All posts by Jack

Economics, General, Politics

Occupy Stardel

There are a number of items I would like Congress to implement to start the economic justice pendulum heading back to sanity.

  • Restore Glass-Steagall at a minimum.  Keep Commercial and Investment Banks separate. Keep both of them out of the Insurance business. There may be some more regulatory restrictions that have a demonstrated need since the 1930’s but get us back to the 1990’s first.
  • Review and reset SEC regulations every 7 years. All those smart guys on Wall Street like to game the system and it would behoove us to reset the games parameters as they stretch the limits.
  • Prohibit Federal employees and contractors from working in the financial industry for at least 7 years after they leave their Federal job or contract.
  • Un-recognize all Nationally Recognized Statistical Reporting Organizations (NRSRO). Reinstate recognition only to those organizations that are not paid by the parties they are reporting on.
  • Pass a law that explicitly states that corporations are not “People”.
  • Pass a law that only citizens can contribute to political campaigns and that all donations must be made available to a readily search-able database, maintained by the FEC, within 48 hours. I would like to extend this even further and say that only registered voters can donate to political campaigns but I will settle for citizens to start with.  I don’t know that any contribution caps are needed  if there is transparency about who is buying the candidate but we should not preclude that option if needed.
  • Any corporate compensation in excess of the President’s annual salary shall be counted as corporate profit and taxed as such.  No deductions.

I believe this agenda falls under the mandate of the United States:

We the People of the United States, in Order to

  • form a more perfect Union,
  • establish Justice,
  • insure domestic Tranquility,
  • provide for the common defence,
  • promote the general Welfare, and
  • secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

 

 

 

Geek Stuff, General

Where will you go today

I just heard about ‘Shopping Walls‘. Basically, if you see something you want to buy, you take a smartphone picture of the code box next to a picture of item and you will be automatically routed to a web site where you can quickly seal the deal and get the item mailed to your home.

Now if I was of a nefarious bent of mind I would cover the little code box with a code box of my own and direct this person, who is about to  disseminate credit card/account information and who expects to provide this information, to a dummy website of my own design that will collect the sensitive information. I might even relay the information through to the store so that the buyer does not notice that anything untoward may have happened.

(I don’t have a smart phone so I have no idea what they are doing.)

 

Phone Number