“Obamacare facts explained by Stefan Molyneux. A comprehensive look at the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and its implementation.”
“The government shutdown has shuttered all the monuments and park services in D.C. And signs like this are littered all over the city, demanding that people stay out of the beautiful parks FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY. But look at these radicals who are blatantly defying the federal government by having a stroll and eating lunch in a CLOSED PARK. Check out these anarchists wandering around this grassy field in front of the Washington Monument. ‘Uhhhh… guys?’ Who are these reprobates? The reflecting pool is closed, so QUIT IT with your romantic picnic! Stop taking dumb tourist photos of your girlfriend! This is a SHUTDOWN.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/brave-tourists-are-blatantly-defying-the-us-governments-dema
“Britain may recruit convicted computer hackers to a new military unit dedicated to combatting cyber-attacks, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said. ‘As a matter of policy the armed forces don’t necessarily exclude people who have criminal convictions. Each individual case would be looked at on its merits,’ Hammond told BBC television late Monday. ‘The conviction would be examined in terms of how long ago it was, how serious it was, what sort of sentence had followed. So I can’t rule it out.’ Lieutenant Colonel Michael White told the same programme: ‘We’re looking at capability development, rather than setting hard and fast rules about individual personality traits.'”
“The number of people leaving Mexico to work in the United States has dropped by roughly 65 percent during the last decade. Big agriculture has sought to counter this by lobbying in Washington for an easier path by which farm workers could gain citizenship. But they’ve also hedged the bet by investing in research that could turn the field jobs over to machines. A firm in Mountain View, Calif., has developed a Lettuce Bot that thins plants in the field 20 to 40 times faster than a human can do it — and the unit works day and night. Its inventor told the San Francisco Chronicle that the robot can thin a 15-acre field, normally a day’s work for 25 people, in less than two hours.”
http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2013-09-15/funt-technology-will-end-illegal-immigration-debate
“So much for a ‘clean’ bill. The measure passed by Congress to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling also contains some goodies and gifts tucked into the 35-page bill. There’s more money — a lot more — for a dam project on the Ohio River and millions of cash for Colorado flooding repair projects. And the wealthy widow of a late U.S. senator will receive a year’s pay as a death benefit. You have to hand it to a Congress that finds no bill is off limits for pork.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/17/politics/new-debt-deal-pork/
“Rushed to approve a 35-page deal to fund the government and avert a debt default, senators allowed a few unrelated provisions to slip through. One was section 146, guaranteeing $174,000 — the equivalent of one year’s salary — to Lautenberg’s widow, Bonnie Englebart Lautenberg. Frank Lautenberg died in June at age 89. He was named one of the 50 richest members of Congress by Roll Call in 2012, with a net worth of $56.8 million at the time. He purchased a $1.8 million condo at the West End Ritz-Carlton in Washington in 2003.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/16/frank-lautenberg-widow_n_4112148.html
“Numerous business customers with Chase BusinessSelect Checking and Chase BusinessClassic accounts have received letters over the past week informing them that cash activity (both deposits and withdrawals) will be limited to a $50,000 total per statement cycle from November 17 onwards. The move to limit deposits and withdrawals while banning international wire transfers altogether is a bizarre policy and will cripple many small and medium-sized businesses with Chase accounts. Buying stock from abroad in any kind of quantity will now become impossible for many companies, while paying employees will also be a headache.”
http://www.infowars.com/chase-bank-limits-cash-withdrawals-bans-international-wire-transfers/
“Consumers may be headed for trouble when they turn over bank and brokerage pass codes to investment advisers or get pulled into investment scams involving digital currencies, state securities regulators said. The North American Securities Administrators Association said digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, offer consumers another way of paying for goods and services, but they also provide a ‘fertile ground for scam artists to capitalize on … (their) increasing popularity and acceptance.’ The association’s members include state and provincial regulators in the United States, Canada and Mexico.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-investing-risks-idUSBRE99E12V20131015
“‘The proliferation of digital currencies fuels the proliferation of tools and services necessary for cybercrime. This in turn helps fuel the growth in cybercrime, and other forms of digital disruption,’ said McAfee EMEA CTO, Raj Samani. ‘Further, the challenges facing such currencies go beyond their propensity for use within money laundering – to targeted attacks on financial exchanges, and malware developed to target digital wallets.’ Evidence that virtual currencies have become a mechanism for online and physical crime risks the possibility of full-scale intervention by governments. There is plenty of precedent for this, McAfee’s authors note.”
“Whether or not whistleblower Edward Snowden’s decision to reveal details of the U.S. National Security Agency‘s (NSA) spying on everyday Americans’ digital lives was justifiable, it’s undeniable that the leak has been a colossal source of embarassment and controversy for the NSA, the U.S. intelligence community, and the U.S. federal government as a whole. In that regard many at the NSA are asking themselves — ‘Could we have done to stop the leak?’ Well the answer, according to a new report in The New York Times, is that they apparently could have — and likely quite easily.”