StupidiNews!

• An apartment balcony collapse in Berkley, California has killed six and injured seven during a birthday party, five of the six dead were Irish nationals on work visas.
• News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch's plan to hand the position over to his son James has been approved by the corporation's board of directors, effective July 1.
• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is accusing EU officials of trying to "humiliate" his country and plans to stand firm against austerity cuts necessary to remain in the eurozone.
• A new report by union sources finds Wal-Mart is sitting on $76 billion in overseas tax havens, allowing the company to dodge at least $3.5 billion in income taxes over the last six years.
• The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that an Estonian news website is liable for nasty comments from readers, causing concern among free speech advocates.

Last Call For Maximum Clownage

The Donald is running for The Presidency, and The Zandar will never, ever run out of material for The Blog.

The real estate mogul and TV reality star launched his presidential campaign Tuesday, ending more than two decades of persistent flirtation with the idea of running for the Oval Office. 

"So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again," Trump told the crowd, in a lengthy and meandering speech that hit on his signature issues like currency manipulation from China and job creation, as well as taking shots at the President and his 2016 competitors. 

"Sadly the American dream is dead," Trump said at the end of his speech, promising to bring it back to life with his run. 

Just over four years after he came closer than ever to launching a campaign before bowing out, Trump made his announcement at the lavish Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, laying out a vision to match his incoming campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again." 

The 68-story tower venue Trump used Tuesday is more than just the backdrop to Trump's presidential announcement, instead becoming a physical embodiment of what Trump is bringing to the table and the challenges he'll face as he formally entered politics. 

Trump has already billed himself as the "most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far," pointing out even that he owns a "Gucci store that's worth more than Romney."

On one hand, the guy is the epitome of American moneyball politics in 2015.  America really does deserve this guy as President.  On the other hand, I live in America and I'd rather it not become a smoking wasteland of Trump-style capitalism.

On the gripping hand, this is the joker who figured out how to mismanage casinos so badly that he bankrupted four of them, so he's perfect for Chief Executive of the United States.

Big winners: me, and every late-night comedy writer for the next 17 months.  Losers: all the other GOP candidates, who will constantly be asked "Do you agree with Donald Trump's (horribly racist/sexist/insulting/stupid) position on X?"

This would be loads of fun, if it wasn't so serious.

Losing The Right To Vote

Over at The Hill, Juan Williams puts the rise of voter ID laws squarely on the backs of black voters, most of whom agree that voter ID should be necessary, and blames us for being ignorant of history.

Why are Democrats losing the debate over voting rights? 

The biggest political fight shaping the 2016 campaigns for the White House and Senate is over limiting the Democrats’ base of likely voters.

President Obama twice won the White House by bringing more young people and minorities, his biggest supporters, into the political process — and into the voting booth. Republicans are now pushing back to increase their electoral chances in 2016.

And they are winning.

Even most black Americans — people who, overwhelmingly, don’t vote Republican — currently favor new requirements for voters to have photo identification. Three-quarters of all voters — people of all races and political parties — favor such laws, according to polls. 

The black support for photo identification of voters can only be described as amazing.

For most of the twentieth century, violence, poll taxes and literacy tests were used by segregationists to deny black people the right to vote.

The current state of public opinion, including among the black community, is doubly incredible because there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud anywhere in the nation.

Williams goes on to point out that 71% of black voters and 55% of Democrats favor voter ID laws, but I don't think it's fair to pin this on black voters when all US groups favor them.  We need to educate everyone on what Republicans are doing with voter ID laws.

Williams is at least getting the ball rolling here, but blaming black America for voter ID laws is a bit like blaming black America for Jim Crow laws. We didn't pass them, Republicans did, in states controlled by Republican lawmakers voted into power by white voters.

There's a difference.

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't.

Kansas Republicans have finally passed their nearly $400 million tax hike on the state's working class to make up for the hundreds of millions in the hole that GOP Gov. Sam Brownback's tax cut for the rich and businesses created, in an effort to avoid even more draconian cuts to schools and universities.

Kansas will avoid massive budget cuts after a tax plan crawled to passage in the Legislature on Friday, but some lawmakers who voted for the plan say the state has failed to right its financial ship. 

Many lawmakers — including ones who supported the bills — accused Gov. Sam Brownback of bullying lawmakers into accepting a flawed plan. 

Republicans, who hold supermajorities in the Kansas House and Senate, found themselves bitterly divided on taxes for weeks in the face of a $400 million budget hole as the legislative session stretched to 113 days, the longest in state history. 

The House scraped together the 63 votes needed for passage at 4 a.m. Friday, passing a plan that raises $384.4 million in tax revenue, after working around the clock since Wednesday night. Several lawmakers who voted for the plan were moved to tears before Rep. Blake Carpenter, a Derby Republican, cast the deciding vote. 

Little more than 12 hours later, the Senate approved the plan with 21 votes, again the bare minimum for passage, after an emotional debate. But even some lawmakers who voted in favor of the plan argued that it failed to address the cause of the state’s financial woes. 

Sen. Jeff Longbine, an Emporia Republican, accused the Brownback administration of perpetrating “political blackmail” in recent weeks by threatening to veto any plan that rolled back an income tax exemption for certain businesses. That exception was passed in 2012 and removed more than 330,000 business owners from income tax rolls. 

“This fix doesn’t fix the problem,” Longbine said. “If you’ve got congestive heart failure, you go to the cardiologist and not the dentist.” 

The 2012 tax bill also eliminated the top tax bracket and cut all income tax rates. Longbine pointed out that it has already cost the state more than $1 billion, but argued that the plan passed by the Legislature through a pair of tax bills Friday failed to address that impact. 

The measures will instead raise the sales tax to 6.5 percent from 6.15 percent in July and hike taxes on cigarettes by 50 cents per pack to help balance the state’s budget. 

Longbine said he wanted to watch the plan burn but voted in favor of it to prevent cuts to the state’s schools, universities and disability services. 

Brownback had warned that if lawmakers did not pass a tax plan before Monday, then he would make massive budget cuts — either issuing a 6.2 percent across-the-board cut costing schools nearly $200 million, or line-item vetoes of budgets for the state’s regents universities.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article23831500.html#storylink=cpy

The Kansas disaster continues, and I'm betting that the hike in sales and vice taxes, a regressive taxation scheme targeting the poor and working class, won't bring in the projected revenue just as the massive tax cuts on the wealthy didn't magically create new revenue either.  Somehow I bet Topeka will be right back in the same hole soon, and when it does, raising taxes on those who can afford it the least won't work.

But this is what happens when you give the GOP total control of a state: guaranteed absolute fiscal disaster. The Nation's Kai Wright looks at the people who are suffering in Kansas under the Brownback administration, like RaDonna Kuekelhan and her sister Cathy O'Mara.

The sisters drove 30 miles from Cathy’s house down to the nearest CHC clinic, in Montgomery County’s largest town, Coffeyville. There, they met Julie Griffin, the doctor in charge. Griffin is also an evangelical minister, and as with many of the people I met in socially conservative southeast Kansas, Brownback’s politics force a tension in her core values. She’s resolutely pro-life and supports Brownback for his famously firm stance against abortion. But for her, valuing life means valuing universal access to healthcare, too. And she blames southeast Kansas’ ailing health on a toxic mix of poverty and political neglect. 

“If you can’t find a job, you can’t feed your kids, you don’t feel like there’s any help for your kid in terms of success, that’s going to affect your mental health,” she says in a typically energetic riff about the challenges her patients face. “And if you don’t take care of your mental health, then your diabetes is going to be a thousand times worse.” She says much of her work is a matter of convincing patients to fight for their own lives, despite the dearth of care. She can call the roll of uninsured patients she’s coaxed away from preventable death, only to have them tumble back to grave illness when they grow defeated because she’s run out of subsidized meds or can’t connect them with a free specialist: “People that didn’t want to take care of their diabetes because there’s no hope anyways.” 

Griffin immediately saw this grim potential in RaDonna and began scrambling. She sent the sisters on a 65-mile trek over the border to Joplin, Missouri, where she found specialists at a private hospital who would see RaDonna without insurance. “We went there for a year, back and forth,” RaDonna says. “We went to a throat doctor, went to a lung specialist, a stomach guy,” Cathy chimes in. Finally, they discovered the problem: All that radiation to clear RaDonna’s larynx cancer had destroyed her esophagus. 

“The top of her throat is paralyzed,” Cathy explains. “Everything that she puts into her mouth and swallows, some of it aspirates down into her lungs. They told me that she is ‘terminal’—that was their words to me. ‘Your sister is terminal. We don’t know how long she will live. She will either slowly starve to death or she will aspirate and choke to death.’” 

RaDonna was too young to collect Social Security, and she was trying to survive on a $231-a-month pension from Emerson. Despite her diagnosis and collapsing income, as a single adult she still didn’t qualify for Medicaid. The only way into Kansas’ program was to qualify for disability—and in 2013 the state rejected her application. “They denied it,” says Cathy, still angry. “They said she was not ill enough.”

Kansas is red state America at its finest: rejection of Obamacare grant money, full privatization of the state's Medicare program, massive tax cuts for "job creators" and budget cuts to get rid of "unnecessary spending", with a Republican supermajority in the state legislature and a GOP governor.

The results speak for themselves, don't you think?

StupidiNews!

• Al Qaeda in Yemen confirms that a US drone strike has killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi, leader of the group's branch in that country.
• House Republicans are delaying a Tuesday vote on trade pact worker protections and are instead working to extend a deadline for the legislation until July 30.
• Hong Kong police are on alert after 10 people were arrested Monday on explosives charges ahead of this week's democracy reform vote.
• Greek leaders say they will not present any new plans to avoid debt default and exit from the European Union, casting further doubt on this weekend's meetings to hash out a solution.
• Sunday's season five finale of Game of Thrones set a piracy record, with more than a quarter of a million people sharing the episode online.

Last Call For Pope On A Hope

Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment has leaked from an Italian media source, and it paints a picture of a Holy See definitely putting the responsibility for the planet's climate changing on the shoulders of those who would be Earth's stewards.

After months of build up, an Italian-language document believed to be an early draft of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment was leaked four days early on Monday, breaking a Vatican embargo on an official papal teaching that flatly rejects traditional conservative Christian justifications for exploiting the planet.

Vatican officials condemned the leak on Monday, saying that the early release of the nearly 200-page document constituted a “heinous act” and insisting that it is “not the final text.” Regardless, if genuine, the Italian-language draft of the encyclical — or one of the highest forms of official Church teaching a pope can produce — will undoubtedly make waves not only for its insistence that humanity protect the environment, but also for its deconstruction of conservative arguments against climate change.

ThinkProgress was not provided with an embargoed copy of the official encyclical, but ran sections of the leaked document by an Italian speaker. The likely encyclical draft — entitled “Laudato Si” or “Praised Be”, from a prayer by St. Francis of Assisi — directly addressed the old biblical claim that because God gave humanity “dominion” over the earth in Genesis, humanity has a right to exploit it at will. This has also been a popular position among American politicians, who have used God to advocate for the continued development of fossil fuels.

“We are not God,” the document reads. “The earth precedes us and was given to us. This allows us to respond to an accusation made against Judeo-Christian thinking: it has been said that, from the story of Genesis, which invites us to subjugate the earth (Genesis 1:28), the savage exploitation of nature would be encouraged, presenting the image of human beings as ruler and destroyer. This is not the correct interpretation of the Bible as intended by the Church.”

That's a pretty big departure from the usual prosperity/abundance gospel that has seen a big rise here in the US as of late, as well as a big departure from conservative dogma.  No doubt he'll be attacked for this, but we'll see what the final work has to say.

Now if we can only get the church to moderate a few other positions...

The Legend Of The Lone Star Gold

If it seems like red states (especially Texas) are run by Ron Paul gold bug lunatics, it's because red states, in particular Texas, are run by Ron Paul gold bug lunatics.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) signed House Bill 483 into law on Friday, which will establish a state gold bullion depository.

According to the governor's office, the law will repatriate $1 billion in gold from the Federal Reserve in New York to the new state depository.

The Officer of the Comptroller will administer the depository, which will serve "as the custodian, guardian and administrator of bullion" that will come to the State of Texas, the release said.

"Today I signed HB 483 to provide a secure facility for the State of Texas, state agencies and Texas citizens to store gold bullion and other precious metals," said Abbott in the release. "With the passage of this bill, the Texas Bullion Depository will become the first state-level facility of its kind in the nation, increasing the security and stability of our gold reserves and keeping taxpayer funds from leaving Texas to pay for fees to store gold in facilities outside our state."

Now, ask yourself why a state in the United States of America would need its own bullion depository, and to repatriate a billion in physical gold from the Federal Reserve. Does Texas plan to issue its own gold-backed currency or something? I mean, this is the kind of thing that might lead one to believe the state's leaders are getting rather serious about secession.

Tenth Amendment fetishists are certainly thrilled with the prospect.

In short, a person will be able to deposit gold or silver – and pay other people through electronic means or checks – in sound money. Doing so has the potential to open the market to sounds money in day-to-day transactions.

By making gold and silver available for regular, daily transactions by the general public, the new law has the potential for wide-reaching effect. Professor William Greene is an expert on constitutional tender and said in a paper for the Mises Institute that when people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve Notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

Gosh, I can't imagine why this wasn't an issue until 2009, but then again I recall a bunch of states decided they no longer wanted to be part of the US currency back in 1860 or so.

Go figure.

Water Mess We're In

California Republicans in their gated communities are not happy about Gov. Jerry Brown's new water restrictions.  Residents of super-rich places like Rancho Sante Fe are finding out that yes, these bourgeois limitations actually do apply to people like them, and they're pretty pissed off.

Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.

People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

Yuhas lives in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average. In April, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called for a 25 percent reduction in water use, consumption in Rancho Santa Fe went up by 9 percent.

But a moment of truth is at hand for Yuhas and his neighbors, and all of California will be watching: On July 1, for the first time in its 92-year history, Rancho Santa Fe will be subject to water rationing.

Oh, how awful that must be when you find out money can't buy you everything.

“It’s no longer a ‘You can only water on these days’ ” situation, said Jessica Parks, spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Irrigation District, which provides water service to Rancho Santa Fe and other parts of San Diego County. “It’s now more of a ‘This is the amount of water you get within this billing period. And if you go over that, there will be high penalties.’ ”

So far, the community’s 3,100 residents have not felt the wrath of the water police. Authorities have issued only three citations for violations of a first round of rather mild water restrictions announced last fall. In a place where the median income is $189,000, where PGA legend Phil Mickelson once requested a separate water meter for his chipping greens, where financier Ralph Whitworth last month paid the Rolling Stones $2 million to play at a local bar, the fine, at $100, was less than intimidating.

All that is about to change, however. Under the new rules, each household will be assigned an essential allotment for basic indoor needs. Any additional usage — sprinklers, fountains, swimming pools — must be slashed by nearly half for the district to meet state-mandated targets.

Residents who exceed their allotment could see their already sky-high water bills triple. And for ultra-wealthy customers undeterred by financial penalties, the district reserves the right to install flow restrictors — quarter-size disks that make it difficult to, say, shower and do a load of laundry at the same time.

In extreme cases, the district could shut off the tap altogether.

Can't wait to see that happen.  California means business and it's going to be rough sailing for the yacht crowd as a result. David Atkins weighs in:

Nothing better shows the infantility of the Republican mindset. These people believe that they’re all kings of their own little islands, that they have a right to use whatever they can get their hands on however they want. They have no concept of community or natural limits. For them, owning a Suburban is just as valid a choice as owning a Prius, climate change is a hoax that shouldn’t affect their choices, and anyone telling them they might have to cut back on something is a busybody interfering in their lives and waging a do-gooder war on their lifestyle. Their wealth doesn’t come at the expense of others because capitalism allows for endless growth and opportunity for those with enough gumption to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And if they’re rich, the sense of the entitlement is exponentially greater.

They’re basically overgrown toddlers who don’t want to share and don’t understand how the world really works. And then they cry and feel abused when confronted by reality.

Absolutely true, this.

StupidiNews!

• A US airstrike in Libya has reportedly killed Al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmoktar, the man behind the AQ assault on an Algerian refinery in 2013 where 37 hostages died.
• The European Space Agency's comet probe Philae is now communicating for the first time after landing on the surface of a comet last November and hibernating.
• Hillary Clinton has weighed in on the TPP trade deal, saying that US drug companies benefiting from the pact should sell their products to the US government at a discount.
• Both European Union officials and Greek politicians are pointing fingers as economic talks to prevent Greece from defaulting on loans collapsed over the weekend.
• Automaker BMW and Chinese search engine giant Baidu say they will team up for a working self-driving car "before the year is out".

Last Call For Fly By Night

Remember when airlines told us that high fuel prices and high overhead costs meant they had no choice but to start tacking on fees and jacking up fares in order to stay in business?  That was then, and in 2015 with oil prices low and airlines more efficient, you'd think they'd lower prices.

You'd be out of your mind.

Don't expect your flying experience to be pleasant, or cheap this summer.

At a meeting of top airline executives this week in Miami, the word on every airline executive's lips was "discipline."

Translation: few seats, pricey tickets, bigger profits.

Despite plummeting fuel costs, the airlines' single biggest cost, few of those savings are getting passed along to passengers.

Instead, record profits. The International Air Transport Association increased its profit outlook for the industry to $29.3 billion, a new high, up nearly 80 percent from last year.

Meanwhile, passengers only saw a $.66 reduction in average airfares last quarter. And they'll soon have more fellow passengers to rub elbows with in the security line and bump into in the aisles.

Airline for America, an industry trade group, predicts 2.4 million passengers per day will fly on US airlines from June 1-Aug 31, up from 2.29 million during the same time last year. To accommodate the 4.5 percent increase in passengers, airlines say they're increasing the number of seats by 4.6 percent.

In other words, the flying experience will remain roughly the same. Cramped, crowded, and with no price breaks in sight.

The airline industry, once in dire trouble after 9/11, is now reaping record profits with more passengers than ever. And all indications are you'll pay even more at the ticket counter as greed controls the industry.  Did you actually think the airlines would start investing in better service and more competition when treating people like cattle makes them tens of billions?

Working as intended, folks.

The Ultimate Snow Job

Yesterday I talked about how hackers most likely working for the Chinese had gotten their hands on the crown jewels of federal personnel files, damaging US intelligence operations badly.  Now the other shoe has dropped, with our British allies across the pond saying that Chinese and Russian hackers have decrypted the treasure trove of NSA files stolen by Edward Snowden two years ago and that the damage is so bad that ongoing British and US intelligence operations have been compromised and agents put in danger.

RUSSIA and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.

Western intelligence agencies say they have been forced into the rescue operations after Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor, who fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in US history.

Senior government sources confirmed that China had also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified.

Indeed, the story suggests that Snowden's info compromised methods and sources as well.

The government source said the information obtained by Russia and China meant that "knowledge of how we operate" had stopped the UK getting "vital information".

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason said the problem for UK authorities was not only the direct consequence that agents had been moved, but also the opportunity cost of those agents no longer being in locations where they were doing useful work.

Intelligence officials have long warned of what they see as the dangers of the information leaked by Mr Snowden and its potential impact on keeping people in the UK safe - a concern Prime Minister David Cameron has said he shares.

According to the Sunday Times, Western intelligence agencies have been forced to pull agents out of "hostile countries" after "Moscow gained access to more than one million classified files" held by Mr Snowden.

"Senior government sources confirmed that China had also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified," the newspaper added.

Needless to say, the pushback from privacy advocates has been immediate.

Privacy campaigners questioned the timing of the report, coming days after a 373-page report by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, which was commissioned by David Cameron. Anderson was highly critical of the existing system of oversight of the surveillance agencies and set out a series of recommendations for reform.

A new surveillance bill, scheduled for the autumn, is expected to be the subject of fierce debate.

Responding to the Sunday Times, David Davis, the Conservative MP who is one of the leading campaigners for privacy, said: “We have to treat all of these things with a pinch of salt.” He said the use of an anonymous source to create scare stories was a typical tactic and the timing was comfortable for the government.

“You can see they have been made nervous by Anderson. We have not been given any facts, just assertions,” he said.

Anderson recommended that approval of surveillance warrants be shifted from the home and foreign secretaries to a new judicial body made up of serving and retired judges, which Davis supports but towards which the government appears to be lukewarm.

That British surveillance bill is a nasty piece of work from what I understand, making the Patriot Act look tame in comparison, so if this is a hair on fire scare attack by our friends across the pond, I wouldn't be surprised.

On the other hand for this kind of news to leak out, a major intelligence player to admit they have been compromised and have changed operations as a result, that's a very serious charge.

We'll see where this goes, but as I have said time and time again, if your chief goalis to damage western intelligence as badly as possible, Edward Snowden's playbook is the route you would use.

Sunday Long Read: Code Monkeys

This week's SLR is a gargantuan piece from Bloomberg Business about "code", computer programming languages and how they are used to craft the 21st century and beyond, written from the perspective of the people who have no idea what code is.

You are an educated, successful person capable of abstract thought. A VP doing an SVP’s job. Your office, appointed with decent furniture and a healthy amount of natural light filtered through vertical blinds, is commensurate with nearly two decades of service to the craft of management.

Copper plaques on the wall attest to your various leadership abilities inside and outside the organization: One, the Partner in Innovation Banquet Award 2011, is from the sales team for your support of its 18-month effort to reduce cycle friction—net sales increased 6.5 percent; another, the Civic Guidelight 2008, is for overseeing a volunteer team that repainted a troubled public school top to bottom.

You have a reputation throughout the organization as a careful person, bordering on penny-pinching. The way you’d put it is, you are loath to pay for things that can’t be explained. You expect your staff to speak in plain language. This policy has served you well in many facets of operations, but it hasn’t worked at all when it comes to overseeing software development.

For your entire working memory, some Internet thing has come along every two years and suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars (inevitably millions) must be poured into amorphous projects with variable deadlines. Content management projects, customer relationship management integration projects, mobile apps, paperless office things, global enterprise resource planning initiatives—no matter how tightly you clutch the purse strings, software finds a way to pry open your fingers.

Here we go again. On the other side of your (well-organized) desk sits this guy in his mid-30s with a computer in his lap. He’s wearing a taupe blazer. He’s come to discuss spending large sums to create intangible abstractions on a “website re-architecture project.” He needs money, support for his team, new hires, external resources. It’s preordained that you’ll give these things to him, because the CEO signed off on the initiative—and yet should it all go pear-shaped, you will be responsible. Coders are insanely expensive, and projects that start with uncomfortably large budgets have an ugly tendency to grow from there. You need to understand where the hours will go.

It's a fascinating piece and well done, explaining the business of software development cycles, hardware upgrades, licensing, integration, and the whole nine yards.  As somebody who works in this industry it's a nice new perspective and a reminder that the people running the show where you work may not be tech geniuses, but they can be pretty smart too.

Last Call For Relaunch Sequence

Hillary Clinton took to New York's historic Roosevelt Island to give a speech about her domestic platform for 2016.  There's a lot there, but whether or not she can get Republicans to go along is anyone's guess.

As we have since our founding, Americans made a new beginning.

You worked extra shifts, took second jobs, postponed home repairs... you figured out how to make it work. And now people are beginning to think about their future again - going to college, starting a business, buying a house, finally being able to put away something for retirement.

So we're standing again. But, we all know we're not yet running the way America should.

You see corporations making record profits, with CEOs making record pay, but your paychecks have barely budged.

While many of you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America's kindergarten teachers combined. And, often paying a lower tax rate.

So, you have to wonder: "When does my hard work pay off? When does my family get ahead?"

"When?"

I say now. (Cheers, applause.)

Prosperity can't be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers.

Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations. (Cheers, applause.)

Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain too.

You brought our country back.

Now it's time -- your time to secure the gains and move ahead.

And, you know what?

America can't succeed unless you succeed. (Cheers, applause.)

That is why I am running for President of the United States. (Cheers, applause, chanting.)

It was a pretty good speech, actually.  Clinton laid out much of what she planned to call for as president if elected.

For decades, Americans have been buffeted by powerful currents.

Advances in technology and the rise of global trade have created whole new areas of economic activity and opened new markets for our exports, but they have also displaced jobs and undercut wages for millions of Americans.

The financial industry and many multi-national corporations have created huge wealth for a few by focusing too much on short-term profit and too little on long-term value... too much on complex trading schemes and stock buybacks, too little on investments in new businesses, jobs, and fair compensation. (Cheers, applause.)

Our political system is so paralyzed by gridlock and dysfunction that most Americans have lost confidence that anything can actually get done. And they've lost trust in the ability of both government and Big Business to change course.

Now, we can blame historic forces beyond our control for some of this, but the choices we've made as a nation, leaders and citizens alike, have also played a big role.

Our next President must work with Congress and every other willing partner across our entire country. And I will do just that -- (cheers, applause) to turn the tide so these currents start working for us more than against us.

At our best, that's what Americans do. We're problem solvers, not deniers. We don't hide from change, we harness it. (Cheers, applause.)

But we can't do that if we go back to the top-down economic policies that failed us before.

Americans have come too far to see our progress ripped away.

Now, there may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir, (laughter) but they're all singing the same old song...

A song called "Yesterday." (Laughter, cheers, applause.)

You know the one -- all our troubles look as though they're here to stay (laughter)... and we need a place to hide away... They believe in yesterday.

And you're lucky I didn't try singing that, too, I'll tell you! (Laughter, cheers, applause.)

We'll see what she can back that up with.

Making Off With The Crown Jewels

We're learning more and more about just what a mother lode of intelligence information hackers got from raiding the US government's personnel files, and as John Schindler points out, if the hackers are working for the Chinese or Russians, then America is in real trouble.

With each passing day the U.S. government’s big hacking scandal gets worse. Just what did hackers steal from the Office of Personnel Management? Having initially assured the public that the loss was not all that serious, OPM’s data breach now looks very grave. The lack of database encryption appears foolhardy, while OPM ignoring repeated warnings about its cyber vulnerabilities implies severe dysfunction in Washington.

To say nothing of the news that hackers were scouring OPM systems for over a year before they were detected. It’s alarming that intruders got hold of information about every federal worker, particularly because OPM previously conceded that “only” 4 million employees, past and present, had been compromised, including 2.1 million current ones. Each day brings worse details about what stands as the biggest data compromise since Edward Snowden stole1.7 million classified documents and fled to Russia.

Then there’s the worrisome matter of what OPM actually does. A somewhat obscure agency, it’s the federal government’s HR hub and, most important, it’s responsible for conducting 90 percent of federal background investigations, adjudicating some 2 million security clearances every year. If you’ve ever held a clearance with Uncle Sam, there’s a good chance you’re in OPM files somewhere.

And of course the problem is the hack was extensive and allowed reams of information out.

Here’s where things start to get scary. Whoever has OPM’s records knows an astonishing amount about millions of federal workers, members of the military, and security clearance holders. They can now target those Americans for recruitment or influence. After all, they know their vices, every last one—the gambling habit, the inability to pay bills on time, the spats with former spouses, the taste for something sexual on the side—since all that is recorded in security clearance paperwork. (To get an idea of how detailed this gets, you can see the form, called an SF86, here.) Speaking as a former counterintelligence officer, it really doesn’t get much worse than this.

Do you have friends in foreign countries, perhaps lovers past and present? The hackers know all about them. That embarrassing dispute with your neighbor over hedges that nearly got you arrested? They know about that, too. Your college drug habit? Yes, that too. Even what your friends and neighbors said about you to investigators, highly personal and revealing stuff, that’s in the other side’s possession now.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of this is not merely that millions of people are vulnerable to compromise, through no fault of their own, but that whoever has the documents now so dominates the information battlespace that they can halt actions against them. If they get word that an American counterintelligence officer, in some agency, is on the trail of one of their agents, they can pull out the stops and create mayhem for him or her: Run up debts falsely (they have all the relevant data), perhaps plant dirty money in bank accounts (they have all the financials, too), and thereby cause any curious officials to lose their security clearances. Since that is what would happen.

So yes, this hack was bad.  We need to clean up this mess, but the reality is that between this and the Snowden documents, US intelligence is all but in complete tatters in 2015.  This is where government is most certainly not working properly, and fixing it will take years of not decades.

Trading Places

For now, fast track trade pact authority for President Obama is off the table as House Democrats folded and Republicans didn't have the votes.

Hours after President Obama made a dramatic, personal appeal for support, House Democrats on Friday thwarted his push to expand trade negotiating power — and quite likely his chance to secure a legacy-defining accord spanning the Pacific Ocean.

In a remarkable blow to a president they have backed so resolutely, House Democrats voted to end assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has supported for four decades. That move effectively scuttled legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress.

“We want a better deal for America’s workers,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, who has guided the president’s agenda for two terms and was personally lobbied by Mr. Obama until the last minute.

The vote that prevented the president from obtaining trade promotional authority now imperils the more sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement with 11 other nations along the Pacific Ocean that affects 40 percent of the global economy on goods ranging from running shoes to computers.

“They have taken their own child hostage,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, adding, “Does it hurt the president? Of course it hurts the president, but it hurts America more.”

The Democratic revolt left Republican leaders trying to summon support from their own party for trade adjustment assistance, a program they have long derided as a waste of money and a concession to organized labor. Eighty-six Republicans voted for the program, more than double the 40 Democrats who supported it. But the trade adjustment assistance bill failed when 303 voted against it.

Republican leaders then passed, in a 219-to-211 vote, a stand-alone bill that would grant the president the trade negotiating authority he sought. But that measure cannot go to the president for his signature because the Senate version of the legislative package combined both trade adjustment and trade promotion.

The House will try again to pass the worker protection part of the deal again on Tuesday,  but at this point things are looking pretty grim.  We'll see what happens, and the trade legislation is far from over, but it's going to be a long trek to the top of this.