What you can do to prevent identity theft in 2012

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Tuesday January 24, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/24 · 07:00

The Identity Theft Research Center (ITRC) has come up with 10 guidelines to help keep your personal data secure in 2012. I’ll get to that shortly but first you should know that I worked in the junk mail industry for 35 years selling your names and private information to companies that use it to target customers. During this time I raised red flags over the lack of security for this massive dossier on almost every American household, basically falling on deaf ears.

I won’t get into specifics on just what junk mailers, financial institutions, corporations, and the government gather in their quest to find out everything possible about every individual in the U.S. Suffice it to say, there is almost nothing they don’t know about you and have at their fingertips to use at will. You probably already know about all the secret data factors available on you, yet many Americans could care less about protecting it.

The reason junk mailers refused to listen to warnings of loose data is that this is one of the most profitable profit centers in any business. By my calculations, selling your name and personal data grosses the junk mail industry alone over $4 billion annually. Marketing this information has a 60 percent profit margin. But the reason you are apathetic about protecting your private information is that you think identity theft won’t happen to you. And then it does.

NastyJack

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Monday January 23, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/23 · 07:00

Former senator Rick Santorum of Penn. finally won the Iowa caucuses over Mitt Romney with 34 votes when the folks in Iowa did their final count. Sounds reasonable to me considering the high evangelical population in the state but also appears much too close when you consider Romney is a Mormon. Like JFK’s Catholicism in the November 1960 election for President, Romney’s Mormonism has been a barrier for the religious right from the beginning.

Apparently there were missing votes in eight Iowa precincts that for some reason or other were never received and counted, blamed on the “state’s old-fashioned primary process.” The missing votes were spread across five Iowa counties and in 2008 that area accounted for a total of 298 votes. In one such precinct GOP chair, Karen Zander, said about the volunteers, “They had no training. They didn’t know what they were doing.”

Pretty pathetic for an election that screams to the rest of the country each year that they are the first, and one of the most important votes in the primaries leading up to the primary nomination. I have never understood the importance of these caucuses, and maybe the rest of the country and future presidential candidates will come to agree after this year. But Romney’s close second does speak well of evangelical voters in that they were apparently able to put religion aside and vote with reason.

NastyJack

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Friday January 20, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/20 · 07:00

Most Americans, and Chinese I suspect, have forgotten the occurrence when the U.S. Ping Pong team in 1971 was invited to China, all expenses paid, to play in Beijing, including tours of the Great Wall. Time magazine called it “The ping heard around the world,” and rightfully so since American/Chinese relations were in the toilet at the time. It was offhanded notification by the Chinese that they wanted to improve relations with the U.S. It worked.

Richard Nixon, President at the time, felt the gesture was a good one and ended up making a trip to China later as the first American President to visit that country. Premiere Chou En-lai even invited the Americans to a banquet in the Great Hall of the People. Ten journalists including five from the U.S. were also invited. In addition to visiting the Great Wall, the U.S. entourage saw the Summer Palace as well as being able to talk to Chinese students and factory workers and attend the ballet.

But what had led up to this competition between the two teams? It was simply a chance meeting between the two stars, one from China’s team, Zhuang Zedong, the other from America’s team, Glenn Cowan, on a bus in Japan following the 31st World Table Tennis Championship in 1971. Zedong presented Cowan with a gift, a silk-screen portrait of the Huangshan Mountains, which was unusual since we were in the midst of the cold war and China considered all Americans imperialists.

NastyJack

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Thursday January 19, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/19 · 07:00

We can thank the Tea Party for repeated accusations of racism that once again reminded us of Southern bigotry and the Ku Klux Klan. The media accused it of being “racially exclusionary, if not…racist,” according to The Washington Examiner. Well-known African American congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, said tea partiers can “go straight to hell.” While perhaps not quite so contentious, progressives would like to see them just gone.

The Tea Party is predominantly white but 6 percent of its supporters are black compared to only 1.6 percent for Occupy Wall Street and a total in the U.S. population of 12.6 percent. Further, blacks represent 25 percent of New York residents. So where were they on the first Occupy Wall Street demonstration on September 17, and thereafter across the country? One opinion was that blacks did not participate because they have been through this before and think it’s hopeless.

I did a post back in December, “Immigrants want a part of the Occupy Movement,”including the agreement that no one is more likely to be in the Occupy “99%” than Hispanics. Of course, wouldn’t blacks fit the same criteria? Currently 60.7 percent of black incomes are under $50,000, compared to 40.3 for whites. Median income for whites is $63,404 compared to that of blacks which is $38,835. U.S. median income is $58,924.

NastyJack

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Wednesday January 18, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/18 · 07:00

Racism is still rampant in Arizona evidenced by the anti-immigration law SB-1070 passed in 2010 by deposed State Sen. Russell Pearce. The state finally got rid of the likes of him, surrounded by his buddy J.T. Ready, racist and neo-Nazi from Pearce’s hometown of Mesa, AZ. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Pearce supporter, has his own problems with racial discrimination from his raids on towns in his county for the sole purpose of harassing Hispanics.

The people of Arizona must agree with this dogma because they elected Arpaio Sheriff in 1992 and he is still in office. Pearce was elected to the Arizona legislature in 2000 and served there eleven years before he was recalled in November of 2011. They both come from solid Arizona roots dating back to 1987 when Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded the former Governor Bruce Babbitt’s decision to honor Martin Luther King with an Arizona holiday.

That was almost 25 years ago but the Rev. Warren H. Stewart still remembers the struggle that eventually ended up with a MLK holiday in Arizona. Stewart, a prominent Phoenix pastor who was the face of the movement then, says the state legislature viewed King as a Black hero but also as an agitator. In those days African-Americans represented only 3 percent of the population. But in 1990 voters went to the polls to decide whether or not King should have his holiday. The proposition failed and Stewart felt he had done all he could.

NastyJack

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Tuesday January 17, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/17 · 07:00

Politico says “deep voter dissatisfaction with the economy” is a real threat to President Obama and congressional incumbents in twelve swing states, according to a new Gallup poll. If you aren’t sure what those dozen states are here is a lineup: Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
Gallup did their survey in October 2011.

In general, the poll says 60 percent of the residents in those states don’t think they are any better off than they were in 2008, compared to 37 percent who think they are. Measured with non-swing states, 54 percent of respondents said they weren’t better off, while 44 percent said they were better off. I decided to take the 12 states and evaluate them in relation to their Hispanic population to see if the President can count on a majority of this vote in 2012.

The swing state with the most electoral votes is Florida counting 29, followed by Pennsylvania with 20, Ohio 18, Michigan 16, No. Carolina 15, Virginia 13, Wisconsin 10, Colorado 9, Nevada and Iowa with 6 each, New Mexico with 5 and New Hampshire with 4. This represents a total of 151 electoral votes; 270 are needed to win. Eight of these states have had increases in their Latino population of over 50 percent since 2002.

NastyJack

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Monday January 16, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/16 · 07:00

Apparently the Boss is angry again and his new album will vent some of this anger which closely parallels the emotions of the Occupy Movement. Starting with Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, the crusade has literally moved all over the world. But Springsteen remains grounded in his concern for the blue-collar group and liberal causes. Although most of the album was written and recorded before the Occupy Movement started, it still reflects the sentiments of the fight for equality.

In an article where Princeton professor Cornel West describes the Occupy Movement as an “idea whose time has come,” Tea Party crackpot Michael Prell compares Occupy with the Berkeley Free Speech movement that took place in 1964-1965, “right down to the babbling incoherence of the participants.” Now this takes the cake considering this man, who is a strategist for the TP Patriots, represents a bunch of blithering blockheads with double-digit IQs.

So what was wrong with the Berkeley demonstrations that resulted in the University backing off and allowing academic freedom with open political activity on the campus, with the Sproul Hall sit-ins eventually creating a place of open discussion? Liberal, yes, and perhaps contrary to a conservative approach that hides its ideology behind the dogmas of religion and worship of big business. Berkeley has gone on to represent a progressive attitude that has become a solid foundation of the left.

NastyJack

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Friday January 13, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/13 · 07:00

Newt Gingrich said that if Mitt Romney didn’t get a 50 percent win in New Hampshire, it wouldn’t be a mandate for his nomination. In 2008 in NH, John McCain received only 37.71 percent of the vote and went on to win. Mike Huckabee came in third with 11.44 percent. This week Romney came in with almost 40 percent of the NH vote compared to 32.17 in 2008. The Iowa Caucus took place on the same date, Jan. 3rd, both years.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire by 39.09 percent in 2008, beating Barack Obama’s 36.45 percent, but Obama went on to win the nomination. John Edwards came in third at 16.94 percent. There will obviously be no Democratic primary in 2012 but what this says is that New Hampshire isn’t always a clincher. When Obama became the Democratic presumptive nominee on June 3, 2008, New Hampshire then cast all its 30 votes for him, one of only three states to do so.

For years now the New Hampshire Primary and the Iowa Caucus have received more media attention than all the other primaries combined. This publicity and resulting momentum by a decisive frontrunner can have great impact on the future of his or her candidacy. According to one report, a win in New Hampshire can increase that candidate’s share of the resulting primary count by 27 percent.

NastyJack

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Thursday January 12, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/12 · 07:00

Except for the killing of police officers, crime is dropping in all other major categories, a trend that has now lasted four-and-one-half years. Of course the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) would like to have you think it is due to the recent proliferation of guns on the street, which they are responsible for. Not so. According to the WSJ/Online, “Police officials and some criminologists attribute the persistent crime drop to more-sophisticated policing methods, such as targeting hot spots with extra officers.”

CNN reported nearly 500,000 criminal background checks during the last week before Christmas 2011. The NRA told CNN that this is due to scared citizens afraid that cuts in police coverage will result in less protection. This is the same kind of bullshit this organization of crackpots has been spreading for years. It sounds like someone is equipping an army, and some of those guns will end up in irresponsible households like the one recently in Mesa, Arizona where a 7-year-old kid took a gun to school.

"You keep any special interest group alive by nurturing the crisis atmosphere," is the statement of former NRA chief Ray Arnet. And it is something they have done well for years working their membership of yahoos into a frenzy over any issue even slightly related to gun control. The best recent example was when Barack Obama was elected President, the NRA told its members he would take away all their guns. Thousands went out and bought more.

NastyJack

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Wednesday January 11, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/11 · 07:00

It was both the youth vote and Latinos that helped get President Barack Obama elected in 2008. One is still hanging in there and the other has real reservations over what he has done for them. Even though Hispanics are concerned that the President hasn’t done enough for their people, they still support him. Considering the way the GOP looks down on this group, that’s a wise choice. The younger vote is something else, and unless Obama puts them back to work soon, they may just skip the elections.

Only 55.3 percent of Americans age 16 to 29 have jobs. According to Brad Chase, Barack Obama missed the boat on two issues. Rather than create jobs for the young unemployed, he talked about it in community forums. Rather then really providing a bailout on the huge burden of college loans, he only reduced rates by a pathetic 0.5 percent. This has led to an approval rate by the 18 to 29 age group of less than 50 percent.

But the Prez just may have his sights on the burgeoning Latino voting population to carry him through in 2012. Combining this with running against a Republican Congress that has done everything they can to defeat anything he proposes, but has done nothing of their own in the last three years may be a winning combination. At the end of the year, Hispanics favored the President over GOP front-runner Mitt Romney by a margin of over 2 to 1.

NastyJack

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Tuesday January 10, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/10 · 07:00

Here’s the latest. The gun freaks now want to be able to extend their concealed right-to-carry privileges to airplanes. J.D. Schechter from, where else but gun-totin’ Arizona, who runs the Arizona Citizens Defense League, says some of his readers think, because of the relaxing of guns laws in many states, this could become a reality.

Just what we need. Some yahoo from Arizona where anyone can own a gun and who probably has absolutely no training in firearms, to protect us on an airplane. I’ll take the train. Some lame brain gun owners still continue to end up at the airport daily with guns packed in carry-ons that they claim they forgot were there. In the week before Christmas, the T.S.A. discovered 31 guns with rounds actually in the chamber. National Rifle Assn. (NRA) education at its best.

And what happened to the uproar over improved gun control following the shooting of U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords. The one year anniversary was last Sunday and immediately following the incident a year ago President Obama sounded as if he might be willing to move forward on the issue. We also have heard nothing from Giffords herself.

NastyJack

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Monday January 09, 2012 · 7:00 AM PST

2012/01/09 · 07:00

The time has passed when you consider becoming a doctor and all your friends assume right away you will be making tons of money. I am not sure that was ever the real case, although there were a lot of docs driving around in Mercedes automobiles, and the general agreement was that specialist doctors were the ones who made the real money. According to CNN Money, many docs today are just trying to survive, many hiding the fact they are about to go bankrupt.

This includes casualties from all fields including cardiologists, oncologists and the family physician. To keep Medicare financially able, federal law says that annual reimbursement rates to doctors be reduced annually based on a formula that is connected to the health of the economy. And even though Congress has blocked these cuts for ten years, the possibility still hangs over the heads of the docs creating an uncertain financial future for them. The current cut is 27.4%.

Our family has witnessed this concern with every doctor who treats us and I was able to actually interview one recently on just where she stands on the issue. I had heard her comments before about how little Medicare paid her for office visits, medical procedures and surgery. Having seen the reports of payments, I agree. But she really unloaded when asked about the current 27.4% cut. She led with “many people think doctors are rich, but most are fighting the same battle as middle-class Americans.”

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What you can do to prevent identity theft in 2012

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If blacks don’t back Occupy Movement will they back Democrats in November?

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POLITICAL ANALYSIS: The Hispanic vote and the 12 swing states

Bruce Springsteen’s latest studio album captures meaning of Occupy Movement

New Hampshire GOP Primary 2012 compared to 2008…Obama’s opposition

Crime down across U.S. but not because of more guns on the street

Obama up with Hispanics, down with youth

More…gun sense and nonsense

ALERT: Senior citizens must support Medicare doctors in pay reductions