Views from the Solar System (49)

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Expedition 32 Soyuz Rocket Rollout
NASA – The Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft is rolled out by train on its way to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Thursday, July 12, 2012. The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft with Expedition 32 Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko, NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide is scheduled for the morning of Sunday, July 15, local time. Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

The Supreme Court Cannot Rewrite Obamacare’s Economic Consequences

By Wayne Winegarden – Obamacare increases government regulations, increases taxes, and increases spending, but it never addresses the central problems with the current health care system. That is, it neither improves health outcomes nor controls skyrocketing health care costs.

Medical costs have been growing at an unsustainable pace for far too long: over the past 20 years, overall consumer prices have risen a bit over 60 percent based on the Consumer Price Index. Prices for medical care grew nearly twice as much – 111 percent.

Obamacare’s fundamental flaw is its inability to “bend this cost curve” because it does not alter the incentives driving health care inflation. more> http://tinyurl.com/7vk3waq

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• Raven Clabough ~ Texas Refuses To Implement Obamacare (shiftfrequency.com)
• Repealing Obamacare Won’t Solve the Health Care Mess (but It’s a Good Start) (cato-at-liberty.org)
• Matheson votes to repeal Obamacare, joins House GOP ()
• Obamacare Is Not Constitutional (nationalreview.com)
• SCOTUS says Obamacare is just a tax. Here’s Obamacare’s 21 Taxes! (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
• Obamacare Is A Major Tax Cut For Middle Class Families (thinkprogress.org)
• Mitt Romney react to Supreme Court: Obamacare is a “job killer.” Transcript (blogs.suntimes.com)
• House of Representatives Votes to Repeal Health Care Reform (blogs.voanews.com)
• Repeal of Health Care Law Approved, Again, by House, Robert Pear, NYTimes.com
• First we should decide if health care is a right, Leonard A. Zwelling, chron.com
• House approves ObamaCare repeal in first vote since Supreme Court ruling, Fox News
• House votes 244-185 to repeal healthcare, Elise Viebeck and Pete Kasperowicz, Hill

EU Trials New Crisis Model in Spain Trading Budget Cuts for Time

By Ben Sills – European leaders are testing the latest version of their debt crisis strategy in Spain, granting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy more time to reduce the budget deficit in exchange for deeper spending cuts.

Europe’s concession to recession-wracked Spain has raised expectations in Ireland and Portugal that they can win more time to rein in their budget deficits after Germany’s hardball tactics in Greece spurred a rebellion against bailout politics there. more> http://tinyurl.com/clbjgzw

Related articles

• Rajoy Announces 65 Billion Euros in Budget Cuts to Fight Crisis – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Euro crisis: the pain in Spain (guardian.co.uk)
• Spain protests loom as Rajoy unveils fresh cuts – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
• Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy raises VAT 3pc in shock U-turn (telegraph.co.uk)
• Spain unveils new austerity package under pressure from eurozone partners (independent.co.uk)
• Spain imposes further austerity measures (seattlepi.com)
• Spanish PM explains EU bailout amid protests (aljazeera.com)
• Rajoy Outlines 65 Billion Euros of Cuts as Protests Hit Madrid – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Spain deepens austerity under European pressure – Reuters (reuters.com)
• Euro crisis is a drawn-out mess of overlapping emergencies, Arthur Beesley, IrishTimes.com
• Bailout demands boosts Finland’s influence in EU, Robert Downs, GlobalPost
• Time to Throw in Towel on Euro Crisis, Patrick Allen, Economist/CNBC
• Could Finland be the first country to leave the euro? Brad Plumer, Washington Post
• The heart of euro crisis still untouched, Brian Milner, Globe and Mail

Five Ways Wireless Carriers Could Rein In The Government’s Surveillance Of Your Phone

By Andy Greenberg – Phone companies are the middlemen of modern surveillance. They collect communications and location information from users on an unprecedented scale. Then, when governments come calling, they turn it over with a greater frequency and volume than ever before in history. And to a large degree, they do it voluntarily.

Here are five ways phone carriers could act now to rein in the mobile device surveillance explosion.

1. Store less data, and delete it earlier.
2. Share information about government requests with one another and determine the minimum standard of cooperation.
3. Publish annual reports about their compliance with surveillance.
4. Take a stand against legislation that hurts users’ privacy.
5. Fight gag orders, and tell individual users about requests for their information.

A few companies such as Twitter, Sonic.net and the soon-to-be-relaunched Internet provider Calyx have fought those gags in court. There’s little evidence that phone companies have taken the same stands on behalf of their users, and there’s no way to know how many surveillance orders have been issued in secret. more> http://tinyurl.com/dy5x9hk

Related articles

• Wireless Firms Flooded by Requests to Aid Surveillance, Law Enforcement… (nytimes.com)
• Government Surveillance of Cell Users: 1.3 Million Annual Requests and Rising (cato-at-liberty.org)
• State of surveillance: Wireless carriers fielding more requests (blogs.siliconvalley.com)
• Surging Surveillance: Shocking Number of Cell Users’ Data Tracked | Common Dreams (2012indyinfo.com)
• United Kingdom of surveillance (thehindu.com)
• The top privacy threat for cell phone users (sovereignman.com)
• How Many People Phone Companies Hire to Give Away Your Information (theatlanticwire.com)
• Is the Digital Data Boom Creating a Surveillance State? (bigthink.com)

Broadband supply surpasses demand?

English: Graphic displaying various type of internect connections for consumer and businesses.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ann Treacy – Boston.com reports that ultra-fast broadband connections aren’t all they’re cracked up to because it really just moves the bottleneck…

The problem is that most of the Internet isn’t transmitting data fast enough to take advantage of such rapid broadband speeds, Entner said. If a server computer transmits an Internet video at, say, 20 million bits per second, having a 300-million-bits-a-second connection won’t make any difference. “The website you are connecting to is the bottleneck,” he said.

I experienced this phenomenon a couple of months ago when I went to my ISP to upload video. more> http://tinyurl.com/cv6b29q

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• Cardiff to get fibre broadband on demand…if there is any (theneteconomy.wordpress.com)
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• Broadband speeds outpacing demand (boston.com)