Aren't you scared yet?

One thing Republicans are doing this year is promising to solve all our problems by passing constitutional amendments. Sometimes this promise is the only specific promise a candidate makes during the campaign. Voters considering support for one of these candidates should ask them what else they intend to do in Washington. Constitutional Amendments rarely succeed, sometimes taking 20 years or more to become the law of the land. So what is your representative planning to do while waiting for his or her amendment to be ratified by 3/4 of the states?

They're also sending out spam, sometimes in the form of chain letters. Here is one of them.This is amusing. The Republicans have shown us this year what happens when they go to a bunch of inexperienced candidates. They're all nut jobs! On the other hand, some great people are long-time congressmen, like Nancy Pelosi, Jackie Speier, Pete Stark, Maxine Waters, Henry Waxman, George Miller, Barbara Lee. Do we really want to throw these excellent congresspeople out so the Republicans can have a shot at their seats? Most of the power in Congress comes from seniority, so it's no surprise that the people mentioned above have powerful positions. Do we want to replace them with people who have no power at all?

The Republican Senate has contributed greatly to the low opinion people have of Congressmen, by filibustering, voting against, and objecting to nearly every progressive bill or appointee that has come before them. Their intent is to make the Democrats look bad because they didn't pass the legislation that Obama promised. One Republican Latino group has advised Latinos in Nevada not to vote "because the Congress hasn't kept its promise to Latinos." The Republicans want you to be discouraged. If Latinos follow their advice, Sharon Angle could be elected to the Senate. This is a person who favors militarization of the border, no amnesty for undocumented latinos, and

The current congress, despite complete Republican stone-walling, has passed the first universal health care law in our nation's history, a government stimulus bill that funded 2.5 to 3.5 million jobs as well as many much-needed public works projects, and a financial reform package that brings the Financial industry back under control.

Speaking of financial reform, one of Obama's key advisors and a strong advocate for consumer rights is Elizabeth Warren. But she can't be appointed the new consumer rights tsar because of Republican opposition. The Senate could hold her nomination hostage indefinitely while they smear her daily on their Propaganda channel (Fox).

Perhaps the most important defect in this idea is that newcomers to congress are suckers for the lobbyists, since they have no information and the lobbyists are happy to give it to them and write their bills for them. This idea is a recipe for disaster.

But it would take a constitutional amendment to implement it, not just a bill. The Constitution specifically sets the terms for federal representatives. It took an amendment to restrict the president's terms to 2 (the twenty-second amendment). So this idea is going nowhere.

==allan


On Oct 20, 2010, at 2:00 PM, fred padula wrote:


Please forward:

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!!

A friend sent this along to me. I can't think of a reason to disagree.

I am sending this to virtually everybody on my e-mail list and that includes conservatives, liberals, and everybody in between. Even though we disagree on a number of issues, I count all of you as friends. My friend and neighbor wants to promote a "Congressional Reform Act of 2010." It would contain eight provisions, all of which would probably be strongly endorsed by those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I know many of you will say "this is impossible." Let me remind you, Congress has the lowest approval rating of any entity in Government. Now is the time when Americans will join together to reform Congress - the entity that represents us.

We need to get a Senator to introduce this bill in the US Senate and a Representative to introduce a similar bill in the US House. These people will become American heroes


**********************************
Congressional Reform Act of 2010


1. Term Limits.

12 years only, one of the possible options below..

A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.


Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathersenvisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.


If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete.

Cyber Wars

On 24 July 2008, Spam King Eddie Davidson [pictured at right] killed himself, his girl friend, and a child after walking away from a federal prison where he was serving a 21-month sentence for charges related to spamming activities.

Today, President Obama announced the creation of a new post, which he called Cyber Czar. This new position would have responsibilty for protecting world computer networks from attacks that cost the economy billions of dollars every years. The only surprising thing about his announcement is how long it took the government to take action.

Imagine if there were gangs of criminals roving the interstate highways, putting up phony signs that divert traffic from its intended course, stopping trucks and carrying off their cargo, and causing delays and traffic jams on a daily basis. Wouldn't the public be enraged? Wouldn't government be forced to step in?

That's exactly what is happening to our "information superhighway." But even though most Americans use computers or rely on their performance in their daily lives, few understand how they work or what dangers lurk there.

The internet began as ARPAnet, a U. S. Deparment of Defense project back in the 1960s. Although security must have been a prime concern at that time, by the 1980s something had gone terribly wrong. Hacking, or breaking into a computer network surreptitiously, was considered by many to be an innocent pastime. The movie "War Games(1983)" showed how a teenager might hack into a top secret military computer. Although the story was somewhat fanciful, still there were many computer users who amused themselves by trying to gain access to various computer networks.

As the Internet exploded, both the opportunities for hacking and the danger from abuse escalated dramatically. Today, there are thousands of hackers, some of them amateurs, but many others professionals employed by governments, who are busily at work trying to defeat the plans that have been laid to protect our data, our websites, and ultimately, our lives. Since computers intrude into every aspect of our lives, they control information that could be used to fire weapons, or prescribe medications, to direct traffic on busy highways, or suck funds out of bank accounts.

Internet Enemy Number One: Spam.
Much of the president's attention is focused on "cyber attacks", where networks are invaded, usually to obtain information, but sometimes to disrupt operations. The most expensive kind of attack, however, is the most common, one which every computer use encounters every day. It's called spam. The propagation of spam, unsolicited email messages, is as sophisticated as any network breakin. In fact, they use the same tools and have developed similar tactics to evade detection.

What does the sending of spam involve? In the first place, the spammer must have some method of gathering millions of email addresses. This may be accomplished by software programs called "spiders" that enter every website on the internet and harvest email addresses, which are later used for spam or sold to spammers. These programs are sold openly on the internet. Greedy and unscrupulous people have sold books and articles about email "marketing" in which they explain how to send spam and make money doing it.
Advanced spamming also uses viruses, trojan horses, and malware. Trojan horses take over your computer and use it to send spam. Malware installs itself on your computer and steals all your email addresses. When a hacker manager to install malware on large computers like government or university databases, it can steal thousands or even millions of email addresses at the same time. This same ability to steal email addresses and take over computers can also be used to steal data, like bank records, social security records, and medical records.

Cyber Wars

During the Cold War, computer programmers employed by governments on both sides of the iron curtain invented programs to disrupt or disable computer networks of the other side. Bulgaria was particularly active in this area, which was related to "cracking", a way of making commercial software available to users who had not purchased a legal copy. So a programmer could make a "cracked" copy of Microsoft Word, for example, and hundreds of people could use the pirated copy without paying royalties to Microsoft. Other programs were also placed on these disks, viruses and trojan horses, which could use the installer as an entry point into a computer.

Since the end of the cold war, programmers trained by their governments in hacking techniques have gone rogue, so to speak, continuing to practice their trade, either for monetary gain or for recognizable sociopathic reasons, which is to say that they want to destroy something because they enjoy doing it. One famous example of this was a Bulgarian called Dark Avenger, who used his programs to attack anti-virus researcher, Sarah Gordon.

Computer hacking lends itself to asymmetrical conflict, where small, relatively weak organizations attack large, powerful ones. Computers are small, relatively cheap, and easily connected to sophisticated systems through the internet or wireless networks. This use of hacking techniques increases the danger associated with cyber crime, much as the use of plastic explosives and hijacked airliners increases the deadliness of guerilla war. The sophisticated weapons systems of technological warfare as practiced by the American army are far more vulnerable to attack by one or two sophisticated hackers than the tanks and bombs of previous wars. America must perforce become better at repelling cyber attacks in order to maintain its military superiority.

Which brings us full circle, because the techniques used to subvert weapons systems (or any other highly integrated system on which lives rely) are the same--viruses, trojan horses, malware--as have been used by less malign hackers since the 1980s. We need our government to begin combatting these threats without delay.