TheWorx

This is a phone call I recorded--and transcribed here--with a staffer from Senator Menendez' office who was responding to my request for "help with a Federal matter;" namely, an FOIA request that was met with exorbitant and unnecessary fees. I put it out so my fellow citizens know what their representatives mean when they offer to help you "with Federal matters." [note: as citizens, it is our right to tape conversations with government officials without their knowledge. Just like a corporation can document it's employees' actions surreptitiously, government officials are OUR employees and we can document them without their knowledge.] [ my remarks are in red ] Staff: You requested information from. . .under the Freedom of Information Act from the Dept. of Commerce? Me: Yes Staff: OK, so, unfortunately, I read over all the materials and , uh, unfortunately, because they address. . .unless you ...

I felt I had been the victim of discrimination by the Commerce Dept. In filing an FOIA [freedom of Information Act] request, I had asked for a waiver of fee because it was a ridiculous amount and unnecessary due to the fact that I had requested electronic records. The amount quoted was initially nearly $13,000 for 62,876 single-sided pages. The letter which follows is one that I received from their legal department. I feel it is important that people who intend to file for a waiver of FOIA fees know how this administration’s bureaucrats can engage in specious arguments to prevent the dissemination of useful data under the FOIA--data, for instance, that could provide evidence that a government agency engages in discrimination with abandon. However, it should be read so as to obtain instruction into the rules regarding fee waivers. For, let’s face it, data requested by the ordinary citizen can easily be made inaccessible via exorbitant copying fees. I thought I had initially answered th...

The utter idiocy of paying for something which does not protect you in the least and which leaves you having to seek expert witnesses and paying lawyers through your nose to defend your patent is, quite frankly, patently absurd.  Samsung expert witnesses: Sorry, Apple, there's no infringement - CNET The obvious solution is to pay a small fee to have the government verify that you thought of an idea on such and such a date. Then, you would do what you have to do now. You fight patent infringement in court if you think someone is using your patent without paying you. What idiot would want to pay thousands for NOTHING! Let's do away with the patent office as it now exists! I'm so frustrated over this that all I can do is state it again, you have to defend your patent on your own. What the heck does a court care whether some patent examiner granted the patent if it has the power to invalidate it? Oh, so asinine. So, so, asinine!

So, Senator Diane Feinstein learns a lesson in privacy and paranoia--we can only hope that her feelings are akin to our own, vis-a-vis mass surveillance. Actually, in the behind every cloud principle, I have said that I would welcome the NSA if the public could obtain phone/Internet records of representatives--at times where they are not engaged in discussions pertaining to military matters. But everything else? Why shouldn't we be privy to such discussions? WHAT, in Helsinki's name could be so secret? What? Other than military, what? Anyway, although I lobbied against Brennan simply because he was from New Jersey--where cronyism and despotism are twin brothers--I feel that there is NO separation of powers issue as is alleged by Senator Feinstein. The reason is that Congress has the right to subpoena members of the executive and the executive, lacking subpoena rights, should be able to spy on the legislature--it's only right.We could, of course, implement total transparen...

I love how Mr. Krugman of the NY Times keeps up the pressure on our state of inequality as in this article, The Undeserving Rich - NYTimes.com , however, I would like to point out a minor fallacy in a minor example he uses to explain how the rich get away calling themselves "deserving." Mr. Krugman says that it is because the super rich and their minions lump the not-so-rich into the "rich" category--the 0.1% that I and Mr. Krugman disdain--and this thereby makes it seem as if there are many more at the top. This is a very valid observation but he makes a point of including LAWYERS in that "dilution" phenomenon, and with that, I take issue as I do with most people with government-issued licenses. No, there is nothing wrong with licenses per se (it is only that after the issuing, they are no longer regulated except for very egregious and, oftentimes, only serendipitous discoveries.) Now, what is it about the inclusion of lawyers that I find so objecti...