Archive for December 7, 2009
I Filed a FOIA Request
Roughly two months ago I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI. (FOIA’s are now officially called a “Freedom of Information-Privacy Act” request or “FOIPA.”)
After filing the initial request, I received a letter from the FBI — addressed to me using my correct name and address — asking for my correct name and address, which, of course, I provided in my initial request. It also asked how much I would be willing to pay for a copy of my file.
I wrote back and gave them all the variations on my name I could think of. I told them I had been at my current address since 1977 and that I was willing to pay $50.00 for copies. I also gave my place of birth and the subject of my request (i.e., anything and everything they have on me).
Today I received a second letter acknowledging the receipt of my second letter and assigning a “FOIPA Request No.” The letter also asked me to “provide the complete name, alias, date and place of birth for the subject of your request…and other specific data you could provide such as prior addresses…” I already did that.
The letter said that to “make sure information about you is not released to someone else, we require your notarized signature or, in place of a notarized signature… For your convenience, the reverse side of this letter contains a form which may be used for this purpose.” Nope. The reverse side of “this letter” is blank.
Then it said that if I was requesting a search of the “FBI’s Criminal Justice Information System” (I’m not), I should “follow the enclosed instructions…” No instructions were enclosed.
It ended by saying that “processing delays have been caused by the large number of requests received by the FBI. We will process your request(s) as soon as possible.”
Humm. If you ask me, some of the “processing delays” may be caused by the FBI’s incompetence. Responding to a FOIA request should be a badda-boom, badda-bing routine kind of thing.
And these guys are charged with “protecting” us?
This might be a long haul.
I’ll keep you posted.
Tweet of the Day
This is a tweet by Dave Koller who’s live-tweeting the senate health care debate.
Geez. Kerry is just pitiful. He of all people — having been Swift Boated in 2004 — should “get it” by now.
Bye-bye Whining AIG Executives
AIG Executives Threaten to Quit Over Cuts Issued by Pay Czar.
Bye-bye assholes. Your company — much less your paycheck — wouldn’t exist today if we taxpayers hadn’t bailed you out.
If You’re a “Liberal” or “Progressive,” Here’s a Must-Read
Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back? We may lose if we step outside the mainstream, but at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity.
You Won’t Hear This on TV
In Polls, Much Opposition to Health Care Plan Is From Left
One way to look at this: 43 percent of people favor health care reform, whereas 38 percent oppose it (20 percent are undecided). But the actual plan under consideration gets numbers that are more or less the reverse of that — 34 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed — because a significant number of people think the plan doesn’t go far enough.
My emphasis.
What we hear on TV is the number who oppose the plan, period. Not why they oppose it.
Mid-Day Time Waster
Calculate what your age would be on other planets.
Congress: Delcare War On Afghanistan, or Not
Congress should debate and hold an up or down vote on whether or not it is willing to formally declare war on Afghanistan. Enough of these monstrously expensive forays into foreign countries that aren’t on the books as official wars. Let’s have a public discussion about what our goals are, and the most efficient way to accomplish them.
I want to see my representative raise his hand in support of the war in Afghanistan, or not. I want him to put his vote where his mouth is. I want him to be held to account because given numbers like these, one can’t help but wonder whether there might be some hanky-panky going on around here:
The nation’s military-industrial complex means big campaign money, and now Democrats get more of it than the GOP. Weapons-makers make elective wars. Historians Barbara Tuchman and William Manchester chronicled how big guns made by the Krupp family encouraged Germany to launch three disastrous wars.
In 21st century America, half of the on-budget $310 billion annual defense budget goes to our own latter-day Krupps. Some recently moved their headquarters here to be close to the spigot. They spend $100 million a year on lobbying, and deploy 1,000 lobbyists to Capitol Hill. Total defense industry employment in this region tops 280,000.
They’re having a field day. The biggest, Lockheed-Martin, based in suburban Maryland, gets upward of $40 billion in defense work a year. Estimates for number two, Boeing, reach to $27 billion; third-ranked Northrop-Grumman gets $24 billion.
