or residents. If it were to do so, it would have to go through domestic channels of obtaining warrants in regular courts.

If Bush has a problem with FISA, it may very well be because he wants to be able to spy on Americans without anyone knowing about it. At the same time, he doesn't want anyone to know about it. Therefore, he uses FISA as his cover. This is also explicitly illegal, as FISA itself prohibits unlawful surveillance from being conducted "under color of law."

His explanations don't make any sense: he claims that current law isn't enough to stop terrorism; in fact, current law is more than sufficient to stop terrorism. Judges are routinely awoken in the wee hours of the night to sign warrants. They are "on call" 24 hours a day, so it isn't a matter of the time requirement involved to obtain a warrant. FISA allows surveillance for up to three days before a warrant is required, so it isn't a matter of the need for immediacy in conducting surveillance.

What, then, Mr. Bush, is your reasoning? Why must you be given the power to conduct surveillance -- possibly on American citizens -- with no oversight and no accountability? Are you asking us to just trust you? "Just trust me" is contrary to the Constitution, and since the Constitution makes no distinction between presidential powers in wartime or peacetime, the only legal recourse for you is to seek a Constitutional amendment allowing you to suspend certain powers of Congress and the judiciary, and take those powers as your own -- as well as suspend some civil liberties -- in times of war. Are you prepared to ask for such an amendment? If you're not, then you'd best comport yourself to the law. As Justice Jackson once wrote, "Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system."

It is our Constitution that keeps the United States from devolving into a dictatorship.

Posted by Mark at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hot on the heels of my last post comes a story from Yahoo! Finance (via The Consumerist) about how an elderly woman had her identity stolen -- only to be screwed by mandatory binding arbitration:

Irene Lieber, 61, lives in a dilapidated apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she scrapes by on $759 a month in Social Security disability payments. Sometime before 2006, her MBNA credit card was stolen, and a collection agency began hounding her for charges she says she never incurred.

"I said I wanted to see the signatures -- who had signed for these purchases? And they wouldn't give me that," says Lieber. "They said, 'You're responsible, this is your credit card.' I ignored them because I thought they were nuts."

Lieber sent a letter demanding the agency cease contact -- which debt collectors must do under a 1996 federal law. But they continued to harass her and her spouse, Theodore, who was confined to a wheelchair following a stroke. Frightened by a menacing phone call, Theodore sent a payment to the collection agency.

Because the credit card contract required binding arbitration to resolve disputes, a private arbitration firm -- not a judge -- settled the case and found in favor of the credit card company, awarding it $46,000.

If you think that's bad, prepare to be appalled. It's not an isolated incident: "In an examination of 19,000 binding arbitration cases in California decided by the National Arbitration Forum, watchdog group Public Citizen found that 95 percent of the decisions went against the consumer." Corporations choose arbitration companies that find in their favor. The arbitrators are paid by the corporations whose cases they're arbitrating. If they find against the corporation, they will no longer have those corporations as clients. Isn't this the very definition of "conflict of interest"? In my job, I'm required to disclose if any of many friends or relatives are vendors or clients of my company; should people's lives be adjudicated on less?

The National Arbitration Forum claims that arbitration "reduces costs [...] for all parties," but Judge Neely's article shows that the costs associated with arbitration are more than court costs would be for similar cases.

Thankfully, the article ends with hope, in the form of the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007, which "requires that arbitration be freely chosen by consumers after the dispute arises -- rather than forcing people to agree to arbitration in advance through a contractual provision." The Arbitration Fairness Act deals with cases like Buckeye Check Cashing through this section:

An issue as to whether this chapter applies to an arbitration agreement shall be determined by Federal law. Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, the validity or enforceability of an agreement to arbitrate shall be determined by the court, rather than the arbitrator, irrespective of whether the party resisting arbitration challenges the arbitration agreement specifically or in conjunction with other terms of the contract containing such agreement.

Under this bill, the question of whether or not an arbitration clause is enforcable is now a matter of law and not jurisprudence. Yay!

Posted by Mark at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ned, knowing that one of my favorite hobbies is despising binding arbitration, sent me a post from Consumerist which links to a law review article written by Judge Richard Neely, who was suckered into being an arbitrator for a private arbitration company.

"Binding arbitration" is a technique used by private companies to circumvent civil courts. Part of English common law -- which is the foundation of the American legal system -- is the idea that government courts can be used to settle civil disputes (disputes between individuals). A judge uses common law, the U.S. Code, and state and local codes to determine who wins a civil dispute. The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution also permits a jury to adjudicate civil cases "where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars."

Arbitration is not required to adhere to common law, the U.S. code, contract law, or any other law. Where courts must make findings according to the law -- which means there may be a big winner and a big loser -- arbitrators find in equity, meaning they try to come to an arrangement that will please all sides equally. Arbitration is done by private arbitration firms that get paid by the companies for whom they're arbitrating, resulting in -- as Judge Neely observes -- a clear conflict of interest. If you, as an arbitrator, find against the company, then you probably won't be arbitrating for them again (as was his experience). The cards are stacked against the consumer from the beginning, and "unconscionable" provisions that would normally be struck down by a court (such as requiring a respondent who clearly can't pay a debt to pay "arbitration fees," which amount to awarding attorneys' fees) are upheld by arbitrators.

In addition to all this, the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago ruled that arbitration clauses in a contract are "severable" from the contract. Contract law says that if any individual part (or parts) of a contract is unenforcable, then the entire contract is unenforcable. This doesn't hold true, said the Supreme Court, for arbitration clauses, which are always enforcable, no matter what. So even if the contract between yourself and a private company is clearly illegal, if the contract contains an arbitration clause, then the dispute over the contract's illegality goes to the private arbitrator, which will undoubtedly find in favor if its client, the company, and you still have to pay. This hypothetical situation would never occur in a civil court, which would void the contract outright if it contained illegal provisions.

Binding arbitration is another example of the extent to which government services have been privatized -- to the benefit of the company, but to the detriment of the general public for whom these government services have always existed. Supporters of arbitration claim that it's good because it clears courts' dockets of simple civil cases. But Judge Neely observes that arbitration companies charge fees that are much higher than what court costs would have been, ultimately resulting in a greater cost than merely going to a judge. It's also always in the best interest of the public to have an impartial arbitrator -- a judge -- rather than what is obviously a slanted arbitrator, no matter how backed up the dockets are. (The Republican Congress and President Bush also didn't do a very good job of filling vacant judicial appointments, resulting in a backlog of cases and the self-fulfilling lament of "the judicial system is too backed up; we should outsource our justice to private arbitration companies." Note that in my last post, I posited that the Bush administration intentionally staffs government offices with incompetent hacks so that it can later point out how inefficient and incompetent government is, offering a justification for outsourcing those jobs to private companies.)

The tide in Congress appears to be turning, however, and the anti-consumer environment that has existed in this country for the last few years may soon go away. Earlier this year, two senators introduced S. 2003, The Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007, which would change how cell phone operators work. Among the provisions:

• Require providers to conspicuously post information about all taxes, surcharges, contract terms, and rates;
• Require providers to clearly itemize all charges on customers' phone bills;
• Require providers to publish coverage maps down to the county level;
• A commision set up by Congress will regulate the ceiling on early termination fees;
• That same commission will conduct a study on handset locking and portability and make recommendations to Congress concerning handset locking.

No doubt this Congress could also amend the Federal Arbitration Act to make it more consumer-friendly or even limit the ability of arbitration to be used in particular instances. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has already ruled "unconscionable" the cell phone industry practice of mandatory binding arbitration in cell phone contracts. Binding arbitration also precludes the possibility of a class-action suit, and given how awful American cell phone service is, it's in the companies' best interest to stifle class action suits by requiring arbitration. Let's face it: there are enough unhappy cell phone customers out there to constitute a class, and rather than make changes to their service so that it's better, cell phone companies would rather head off expensive upgrades and policy changes (the latter of which might mean that they'll lose lucrative fees and penalties) by prohibiting such suits altogether.

Thanks, Ned!

Posted by Mark at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bush administration to children: suck it

Let's start with President Bush vetoing an expansion of SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. SCHIP provides health insurance to children whose parents can't afford it. The bill presented to the president would have expanded enrollment from 6.6 million to 10 million by covering children who are just above the poverty line. Those who opposed the bill argued that it's a step toward socialized medicine.

And?

As I pointed out last week, we already have socialized medicine in this country. Medicare, Medicaid, VA hospitals, and those great health plans that members of Congress get -- these are all government-run healthcare programs! Michael Moore's Sicko has undoubtedly frightened Republicans (and Democrats!) who get money from healthcare companies. More than anything else, Moore's film has galvanized popular support for some kind of government-sponsored healthcare program, as poor Republican voters realize that they're being screwed by the private healthcare system. There isn't a single Republican presidential nominee who has a plan for providing some kind of government-backed healthcare; the Democratic nominees, meanwhile, are falling over each other trying to promote their own plans. Of course, in primary season, the goal is to appeal to the base and then, in the general election, try to get everyone else to latch on. It could be that the Republican nominee will succumb to popular demand for healthcare reform after the primaries, so time will tell.

Supreme Court not as conservative as previously thought

Monday, the Supreme Court refused to grant certorari to a case involving birth control, healthcare plans, and religion. Catholic Charities, Inc. -- a private company affiliated with the Catholic Church -- didn't want to provide birth control as part of its healthcare plan to employees. The state of New York disagreed, saying that Catholic Charities is not a "religious employer" as defined by the Women's Contraception Equality Act, and therefore is not exempt from not providing birth control for religious reasons.

This same issue was brought up over three years ago in the California Supreme Court, and they came to the same conclusion. By denying a writ of certiorari, the lower court's ruling stands. And you thought this court was going to be super-conservative!

I thought contractors were contractors

The House of Representatives today passed a bill that would allow prosecution of private contractors in civilian courts. According to NYT, opponents of the bill -- all of whom were Republicans -- argued that "it would insert civilian investigators into areas better covered under military law." But Blackwater contractors are not part of the military. Even though they work under contract for DoD, they're still civilians, and as such should be subject to the same laws as civilians. Giving them a free ticket results in -- oh, guess what? The very kind of activity that occurred last month, prompting the Iraqi government to throw them out of the country.

Thankfully, the bill passed with only 30 "nay" votes, which makes it veto-proof (in that house, anyway) in the event that President Bush vetoes the bill due to his vice president's intimate involvement with Halliburton, Blackwater's parent company. No doubt a veto would be justified with a bunch of BS about contractors needing to do their job effectively without fear of prosecution (although, as we have seen, contractors in Iraq have a nasty habit of not doing their jobs effectively).

UPDATE: Scott, SEDHE's Chief Information Auditor, informed me that Blackwater is not a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Posted by Mark at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)