SEC Says New Financial Regulation Law Exempts it From Freedom of Information Act

So much for transparency.

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities.” Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

BENWAY

So I am assigned to engage the services of Doctor Benway for Islam Inc.

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, cooperative, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind that hygienic façade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from Annexia, where his assignment had been T.D.– Total Demoralization. Benway’s first act was to abolish concentration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.

“I deplore brutality,” he said. “It’s not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct.”

Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, in various uniforms, often in bathing suit and pyjamas, sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper, would stamp it. On subsequent inspection the citizen was required to show the properly entered stamps of the last inspection. The Examiner, when he stopped a large group, would only examine and stamp the cards of a few. The others were then subject to arrest because their cards were not properly stamped. Arrest meant “provisional detention”; that is, the prisoner would be released if and when his Affidavit of Explanation, properly signed and stamped, was approved by the Assistant Arbiter of Explanations. Since this official hardly ever came to his office, and the Affidavit of Explanation had to be presented in person, the explainers spent weeks and months waiting around in unheated offices with no chairs and no toilet facilities.

Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required. The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines.

No one was permitted to bolt his door, and the police had pass keys to every room in the city. Accompanied by a mentalist they rush into someone’s quarters and start “looking for it.”

The mentalist guides them to whatever the man wishes to hide: a tube of vaseline, an enema, a handkerchief with come on it, a weapon, unlicensed alcohol. And they always submitted the suspect to the most humiliating search of his naked person on which the make sneering and derogatory comments. Or they pounce on any object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree.

“And what is this supposed to be for?”

“It’s a pen wiper.”

“A pen wiper, he says.”

“I’ve heard everything now.”

“I guess this is all we need. Come on, you.”

After a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats.

Of course the Annexia police processed suspected agents, saboteurs and political deviants on an assembly line basis. As regards the interrogation of suspects, Benway has this to say:

“While in general I avoid the use of torture– torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance– the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness, and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be employed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punishment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms of disciplinary procedure. One was known as The Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at any time are clamped against the subject’s teeth; and he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to put certain connections in certain sockets in response to bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an hour on the switchboard and the subject breaks down like an overloaded computer…”

–William Burroughs, Naked Lunch

World’s 7th Largest Economy for Sale – Cheap!

It is said that during the death rattle of the Roman Empire, the Senate gave up even the pretext of holding elections, choosing instead to sell the Senate offices outright to the highest bidders, election buying being merely a costly, if quaint, formality.

There is of course, this guy:

It’s bad enough that he actually tried to sell a Senate seat to the highest bidder

but that hair, man…

Whitman may give $30 million to state GOP

July 15, 2010 | By Carla Marinucci and Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Political Writers

California Republicans are buzzing about the possibility that billionaire gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman – who has spent nearly $100 million of her own money on her campaign – could be preparing another unprecedented personal investment in her political future: a $30 million-plus infusion into the state party.

The Chronicle has obtained a draft of a detailed 44-page state GOP “2010 Victory Plan” that outlines the party’s $85.5 million financial blueprint for a campaign effort that includes $30 million directed to the gubernatorial race.

The former eBay CEO is “putting a significant amount of money in … it could be $30 to $40 million,” said a GOP insider familiar with the plan. The source said Whitman is also expected to tap her fundraising sources and contacts for the party’s benefit.

Whitman’s potential $30 million in contributions was confirmed by prominent state Republicans, who spoke on condition that they would not be named for publication.

But Whitman spokesman Tucker Bounds strongly denied the notion.

“No secret document or anonymous source you have is credible in this because Meg is not writing the $30 million check,” he said. “It’s simple. Meg is planning to help solicit outside contributions to the party and working tirelessly to defeat the status quo in Sacramento. That’s the plan and it isn’t a secret.”

Moreover, Whitman campaign officials insisted the candidate is planning no sizeable contributions to the state GOP.

Reshaping politics

With four months to go before the November election and the latest polls showing the gubernatorial race in a dead heat between Whitman and Democratic state Attorney General Jerry Brown, the buzz about Whitman’s seemingly bottomless checkbook underscores how the GOP candidate – who has already broken all spending records – continues to reshape California politics dramatically.

The victory plan specifically states that the mission of the party in 2010 is “to put a Republican governor in Sacramento by strategically communicating, promoting and supporting the (state party) message to its members, elected officials and candidates.”

Gubernatorial candidates frequently donate and fundraise heavily for state party causes – as has Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But with a net worth exceeding $1 billion, Whitman is by far the wealthiest candidate ever to seek state office.

Struggle to expand

Party insiders say that a move by Whitman could have wide-reaching effects in a party that has struggled to expand its shrinking base in the nation’s most populous state.

Currently, 45 percent of California voters are registered Democrats, giving the party a 2 million vote advantage over the GOP, which has 31 percent of the registered electorate. Twenty percent of voters are classified “decline to state.”

This sort of cash infusion for the GOP – it has $1.8 million in the bank, according to the secretary of state’s most recent reports, filed in June – would help with the plan’s stated aim of registering 500,000 new GOP voters.

“I can confirm her campaign is very engaged with the state GOP and her commitment to carry us across the finish line is very sincere and very substantial,” said state GOP vice chair Jon Fleischman, publisher of the popular Flashreport.org website.

Though Fleischman would not confirm any specifics of the plan, other Republicans did.

Still, Fleischman said state Republicans welcomed Whitman’s support in beating Brown, whose campaign has been bolstered by at least four independent expenditure efforts funded by major union groups.
“Meg Whitman’s organization has been a partner in the creation and development of a statewide political plan, and we’re excited to have her at the top of the ticket,” said Fleischman.

Strings attached?

And while appreciative of receiving an influx of dollars, other conservative activists were wary.

“The question is, would there be strings attached to the money?” said Mike Spence, a GOP strategist and former president of the California Republican Assembly, a conservative activist organization.

The draft of the plan calls for the hiring of an army of new GOP political operatives, including technology coordinators, media trainers, voter-outreach coordinators and “a team of ethnically, linguistically and geographically based group of surrogates” to speak on the candidate’s behalf in 13 media markets.

Already, sources said, some of Whitman’s top insiders are involved in hiring the team that will oversee the effort – including some of the same veteran operatives now at work in Whitman’s campaign.

The revelation about Whitman’s role in GOP finances comes in a week when she has been in the national spotlight on money issues.
A New York Times story earlier this week outlined how Whitman invested $1 million in political consultant Mike Murphy’s independent film company just days after he told rival political GOP candidate Steve Poizner he would no longer be involved in politics. Murphy later went to work for Whitman as her senior campaign adviser.

The SFGate Article

Typical Middle-Class 2 Yacht Family

From Matier & Ross, San Francisco Chronicle

Sen. Barbara Boxer has fired a shot across the bow of Carly Fiorina – in the hopes that her Republican rival’s ownership of a pair of yachts might sink her with voters.

Boxer has taken to comparing her years of “public service” to Fiorina’s choice “to become a CEO, lay off 30,000 workers, ship jobs overseas (and) have two yachts.”
Fiorina’s 70-foot Alchemy V, a 2001 Dyna Craft valued for tax purposes at just over $1 million, is moored in Sausalito.

Her 56-foot Sea Ray yacht, the 3-year-old Alchemy VI, is docked on the Potomac in Washington, D.C. – not far from the Georgetown condo that Fiorina and her husband own.

Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said it makes sense for the Fiorinas to be a two-yacht family, given that the boat-loving couple have divided their time between California and D.C., near where their grandchildren live.

read it on SFGate.com

Taxpayer Money Wasted on Keeping people from Dying Horrible Deaths!

Dialysis shortage creates expensive problem for city
By: Katie Worth
Examiner Staff Writer
July 20, 2010

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner (newspaper version, they apparently edited the web page because it sounded a little too heartless)

SAN FRANCISCO — Dialysis centers in The City increasingly exceed capacity, requiring some patients to be hospitalized for days or weeks — often on the public dime — while they wait for a spot at an outpatient clinic to receive the life-saving treatment.

Dialysis is a blood-filtration technique used on patients who face kidney failure. Because more than 100,000 Americans currently need kidney transplants, the wait for a donated organ can take years. In the meantime, patients are treated with dialysis to keep them alive. The typical treatment requires a patient to sit in a clinic for about three hours, three times a week, while their blood is filtered by a machine.

Since the 1970s, each of the clinic’s 13 chairs takes three shifts of dialysis patients. But in recent months, the capacity problem has become so bad that the nursing staff has had to extend the hours of the clinic three days a week to take a fourth patient, and now it’s asking for funding to expand the hours for three more days a week.

When patients need dialysis but there’s no room in the outpatient center, they can end up being hospitalized. Hospitalizing a patient for dialysis can cost taxpayers thousands of dollars a day, whereas receiving the three-hour blood-cleansing treatment costs just hundreds of dollars, according to hospital officials.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner