lambert's blog

Dear Lord.

Suit: McDonald's wages put on costly debit card
A Pennsylvania woman has filed suit to avoid fees she may be charged to get her McDonald's wages from a debit card.

Single mom Natalie Gunshannon has filed suit over bank fees that allegedly include $1.00 to check her balance, $1.50 to withdraw cash and $15 to replace a lost card.

The 27-year-old Gunshannon, who lives near Wilkes-Barre, says the JPMorgan Chase payroll card was her only payment option.

Her suit names franchise owners Albert and Carol Mueller, who employ about 800 people at 16 McDonald's restaurants in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Jeebus. Whatever happened to the good old paycheck you put in the bank, anyhow? Read below the fold...

As part of the PPACA FAQ, we're going to do a link dump every Monday; here is last Monday's. As the rollout approaches, we'll be forecasting future events for the coming week, but we're also interested in good links from the past week, so please, add those in comments! Your reward will be undying fame at Corrente and The Confluence in the form of a hat tip. Read below the fold...

This is really close to a garden brag, in fact. Below, a photograph of my not-heating season office, where I sit -- on the path, about where the "Lungwort" label is -- and work whenever I can (and I should really get off the vampire shift, so I don't miss the morning). The photograph is not very good, since the iPad [Hi, NSA! [waves]] lens is pretty lo-res, but I didn't want to dig a camera out from the morass in my kitchen and then figure out how to charge it. Anyhow, I making keen diagrams with Skitch, an iPad app.

But the photograph and the sketch show the design. I thought of doing this after I tried to count the varieties of flowers before me, and got up to nine (9) before I lost track. The diagram shows 15 (fifteen) but that doesn't count the orange lilies which are on the other side of the property line (and which I don't like anyhow), the tomatoes, some little frondy-like self-seeded wildflowers, and several kinds of weeds. And I forgot to label the clover, which appear as small white blobs close to the lungwort.

Blue is perennial; green is annual.

The photograph is also a little distorted, or completely realistic, in that from where I sit, none of the invading weeds and uncut grass at the bottom of the photo, which with a better, or worse, lens I would not have left in the frame, are in my field of vision. So I see only a panorama of flowers, and smell the iris, roses, and honeysuckle, and watch the pollinators on their rounds, and flee for the porch when a shower passes overhead. So, immense pleasure from not much money ($200 tops over three or four years) and not much work (a day to get the stone dust path in, and minutes here and there for the flowers.

As to the mystery flowers: Read below the fold...

Tweet of the day:

i wonder if OFA is ever gonna pay me the 800 bucks they owe me (through blogads) @barackobama #petty #gottaeat

— Atrios (@Atrios) June 17, 2013

This is madness. Read below the fold...

From Snowden's live chat/interview at the Guardian:

11.23am ET

Question:

Gabrielaweb

17 June 2013 2:17pm

Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?

Answer:

[SNOWDEN:] Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.

Read below the fold...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whi... Read below the fold...

Times:

ith only a few months remaining before Americans will start buying coverage through the new state insurance exchanges under President Obama’s health care law, it is becoming clear that the millions of people purchasing policies in the exchanges will find that their choices vary sharply, depending on where they live.

States like California, Colorado and Maryland have attracted an array of insurers. But options for people in other states may be limited to an already dominant local Blue Cross plan and a few newcomers with little or no track record in providing individual coverage, including the two dozen new carriers across the country created under the Affordable Care Act.

Maine residents, for example, will not see an influx of new insurers. The state has an older population and strict rules that already have discouraged many insurers from selling policies, so choices will probably be limited to the state’s dominant carrier, Anthem Blue Cross, and Maine Community Health Options.

“What we’re seeing is a reflection of the market that already exists,” said Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia who closely follows the health care law. ...

As people become aware of the differences among the exchanges, “some of the laggard states are going to end up changing,” said Ron Pollack, the executive director for Families USA, a consumer advocacy group that supports the law.

Let me translate "end up changing" for you, Ron you asshole: Read below the fold...

There is no way the government is collecting a five year history of the phone records of all Americans to run 300 queries a year.

— Ryan Singel (@rsingel) June 16, 2013

Read below the fold...

From his interview with the Guardian:

Unlike other leading Democrats and his former allies, Gore said he was not persuaded by the argument that the NSA surveillance had operated within the boundaries of the law.

"This in my view violates the constitution. The fourth amendment and the first amendment – and the fourth amendment language is crystal clear," he said. "It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is."

Gore added: "This is not right."

To my mind, there are the "secret law" aspect of the NSA scandal is far more powerful as an argument than the "privacy" argument. Read below the fold...

Bruce Schneier:

Before the Justice Department prosecutes Snowden, there are some other investigations that ought to happen.

We need to determine whether these National Security Agency programs are themselves legal. The administration has successfully barred anyone from bringing a lawsuit challenging these laws, on the grounds of national secrecy. Now that we know those arguments are without merit, it's time for those court challenges.

Read below the fold...

Just unbelievable. Or all too believable. Read below the fold...

In his Guardian riposte to concern trolls:

The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. As I've written many times, one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush War on Terror and National Security State into their biggest proponents: exactly what the CIA presciently and excitedly predicted in 2008 would happen with Obama's election.

Some Democrats have tried to distinguish 2006 from 2013 by claiming that the former involved illegal spying while the latter does not. But the claim that current NSA spying is legal is dubious in the extreme: the Obama DOJ has repeatedly thwarted efforts by the ACLU, EFF and others to obtain judicial rulings on their legality and constitutionality by invoking procedural claims of secrecy, immunity and standing. If Democrats are so sure these spying programs are legal, why has the Obama DOJ been so eager to block courts from adjudicating that question?

Good question. Read below the fold...