U.S. Unadjusted Unemployment Rate at 7.9% in September
U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, was 7.9% for the month of September, unchanged from 7.9% measured in mid-September but down slightly from 8.1% for the month of August. Gallup's seasonally adjusted September unemployment rate was 8.1%, unchanged from August.
These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews, conducted by landline and cell phone, with approximately 30,000 Americans throughout the month -- 68.2% of whom are active in the workforce. Gallup calculates a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate by applying the adjustment factor the government used for the same month in the previous year. The government made no adjustment to the August numbers last year, but adjusted September's up by 0.2 percentage points, which accounts for the flat seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in September despite the decline in the unadjusted rate.
The 7.9% unadjusted rate is the lowest Gallup has recorded since it began collecting employment data in January 2010. It is also significantly lower than the 8.6% rate measured in September 2011.
Underemployment, as measured without seasonal adjustment, was 16.5% in September -- also the lowest rate Gallup has recorded since it started collecting unemployment data in 2010. The September reading reflects more than a half-point drop since the end of August, and a nearly two-point improvement from the 18.3% measured in September 2011.
Gallup's U.S. underemployment measure combines the percentage who are unemployed with the percentage of those working part time but looking for full-time work. Gallup does not apply a seasonal adjustment to underemployment.
U.S. Unadjusted Unemployment Rate at 7.9% in September
Voter ID laws take another hit in Mississippi, no appeal coming in Pennsylvania ruling
Republicans thought they could suppress the vote this year with a variety of new laws, including state requirements that citizens show a photo ID before casting their ballots. Courts in New Hampshire and Georgia approved their laws. But, in Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the photo ID mandate has fallen to court rulings and other legal action. Mississippi joined those three on Tuesday. That came on the heels of news that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett won't appeal Tuesday's ruling that eliminates the photo ID requirement in his state for this year's election.
Unlike Pennsylvania, where the nation's strictest photo-ID law ran afoul of state courts, Mississippi falls under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law was passed to end various "Jim Crow" laws and regulations that for decades had kept most African Americans in the South from casting ballots. Under the law, 16 states or parts of states must have major changes in their voting laws "pre-cleared" by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ's request for more information in its review of the Mississippi law means it won't be in place for this year's election, according to Attorney Gen. Jim Hood.
"All the DOJ is saying in this response is that they need more details of the state's plan in order to make a determination," said Hood. "What this means is that the voter ID requirement will not be in place before the November election. You will not be required to show ID at the poll until DOJ interposes no objections or pre-clears Mississippi's voter ID bill." [...]In its letter to the state, the Justice Department asked Hood's office whether the state has determined that voter ID "will not have a retrogressive effect on minority citizens in the effective exercise of their electoral franchise." The DOJ also asks to review a detailed description of any measures the state intends to put in place to "ameliorate this prohibited effect, which Hood said would include the rules and regulations being created by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann.
Voter ID laws take another hit in Mississippi, no appeal coming in Pennsylvania ruling
New Zealand PM was aware of illegal Kim Dotcom surveillance
The New Zealand prime minister who authorized the raid the netted Megaupload.com founder Kim Dotcom in January now admits he was briefed on the possible illegality of the case less than a month after it went down.
Only last month, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key publically apologized to Kim Dotcom, explaining that the mistakes carried out by the Government Communications and Security Bureau (GCSB) leading up to and during the January 20 raid on his Coatesville, NZ home was “appalling.”
"Of course I apologize to Mr. Dotcom. I apologize to New Zealand," Mr. Key said. "I am personally very disappointed that the agency failed to fully understand the workings of its own legislation” when conducting surveillance of Dotcom in the period before his arrest.
Now, however, Mr. Key confirms that he sat in on a debriefing meeting with the GCSB on February 29, during which the state’s spy agency discussed details of the mission.
Mr. Key admits to attending the meeting, but blames "brain fade" for forgetting the actual events of the encounter. A Government Communications Security Bureau review now confirms that the prime minister was put in the know only weeks after Dotcom was arrested, and right at the start of a case that the defendant calls “politically motivated” and appears to be weakening by the moment.
“A paper prepared as talking points for the staff member conducting a presentation contained a short reference to the Dotcom arrest a few weeks earlier, as an example of cooperation between the GCSB and the police,” the GCSB investigation appeals.
Mr. Key declines remembering the specifics of the sit-down, saying, “While neither the GCSB Director nor I can recall the reference to the Dotcom matter being made during my visit to the bureau back in February, I accept that it may well have been made.” What he does recall, he says, is seeing an image of Dotcom appear on the screen during a presentation made during the February meeting.
"They just flashed through it, I do vaguely remember the screen so I remember it being put up,” he says.
An investigation into GCSB practices have forced the agency to admit that the legality of three surveillance missions dating all the way back to 2009 may now be called into questions, only expediting the erosion of New Zealand’s case against Dotcom, a German national who has been raising a family at his Coatesville estate since being freed by authorities. His arrest in January was endorsed by the United States’ FBI, who has indicted Dotcom and his associates for allegedly operating a vast copyright conspiracy over the Internet. Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, maintains his innocence.
New Zealand PM was aware of illegal Kim Dotcom surveillance
Hackers, Possibly From Middle East, Block U.S. Banks' Websites
The financial and banking industries are on high alert tonight as a massive cyberattack continues, with potentially millions of customers of Bank of America, PNC and Wells Fargo finding themselves blocked from banking online.
"There is an elevated level of threat," said Doug Johnson, a vice president and senior adviser of the American Bankers Association. "The threat level is now high."
"This is twice as large as any flood we have ever seen," said Dick Clarke, an ABC News consultant and former cybersecurity czar.
Sources told ABC News that the so-called denial of service attacks had been caused by hackers from the Middle East who had secretly transmitted signals commandeering thousands of computers worldwide.
Those computers -- or "zombies" -- were then used to overwhelm bank websites with a barrage of electronic traffic.
Different banks have been targeted on different days.
Today was PNC Bank's turn: For three hours, ABC News tried to get on the PNC website to no avail.
Iranian Hackers Attack U.S. BanksWatch Video
Citibank Security Breach Hits America Watch Video
Epsilon Email Breach Exposes Client Data Watch Video
On Facebook, a frustrated customer, Cynthia Schirm, wrote, "Trying to pay bills. This is ridiculous."
"Hopefully it can be up soon," wrote Stacy Briggs-Gerlach. "Never realized how dependent I am on it!!!"
A group of hackers calling themselves Izz ad-Din al-Qassam warned the financial industry that it was going to attack in retaliation for the controversial film "The Innocence of Muslims," which provoked outrage across the Muslim world earlier this month.
The U.S. said it suspected that hackers in Iran were also involved.
"This is the first time that we know about, where a Middle Eastern entity, perhaps a Middle Eastern government, has attacked websites, critical infrastructure, in the United States," Clarke said.
Even though hackers have not been able to steal any money during these attacks, authorities say they fear the next generation of wide-scale cyber assaults could be more devastating.
"If they get inside the banks, they can move money around and cause financial chaos," Clarke said.
ABC News obtained a Sept. 17 FBI alert warning that foreign hackers were targeting bank and credit union workers.
In a number of those cases, the hackers stole employee login credentials and then wired themselves between $400,000 and $900,000.
Sources told ABC News that the U.S. government was actively working to locate and disrupt the massive attacks.
Hackers, Possibly From Middle East, Block U.S. Banks’ Websites
Here's What the Space Around Earth Sounds Like
One of NASA's newest missions has recorded the radio waves coming from our magnetosphere. Musicians: Sample away.
A graphic of Earth's twin rings of plasma known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts in our planet's magnetosphere (NASA)
Surrounding our planet are rings of plasma, part of Earth's magnetosphere, which are pulsing with radio waves. Those waves are not audible to the human ear alone, but radio antennae can pick them up, and that's just what an instrument -- the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) -- on NASA's recently launched Radiation Belt Storm Probes has done.
The noises, often picked up here on Earth by ham-radio operators, are called Earth's "chorus" as they are reminiscent of a chorus of birds chirping in the early morning. So here's your planet, singing its song into space. Musicians: Sample away.
Here’s What the Space Around Earth Sounds Like
Romney Wants Former Merrill Lynch CEO Who Helped Crash The Economy As Treasury Secretary
Captain Capitalist and corporation BFF, Mitt Romney, is all about business (except telling you what that business is). His entire campaign is based on good hair and apparent sharp business acumen. Mittie rich can boast all he wants about his keen understanding of the private market; moreover, one in which allowed a patrician son of privilege to lay off thousands of middle-income earners by leveraging relatively solvent companies and footing an enormous profit, which he then stashes in foreign tax shelters for a bainy day. But Romney is ultimately a sneering, soulless vulture capitalist who uses all the lying and cheating skills he learned in business school to bring mixed market capitalism to its very knees. Let’s face it, here: Romney is such a wall street insider that when he gets a rectal exam, wall street feels a chill.
But Romney appears to really be milking this “screw the 47 percent” mentality after suggesting he would strongly consider for Treasury Secretary John Thain, the former CEO of Wall Street investment bank Merrill Lynch who now heads CIT Group. Thain is of course best remembered as the fat cat who notoriously spent $1.22 million to redecorate his office using shareholder money, including a $35,000 commode. Unless one happens to crap gold bricks, an ordinary toilet will suffice.
After the sale of Merill Lynch to Bank of America as part of the bailout during the economic abortion, Thain took over CIT Group Inc, which evidently received $2.3 billion dollars from TARP in December of 2008. At CIT Group INC., he received a pay package of $500,000 in cash, $2.5 million of restricted CIT stock with a holding period of one year, and $3 million in stock restricted for three years. The Peter Principle was huge in 2009 and Thain was its poster boy. But hey, surely Thain can out-prick that.
From Think Progress:
According to a new book by former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chairwoman Sheila Bair, when the CEOs of America’s major banks came to Washington to discuss the much-reviled $700 billion bank bailout in 2008, the first question asked by Thain was “if his compensation was going to be cut.” Upon Thain’s departure from Merrill Lynch, the New York Times’ Floyd Norris wrote, “The departure of John Thain from Bank of America provides another reminder of how Wall Streeters have come to see themselves as entitled to pay that would seem excessive even if their companies were not failing.”
And since Romney won’t stand for his poor 1 percenters being forced to buy only 1 Ferrari per household, he’s pledged to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which included a provision that imposed placing restraints on executive compensation at financial institutions. I perish to think the amount of corporate welfare that Thain will dole out as Treasury Secretary. Well, at least he wouldn’t need a $35,000 commode since he would now be crapping all over the middle-class and poor.
Michael is a comedian/VO artist/Columnist extraordinaire, who co-wrote an award-nominated comedy, produces a chapter of Laughing Liberally, wrote for NY Times Laugh Lines, guest-blogged for Joe Biden, and writes a column for MSNBC.com affiliated Cagle Media. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook, and like NJ Laughing Liberally Lab if you love political humor from a progressive point-of-view. Seriously, follow him or he’ll send you a photo of Rush Limbaugh bending over in a thong.
Romney Wants Former Merrill Lynch CEO Who Helped Crash The Economy As Treasury Secretary
WikiLeaks’ web host raided by Swedish police
The Stockholm-based web host for WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay has been raided by Swedish police. Four of the firm’s servers were seized, though it remains unclear exactly who was being targeted.
The Stockholm-based web host PeRiQuito AB, or PRQ, was targeted by police on Monday, the company’s owner Mikael Viborg told local media.
"PRQ.se, one of a number of ISPs used by WikiLeaks has been raided by Swedish police; 4 servers seized. Police still in office," WikiLeaks tweeted on Monday.
A large swatch of filesharing sites, including The Pirate Bay and PRQ’s own website have been down since the raid, though Viborg says the technical issues were unrelated to the seizure of the servers.
Other bittorrent sites which are currently unavailable include torrenthound.com, linkomanija.net and tankafetast.nu, release blog RLSLOG.net, and the sports streaming sites atdhenet.tv, hahasport.com, sportlemon.tv and stopstream.tv, Torrent Freak reports.
Viborg says the search warrant was related to intellectual property violations, though it remains unclear whose servers were impounded.
The Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed that a raid had taken place, but did not provide any additional information.
Several Swedish government agencies and businesses were the victims of cyber attacks in the days leading up to the raid. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, though Swedish police claim they are linked to the ongoing sex crimes investigation against WikiLeaks-founder Julian Assange.
PRQ became infamous for its maximalist approach to free speech issues concerning its policy on hosting.
Among its 2,000 or so clients, the firm has hosted WikiLeaks, the North America Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), Pedophile.se, and the Chechen rebel site Kavkaz Central.
The Pirate Bay said PRQ is no longer their host, though Viborg said WikiLeaks was still hosted by PRQ as of last summer, Forbes reported.
“Even though I loathe what they say, I defend them,” Viborg told Forbes last August regarding his pro-pedophile clients. “We don’t cooperate with the authorities unless we absolutely have to.”
PQR was founded by The Pirate Bay members back in 2004 and has been raided by police on two separate occasions.
In 2006, Swedish police confiscated 180 servers in connection with an investigation targeting The Pirate Bay. A second raid occurred in 2010 targeting a filesharing network known as “The Scene.”
The Pirate Bay and PRQ co-founder Svartholm Warg was extradited to Sweden last month to serve a one-year sentence for breaching copyright laws. He is also being charged with hacking into the Swedish IT security company Logica, a firm that services the Swedish tax office. The tax numbers of 9,000 Swedes were later leaked online, making headlines around the country.
WikiLeaks’ web host raided by Swedish police
Voter-fraud shocker?! On behalf of ... the GOP?
Republicans' current crop of "voter security" laws areDemocrats' "voter suppression" laws.
For several years now, Republican-led legislatures have been loud in their concerns about what amounts to a solution in search of a problem: massive, organized voter fraud in order to steal elections. Real verified instances of organized, deliberate voter fraud can likely be counted in the scores at best, and Republicans have been ardent about using the specter of the now-disbanded ACORN group to raise a national warning.
Most spectacularly, South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley roused the troops at the Republican convention inTampa, Fla., in August by repeating the completely boneheaded and inapt trope about the voter I.D. law of the sort her state approved (and which, like many such laws, is being challenged in federal courts).
"If you have to use picture I.D. to get onto a plane," she said, "it is common sense that you would use picture I.D. to protect the integrity of the voting process."
Another proof that common sense isn’t that common. Getting on a plane is a commercial transaction. Voting is a constitutional right. No resemblance whatsoever.
So get a load of what’s just happened.
There has emerged some potential voter fraud – possibly by a group hired by Republicans themselves, which puts me in mind of the verse in Matthew, in the Gospels, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" which essentially means, who are you, Mr. Pot, to call the kettle black?
The controversy surrounds a Republican political consulting firm whose chief operated a voter registration project that was investigated by the Justice Department and several state officials in 2004 on fraud allegations; charges were never filed, and in this 2012 instance, GOP officials, including the Republican National Committee, have been scrambling to fire the consulting firm to contain the political fallout a little over a month before the elections.
This new dip into the same political hot water concerns a new group headed by the same man whose group is facing questions about suspicious voter registrations in swing states including Florida and Colorado. The GOP was paying the firm a reported $2.9 million to register voters. Several states, including North Carolina, are now looking more closely at voter registrations submitted by the group’s workers.
In the swing state of Colorado, a Fox News station reported on a young woman registering voters in Colorado Springs. In a video, she said that ‘’We’re out here in support of Romney, actually,’’ and then, when she was asked who she works for, risibly claimed – after a long pause -- to be working for the county clerk’s office.
The consulting firm at issue, Strategic Allied Consulting – love those innocuous, meaningless-sounding names, don’t you? -- was formed under that name just this year, but it is headed by former Arizona state GOP executive director Nathan Sproul. He’s a veteran of about eight years of voter registration efforts paid for by GOP interests, efforts that have drawn scrutiny in several states,North Carolina among them.
Interestingly, Sproul has put forth the same argument about voter registration drives that opponents of voter I.D. laws use: that if there’s any problem, it’s just with a few bad apples. There’s no fraudulent intent.
I was rather expecting a double-down argument, the deep conspiracy "sting" defense, that those people registering voters were, hey, after all, just patriotic Americans submitting these phony registrations to see whether government officials would notice and do their duty, and so we were just being good and vigilant citizens, not committing a federal crime, because our hearts are pure.
Since the questions about suspicious voter registrations arose over the last few days, the company has been fired by Republican Party organizations in several of the swing states it’s been operating in.
This is the backdrop for my colleague Patrick McGreevy’s story about what’s happening in the Inland Empire. Riverside County is seeing a surge in GOP voter registrations – in some cases, by people who didn’t want to register Republican.
Democrats have taken scores of formal complaints to the Secretary of State’s office from a Riverside County state Senate district where voters say someone registered them as Republicans without their knowledge or consent in a district that’s recently reported a surge of 27,000 new Republican voters, something that’s drawn attention to the Golden State Voter Participation Project and its chief donor, GOP activist Charles Munger Jr., as well as a number of business groups.
That state Senate district election is a tussle between the Republican incumbent and a Democratic opponent over a district that could tip the Democrats into a supermajority in the state Senate. While voters of any party can vote any way they like in a general election, being registered to one party or another determines what kind of campaign mail and get-out-the-vote efforts you get, hence the battle over party-specific registrations.
Voting is a messy system, in part because almost every single jurisdiction in the U.S. has its own voting laws. The patchwork means that someone who’s eligible to vote in New Mexico may not be eligible to vote in Arizona. That’s fine for local elections – but what about federal? There’s a reason, for example, that states can’t impose term limits on Congress. That’s a federal power.
So then why should a voter in one state be disenfranchised from voting in a federal election when that same voter could cast a vote for president or U.S. Senate if he or she lived one state over? It seems to invite a voting rights lawsuit under federal voting rights laws.
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