Friday, February 28, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Ukraine official says Russian troops take over military airport in Crimea – CBS
CBS/AP February 28, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russian military were blocking a Ukrainian military airport in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea near the Russian naval base while unidentified armed men were patrolling another airport serving the regional capital, Ukraine's new Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Friday.

No violence was reported, and flights continued to operate at the airport serving Simferopol, the regional capital. It was not immediately clear whether the airport in Sevastopol, owned by the Ukrainian defense ministry, was open but there are no scheduled services to the facility.

Ukraine's State Border Guard Service said about 30 Russian paratroopers from the 810th brigade of Russia's Black Sea Fleet had taken up position outside the Ukrainian Coast Guard base in the Sevastopol area. It said the paratroopers said they were there to prevent any weapons at the base from being seized by extremists. Russia's defense ministry had no comment.

The Russian foreign ministry refused to comment while a spokesman for the Russian defense ministry also had no comment.

Avakov wrote in a Facebook post that the Belbek international airport in Sevastopol was blocked by military units of the Russian navy.

"I can only describe this as a military invasion and occupation," Avakov said.
Ukraine's Parliament, meanwhile, adopted a resolution calling for a U.N. Security Council meeting on the nation's crisis and demanding that Russia halt steps which it says are aimed against Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Early on Friday, dozens of armed men in military uniforms without markings were seen patrolling the airport in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea.

An Associated Press photographer saw military men armed with assault rifles Friday morning patrolling the airport. The men, who were wearing uniforms without any insignia, refused to talk to journalists, and it was not immediately clear who they were.

On Thursday, masked gunmen with rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles seized the parliament and government offices in Simferopol and raised the Russian flag over the parliament building.

The events in the Crimea region have heightened tensions with neighboring Russia. It scrambled fighter jets on Thursday to patrol borders in the first stirrings of a potentially dangerous confrontation reminiscent of Cold War brinksmanship.

U.S. officials are closely monitoring Russia's military movements near Ukraine's border, reported CBS News correspondent David Martin. So far, it appears to be just an exercise as the Russians say, but that war gaming so close to the border could give Russia a rolling start to push into Ukraine, with little or no warning, and Martin says that is what concerns officials like U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

In spite of the concern, Martin said the U.S. is also trying to avoid any acts which could raise the tensions further, and according to the top American commander in Europe, NATO is not planning for any military reaction to a Russian intervention in Ukraine.

Russia also has granted shelter to Ukraine's fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, after recent deadly protests in Kiev swept in a new government.

Yanukovych has a news conference scheduled Friday in Russia's south near the Ukrainian border. He has not been seen publicly since Saturday, and he declared Thursday in a statement that he remains Ukraine's legitimate president.
Ukraine's parliament on Thursday elected a new government led by a pro-Western technocrat who promptly pledged to prevent any national break-up.

Moscow has been sending mixed signals about Ukraine but pledged to respect its territorial integrity. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long dreamed of pulling Ukraine -- a country of 46 million people considered the cradle of Russian civilization -- closer into Moscow's orbit.

For Ukraine's neighbors, the specter of Ukraine breaking up evoked memories of centuries of bloody conflict.

"Regional conflicts begin this way," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Thursday, calling the confrontation "a very dangerous game."

Ukraine's new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, on Thursday said the country's future lies in the European Union, but with friendly relations with Russia.
Yatsenyuk insisted the country wouldn't accept the secession of Crimea. The Black Sea territory, he declared, "has been and will be a part of Ukraine."

Oleksandr Turchynov, who stepped in as acting president after Yanukovych's flight, condemned Thursday's assault in Simferopol as a "crime against the government of Ukraine." He warned that any move by Russian troops off of their base in Crimea "will be considered a military aggression."

Ukraine's population is divided in loyalties between Russia and the West. Crimea, which was seized by Russian forces in the 18th century under Catherine the Great, was once the crown jewel in Russian and then Soviet empires. CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward reported that 60 percent of the population in Crimea are ethnic Russians, and many simply don't identify with the Ukrainian-speaking western parts of the nation, where Kiev sits and from which the recent opposition overthrow sprung.
"We cannot accept the authority in Kiev. We are a different people," Ludmila Milodanova, a pro-Russian protester said on the streets of Simferopol on Thursday. "We will be happy to join Russia. It is our motherland."

Crimea only became part of Ukraine in 1954 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred jurisdiction from Russia -- a move that was a mere formality until the 1991 Soviet collapse meant Crimea landed in an independent Ukraine.

The escalating conflict has sent Ukraine's finances plummeting, prompting Western leaders to prepare an emergency financial package.

In a bid to shore up Ukraine's fledgling administration, the International Monetary Fund has said it is "ready to respond" to Ukraine's bid for financial assistance. The European Union is also considering emergency loans for a country that is the chief conduit of Russian natural gas to western Europe.

Ukraine's finance ministry has said it needs $35 billion over the next two years to avoid default.


http://rt.com/news/minority-language-law-ukraine-035/

Canceled language law in Ukraine sparks concern among Russian and EU diplomats
Edited time: February 28, 2014 06:31

Ukraine’s swift abolition of the law allowing the country’s regions to make Russian a second official language has worried European MPs and officials, and has been condemned outright as a “violation of ethnic minority rights” by Russian diplomats.
The European Parliament has approved a resolution on Ukraine, which among other things calls on the country’s MPs and the new government to respect the rights of minorities, particularly when it comes to the use of languages.

Ukraine’s new leaders should distance themselves from extremists and avoid any provocation that might fuel "separatist moves,” MEPs said, the parliament’s press service reported. MEPs said that the new government should respect the rights of minorities in Ukraine, including the right to use Russian and other minority languages.

The resolution, proposed by six political groups in the European Parliament, urges Ukraine to ensure that its new legislation complies with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) abolished the 2012 law “On State Language Policy” the day after it voted to dismiss President Viktor Yanukovich. The law allowed the country’s regions to use more official languages in addition to Ukrainian if they were spoken by over 10 percent of the local population. Thirteen out of Ukraine’s 27 regions, primarily in Eastern Ukraine, then adopted Russian as a second official language. Two Western regions introduced Romanian and Hungarian as official languages.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Ukrainian MPs were wrong to cancel the law.

“The parliament of Ukraine has made what I believe to be a mistake a few days ago, cancelling a law on regional languages,” he told CNN, commenting on the current instability in the Crimea, where the majority of the population speaks Russian. “The new Ukrainian government should signal very eloquently to the ethnic minorities in Ukraine that they are welcome in Ukraine; that they are going to be part of the new Ukraine. And also Ukraine is a member of the Council of Europe, [with] its laws on protecting minorities.”

A much stronger reaction earlier came from Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights.

“Attack on the Russian language in Ukraine is a brutal violation of ethnic minority rights,” he tweeted in a comment on the abolition of the regional languages law.
An estimated 40 percent of the Ukrainian population speaks Russian, and the repealing of the language’s official status has been met with criticism by many citizens.

Activists in the Western Ukrainian city of Lvov, largely perceived as home to strong anti-Russian sentiment, decided to have a day of the Russian language to protest the Rada’s decision. The initiative was taken up by the city’s mayor, Andrey Sadovoy.
"I’m proud of those in Donetsk and Odessa who speak Ukrainian, although it’s not their native language. I’m proud of those in Lvov who today speak Russian in solidarity with the East of the country,” he said, Ukrainian Vesti daily reported.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed its concerns over the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. Among the most acute issues, the ministry cited “infringement of the right to speak [people’s] native language, discrimination based on ethnicity or country of origin, attacks and acts of vandalism performed on monuments of historical and cultural heritage as well as on places of religious worship.”

Monuments associated with Ukraine’s Soviet and imperial Russian past have been torn down all over the country in the last few days. As well as statues of Lenin, symbols of the victories over Hitler and Napoleon have also been destroyed or damaged.
Following the international and domestic criticism, acting Ukrainian President Aleksandr Turchinov ordered the Ukrainian parliament to urgently draft a new language bill, the press service of PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party has said.

The law will be “completely balanced” and will “take into account the interests of the east and the west of Ukraine, of all the ethnic groups and national minorities,” Turchinov said.




EU diplomats agree with Russia that the cancellation of Russian speakers rights is not advisable or fair. It does seem to me that if the opposition forces now controlling Kiev want the Ukraine to hold together as a nation, they need to give basic rights to all citizens. There is too much old enmity involved in this conflict.

Russian forces are apparently in the Ukraine now. “ the paratroopers said they were there to prevent any weapons at the base from being seized by extremists. Russia's defense ministry had no comment.” The US and NATO are not planning to intervene militarily at this time. I will continue to watch news articles on this conflict.




Appeals court says school had right to ban U.S. flag T-shirts – CBS
CBS/AP February 27, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO - Officials at a Northern California high school acted appropriately when they ordered students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during the Mexican heritage celebration Cinco de Mayo, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the officials' concerns of racial violence outweighed students' freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday. Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day.

The unanimous three-judge panel said past problems gave school officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for their actions. The court said schools have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety.

"Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence," Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel. The past events "made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real," she wrote.

The case garnered national attention as many expressed outrage that students were barred from wearing patriotic clothing. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based American Freedom Law Center, a politically conservative legal aid foundation, and other similar organizations took up the students' case and sued the high school and the school district.

"It is truly a sad day when government officials are permitted to ban the American flag on a public high school campus for any reason," Robert Muise, the American Freedom Law Center's co-founder and senior counsel, said in a statement.

"Here, school officials feared that our clients would offend 'Mexican' students if they wore their flag shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo, so they ordered the students to either remove their shirts or leave school in direct violation of their First Amendment rights," Muise said.

William Becker, one of the lawyers representing the students, said he plans to ask a special 11-judge panel of the appeals court to rehear the case. Becker said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if he loses again.

"The 9th Circuit upheld the rights of Mexican students celebrating a holiday of another country over U.S. student proudly supporting this country," Becker said.
Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when Mexican troops defeated a French army of Napoleon III, then considered the mightiest military in the world. It is considered a bigger holiday in the U.S., celebrating Mexican heritage with parades and revelry in many major cities.




I believe it is fair and wise to allow minority ethnic groups to celebrate their important holidays, speak their own language, go to their own religious services, etc., as long as they are not disturbing the peace or initiating violence or undue cultural conflict. In a peaceful society minorities should be allowed to live a full life and add their cultural elements to the “melting pot” of America. African Americans' celebrating Kwanza is an example. These things should not cause groups who consider themselves to be more mainstream to start a battle over the matter.

American white protestants shouldn't taunt or attack Latino citizens when they are peacefully observing their primary nonreligious holiday. It reminds me of the England-allied Northern Ireland protestants staging parades through the Catholic neighborhoods, called “Orange Walks,” celebrating the British win over Ireland in which England attained control over Northern Ireland. The Orange Walk was a blatant provocation and inevitably caused a riot. During the Clinton administration, and with his help, Britain and the Irish revolutionaries reached a peace agreement, but the Men of Orange still are adamantly against the agreement.

Those marches are now strongly controlled by the Parades Commission, but I noticed in a BBC Internet article from July 2013 on the subject that the Orange Order is still protesting that control, claiming that the Catholic Irish republican population is “waging a cultural war” against “Britishness.” To me, the Men of Orange are just trying to maintain their control and are stuck deeply into their pattern of hatred. They should give over their attempts at continued power and become a peaceful part of the society. They are, after all, the minority and the controls over their marches are for the purpose of keeping the peace.




Scientific world getting duped by computerized fake research papers – CBS
By Erik Sherman MoneyWatch February 27, 2014

If you've ever had occasion to read an academic paper in almost any field in which you don't hold a PhD, chances are that it seems like so much gobbledygook. And there's some chance that it literally is.

A 2005 prank by three MIT graduate students has given way to a new genre: computer-generated fake academic papers, as the Guardian reports. Back then, the students wrote a program called SCIgen in just days that would take high-minded terms from academic writing, paste them together, and create papers that had literally no research or meaning behind them.

The program used "context-free grammar" and added graphics, figures, and citations. The students -- Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn and Dan Aguayo -- didn't stop there. They submitted two papers under their names to a scientific conference. One was accepted. Here's the gibberish-filled abstract:
Many physicists would agree that, had it not been for congestion control, the evaluation of web browsers might never have occurred. In fa ct, few hackers worldwide would disagree with the essential unification of voice-over-IP and public-private key pair. In order to solve this riddle, we confirm that SMPs can be made stochastic, cacheable, and interposable.

Academic publishing industry spam

Why did they do it? The trio was tired of all the emails they'd receive from conference organizers looking for papers. They thought that the standards for the conferences, which charge hefty fees for attendance, might not be rigorous. It might have ended there -- with the one-time submission of their nonsensical papers -- except that they made the program freely available, and it has become quite popular.

According to a newly published research in the journal Nature, more than 120 papers in a subscription database were computer-generated fakes. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), a major professional organization in electronic engineering and computer science, had published more than 100 of them.

Computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France developed software to detect the fakes generated by SCIgen. Some evidence suggests that not all the authors listed on the papers were involved.

According to Labbé, researchers are pressured to keep churning out papers and publish as much as possible -- the old "publish or perish" saying in academia. Maybe this was a stealth campaign to discredit the practice, or perhaps some people thought it could add to their credentials without requiring more hours of work.

But there's a darker side. SCIgen deals with nonsense. But what if you could harness some of the more startling developments in artificial intelligence to create work? (IBM's Watson program that could win at Jeopardy comes to mind.) Add information and let a computer put together a syntactically correct paper that expressed meaning, not context-free grammar that stopped at putting correct parts of speech in the right places, regardless for how it sounded.

You now might be able to create fake papers that would not automatically be distinguishable. Refer to real previous papers as citations, making it even more difficult to discover an auto-paper, because it would exhibit real ties to the rest of the academic publishing industry. (You could even throw in the occasional typo or misspelling to make things look even more authentic.) How could anyone know where human research left off and an academic Terminator picked up?




This is like the article I clipped a couple of months ago about computer generated news articles. The program was especially adept at writing sports stories due to the heavy use of statics and popular sports phrases in those articles. This subject is making me think that it would be a good subject for a futuristic novel in which such a computer program makes a bid to take over a state government, purporting to be a qualified political candidate. Photos of the “candidate” are clipped from Facebook to make their news articles more realistic. Add some racial overtones and you could have a thriller.

Seriously, though, this is potentially a real problem. Thank goodness someone has invented a computer program to detect these forgeries, but I can imagine the FDA or other important government departments being misled by a scientific article and making misguided decisions. Besides, its just shameful to abuse the public this way. The human mind at its best is considered to be the only source of important writing, so this is simply shocking to me.

Artificial intelligence is very popular now, but it is a suspect field, I think, capable of causing great damage. I'll never forget Hal of 2001 fame. This time it was three college students who did it, but it could be a dangerous radical political party that was generating propaganda next time. Do we need laws making such programs illegal? I think we do need more laws than we currently have to regulate Internet use in some cases. The ubiquitous Internet bullying is one such case, and some laws have already been made to punish abusers legally. This situation is one to watch to see where it goes.




­

To Save Endangered Tortoises, Conservationists Deface Their Shells-- NPR
by Gloria Hillard
February 27, 2014
­
They're a quiet bunch, the hundreds of animals residing at the well-guarded botanical oasis in California's Ojai Valley. They've been brought to the Turtle Conservancy from countries around the world, like modern-day refugees escaping certain and persistent perils.

For years, the conservancy has worked on the front lines of the battle against smugglers, including on behalf of the ploughshare tortoise from Madagascar. The species is among the rarest tortoises on Earth; experts believe that only a few hundred still exist. Their rarity, along with a golden shell, has laid a high price on their head.

"Turtles and tortoises are arguably the most threatened group of animals on the planet," says Eric Goode, founder of the Turtle Conservancy. "Out of the 330 species of turtles and tortoises, over half of them are threatened with extinction."
Goode purchased the land in the Ojai Valley eight years ago, transforming it into a breeding facility and a lush haven for some of the world's most endangered creatures — those threatened by hunters, habitat destruction and now a booming global wildlife trade.

"In Southeast Asia in particular, the newfound wealth in the middle class enables people to now buy animals and keep them as status symbols," Goode says. "This is happening in China, in Indonesia."

The ploughshare tortoise is one of the most coveted living status symbols. On the black market they can fetch tens of thousands of dollars each. If you hold an adult in your hands, it's the size of a basketball.

At the Turtle Conservancy, two of them slowly meander toward veterinarian Paul Gibbons, their rounded feet lightly touching the earth.

"We're looking at a tortoise that's incredibly beautiful with its golden shell and this rounded dome," Gibbons says.

To help save this species, conservationists aim to make its most attractive feature, the shell, less desirable to poachers and wealthy collectors, he says. Carved into the back of a 30-pound female ploughshare at the conservancy are four large numbers, 7-0-0-2, and two block letters, M-G. Each tortoise has a unique identifier that includes info about where the tortoise originated, in this case Madagascar, and where it was found — Asia. The engraving is a last-ditch effort to protect the animals.
"We want the hobbyist or the pet owner to think: I'm looking for a beautiful tortoise, one that's not damaged," Gibbons says.

The engraving is being done not only on those in the captive breeding program but on the few hundred remaining in the wild as well. Shells wear down as part of the aging process and the procedure doesn't appear to be a painful one for the tortoise, Gibbons says. The long-term effects are less certain, though.

"We are balancing some harm with the benefit to the species and the individual," Gibbons says.

Currently, 11 ploughshare tortoises live at the sanctuary, but many people are hoping that number rises. Gibbons points to a pregnant female ploughshare nestled next to a large rock.

"The eggs now are 2 1/2 months old. We're seeing signs that we believe there's a chance they might be fertile, but we're not certain yet," Gibbons says.
Nothing would make the conservancy's Goode happier than welcoming captive-bred ploughshare hatchlings into the world.

"On one hand, tortoises have lived for over 250 million years. They've outlived the dinosaurs and they precede the dinosaurs. On the other hand, man is able to exterminate them very, very quickly," Goode says.

It is a mystery how they've survived this long. They move so slowly; they can't run away. All they can do is calmly stare back at you through ancient eyes.




I have never heard of this tortoise, but it is another creature that is being driven to extinction because of pointless human activities. I do consider the gathering of a living species to own them as a status symbol to be pointless. It occurs in every human society, but it is harmful and gives no real additional meaning to life. It's not the highest order of human thinking that is at the root of this kind of thing. It's part of the sheep mentality, when people follow each other slavishly rather than making a stand against the trend. Fads like this don't help mankind at all. They simply destroy another of earth's species.




­
Connecticut Looks To Sell Its Obamacare Exchange To Other States – NPR
by Jeff Cohen
February 28, 2014
­
Kevin Counihan, the CEO of Access Health CT, is walking through the 15th floor of a downtown Hartford office building that houses Connecticut's health insurance marketplace. He passes the legal department, the IT folks and the consultants, then stops in front of three large, wall-mounted computer screens.

"These are showing in real time, activity on our website. So, for example, right now you're looking at the number of concurrent users on the site," Counihan says. "So you can see that there are 212 people in the process of applying for insurance on the site."

The monitors and technology are just a part of what his agency is doing right. Connecticut is widely seen as one of the states that is succeeding with the Affordable Care Act. The state's website works well, and it has already exceeded its first-year enrollment goals. Other states have noticed.

"We were approached by several states who called us and said, 'Would you have any interest in franchising your exchange to us as a state?' And so, as we thought about that, we began coming up with this concept of an 'exchange in a box,' " says Counihan.
Think of it as Obamacare a la carte. Need an effective executive team? Let Counihan's people run your show, for a fee. Need help managing your vendors? They can do that, too. The Connecticut exchange's technology infrastructure can be scaled to fit any need, he says. Connecticut can deliver a state-specific look and feel, too. Sales. Marketing. Legal. Why do it yourself, when Connecticut can do it for you?

"My only point to some of these other states is, why go through all that agita? Why recreate a wheel somebody else already built?" Counihan says, sounding every bit the salesman. And he is, because the effort could help Counihan bring new revenue into the exchange.

The question is, can it work? Consultant Rosemarie Day of Day Health Strategies worked with Counihan years ago when Massachusetts built its own health insurance system. She says the idea of an exchange in a box is intriguing, but it's got to be nuanced, too.

"I think you can't just cut and paste, if it works in Connecticut, boom," Day says. "Doing that kind of organ transplant and reconnecting things can take longer."
She cautions that it's important to consider the complicated insurance markets in different states and their politics.

"States that have embraced having their exchange have a fair amount of buy-in from their governor's office, and the governors wanting to put their own stamp on what they're doing for their constituents," says Day.

Ego plays a role, too. States that seem like they are running successful exchanges may still need help behind the scenes, she says.

"They may not be publicizing all of this, but they're trying to make sure that they get out of that fingers-in-a-dike mode into something that is sustainable," Day says. "If [Connecticut] can help them do that, that would be tremendous."

NPR approached several states that have struggled to implement Obamacare for comment. None confirmed contact with Connecticut.

But Oregon said it's looking at technology alternatives should its vendor not deliver by the end of March. Maryland officials said earlier this month that they are actively investigating their options. Just this week, the state fired its healthcare IT contractor and picked a new one.

Not everything is perfect in Connecticut. The state's Spanish language enrollment website just went live — with barely a month to go before open enrollment ends. Still, people who work for Counihan say Connecticut has a lot to offer.

"The second name of this city is the insurance capital of the world," says Jim Wadleigh, the chief information officer for Access Health CT. "As you look at our entire leadership team, we come from the Cignas, the Aetnas, the Uniteds, the Health Nets, all those companies. That is probably what's helped us be so successful. We understand health care."

They also understand timing. Counihan says states that need help getting ready for the next open enrollment in November have a few weeks to decide how to proceed. But the clock, he says, is ticking.




Hopefully information about Connecticut's plan will spread sooner rather than later, so that all states will be up and running by November. There is so much confusion about the Affordable Healthcare problems that it is hard to keep track of all of them. If all the states are trying to have their own unique plan, maybe that is part of the matter. I hope Republican states are not trying to sabotage the success of the plan rather than making it succeed. This article did say politics is part of the situation. I hope this works out for the better soon. We shouldn't have this as a political football. We do need healthcare that works as a people. I'll look for more news articles about this as they come up.




­ House Approves Anti-Regulatory Bills, With Eye On Elections – NPR
by Bill Chappell
February 27, 2014
­
The House of Representatives has approved several bills that would limit and change the way the federal government regulates businesses. The Republican-backed measures were all passed by largely party-line votes; none are seen as likely to be enacted into law.

The legislation underscores "an increasingly symbolic thrust of legislation as Congress heads toward midterm elections," NPR's David Welna reports for our Newscast unit.

"This is an opportunity for us to show the American people that we are committed to restoring the trust in government," GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor said today.
Here's more from David:
"The series of anti-regulatory bills the House approved is part of what Republican leaders are calling Stop Government Abuse Week.

"Democrats accused Republicans of wasting everyone's time.
" 'I sincerely wish my friends on the other side of the aisle would stop this conservative merry-go-round,' said Alcee Hastings, a congressman from Florida.
"Even some Republicans acknowledged their legislation is unlikely to be considered by the Senate."

Here are two of the bills voted on today:
The Achieving Less Excess in Regulation and Requiring Transparency Act, or ALERRT, was sponsored by Rep. George Holding, R-N.C. It was approved by a 236-179 vote, with 10 Democrats joining the Republican side.

The Consumer Financial Freedom and Washington Accountability Act was sponsored by Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis. It seeks to replace the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a five-member commission that would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The new body would be called the Financial Product Safety Commission. It was approved by a 232-182 vote, with 10 Democrats voting in favor.




Why are there Democrats voting with them? What is their purpose? I wonder if these bills are part of Congress's plan to “do nothin',” as mentioned in yesterday's news article. When I see a situation of products being made badly or an abuse of power I think we need more regulation, not less. Foods, drugs, activities like the aircraft controllers all deal with important issues and need to be regulated. The problem with some regulatory agencies is that they are not checking often enough or closely enough, and problem situations slip through undetected. Of course, this article says that the bills in this article are not expected to be made into law. It's just a “ conservative merry-go-round” – another waste of time.