ARTS & FARCES internet

On 15 May, Common Cause of Minnesota filed complaints with the Minnesota Attorney General and the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board alleging the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—a secretive right-wingnut corporate bill mill—is violating lobbying and charitable activities laws.

The complaint to the attorney general alleges that ALEC “operates as a corporate lobby group masquerading as a public charity.”

The complaint to the state’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board alleges ALEC failed to register as a lobbyist in Minnesota. Common Cause provided evidence of email from ALEC to Minnesota legislators “advocating for support of ALEC drafted legislation.”

The action by Common Cause of Minnesota grew out of a national action by Common Cause when it filed a complaint with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The Common Cause complaint requests an investigation into “ALEC’s lobbying activities, the collection of unpaid taxes, and assessment of appropriate penalties” and is based on more than 4,000 pages of ALEC’s documents.

For more than 40 years, ALEC has consistently maintained that it doesn’t lobby; rather it claims it’s an educational group that sponsors public policy meetings between state legislators and corporate representatives. Corporate members pay dues—ranging from US$7,000 to US$25,000—to ALEC annually. State legislators pay annual dues of US$50 and receive “scholarships” to cover their attendance at the ALEC educational meetings that mostly take place at luxury resorts and include their families. The state legislators that attend ALEC’s educational meetings are provided with draft legislation that have included support for the castle doctrine and voter identification initiatives.

ALEC’s attorney, Alan Dye, told Minnesota Public Radio’s Catharine Richert, “the group abides by legal lobbying limits, but that the organization is free to communicate with state lawmakers in ways not covered by those definitions, such as sending out research and analysis.”

After more than 12 years of dialysis, I’ve had numerous fistulagrams and angioplasty procedures on my fistulas. My first fistula—in my left forearm—was consistently problematic and permanently clotted off in late March 2009. I’ve been using my second fistula—in my left upper arm—without incident since mid-June 2009. I had to have my first fistulagram and angioplasty on my second fistula about a month or so ago.

The sad fact is that dialysis centers use high blood flow rates (for years mine was 600 mL/min; now it’s 500 mL/min) in order to treat more patients in a given amount of time. It’s simple economics: The more patients treated, the more money made. Never mind that multiple studies have shown that slower, longer, gentler dialysis—like that provided by home dialysis; it’s known as optimal dialysis—is more effective.

Aside from high blood flow rates in dialysis being linked to cardiovascular problems, the high blood flow rates wear out fistulas faster. Being stuck with 14 gauge needles three times a week doesn’t help much. Even with the buttonhole technique.

Being able to grow fresh blood vessels from human cells for the use in dialysis fistulas has long been a goal of researchers. Cytograft Tissue Engineering is taking a different approach: Instead of growing tissue from human cells, the company is “weaving” vessels from “thread” spun from cultured connective tissue.

The company told Susan Young, writing for MIT’s Technology Review, that tests in dogs indicate the woven tubes don’t leak much and are durable enough to withstand repeated needle sticks.

You would be mistaken—and forgiven—if you thought the US hadn’t outlawed the use of propaganda against its own citizens, Judith Miller’s work on weapons of mass destruction for the New York Times leading up to and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq notwithstanding. The US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Smith-Mundt Act) prohibits the dissemination of propaganda to domestic audiences. It prevents the domestic broadcast of Voice of America, for example.

US Represenatives Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Washington) have proposed an amendment to the current defense authorization bill (.pdf; 37KB) in the US House of Representatives to “fix” Smith-Mundt and legalize the use of US government-generated propaganda on the American citizenry.

Apparently trying to cover all of their bases, Thornberry and Smith have also introduced their pro-propaganda agenda as a standalone bill, H.R. 5736 (.pdf; 139KB), “to amend the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences, and for other purposes.”

In announcing his proposed legislation, Thornberry notes in a media release, “We continue to face a multitude of threats and we need to be able to counter them in a multitude of ways.  Communication is among the most important. This outdated law ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible and transparent way. Congress has a responsibility to fix the situation.”

For his part, Smith put a much finer point on the pair’s agenda. “While the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 was developed to counter communism during the Cold War, it is outdated for the conflicts of today,” says Smith in the media release. “Effective strategic communication and public diplomacy should be front-and-center as we work to roll back al-Qaeda’s and other violent extremists’ influence among disaffected populations. An essential part of our efforts must be a coordinated, comprehensive, adequately resourced plan to counter their radical messages and undermine their recruitment abilities. To do this, Smith-Mundt must be updated to bolster our strategic communications and public diplomacy capacity on all fronts and mediums –- especially online.”

Eduardo Saverin co-founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard. Born in Brazil, his wealthy family emigrated to Miami when it was discovered the 13-year-old was on a list of kidnap targets.

Follow this story arc, because you can’t make this up. Rich immigrant kid flees his homeland, gets into Harvard, and becomes an almost instant billionaire. Maybe it could have happened anywhere, but it’s a peculiarly American story. As Farhad Manjoo, writing for PandoDaily notes:

“At just about every step between his landing in Miami and his becoming a co-founder of Facebook, you find American institutions and inventions playing a significant part in his success.

“Would Eduardo Saverin have been successful anywhere else? Maybe, but not as quickly, and not as spectacularly. It was only thanks to America—thanks to the American government’s direct and indirect investments in science and technology; thanks to the US justice system; the relatively safe and fair investment climate made possible by that justice system; the education system that educated all of Facebook’s workers, and on and on—it was only thanks to all of this that you know anything at all about Eduardo Saverin today.”

Saverin sued Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook ownership—Saverin is thought to have provided Facebook’s initial startup money—and settled for the proverbial undisclosed amount. Not bad for two years’ part-time work.

Now Saverin has renounced his American citizenship. He filed his renunciation in January 2011, the severance became official in September 2011, and was reported by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in April 2012. Saverin insists he’s been “misunderstood,” that he’s “not a tax expert,” and that he’s “complied with all the known laws” according to an interview with Quentin Hardy, writing for the New York Times.

Never mind that his four percent stake in Facebook will likely bring him close to US$4 billion when Facebook goes public. The 30-year-old billionaire says his move to Singapore—a country with a maximum personal income tax of 20 percent and no capital gains tax—has nothing to do with taxes. It’s merely “more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Saverin’s spokesperson told Bloomberg. Presumably the same spokesperson told Quentin Hardy, writing for the New York Times, that the tax issue “never came up” and the Singapore residency “seemed a lot simpler.”

As Hardy quips, “He declined to say exactly what simplifications the impending billionaire would enjoy, other than the financial ones.”

The US-based entertainment cartel is hell-bent on putting the internet genie back in its bottle, regardless of cost and consequences—intentional and unintentional. Its latest weapon of choice to subvert democratic process and openness is something called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It sounds benign, but it’s anything but.

The US participation in the agreement is ostensibly coordinated through the executive office of the president’s Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), but make no mistake, the US trade representative Ron Kirk takes his marching orders from the entertainment cartel.

The TPP is a secret agreement between a handful of countries that includes provisions dealing with intellectual property, specifically online copyright enforcement and infringement anti-circumvention. Unfortunately, no one really knows what all is contained within the TPP’s sections dealing with intellectual property. A 10 February 2011 version of the US intellectual property chapter proposal (.pdf; 283KB) was leaked and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) produced a useful analysis (.pdf; 381KB) of its provisions.

Because the Obama administration has classified the TPP as a treaty, it’s not subject to congressional scrutiny. In fact, the TPP parties have agreed to reveal the final treaty only four years after ratification. In 2009, the Obama administration issued a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request denial (.pdf; 444Kb) to Knowledge Ecology International, declaring the contents of the proposed international treaty a national security secret. The George W. Bush administration similarly rejected an equivalent FOIA request (.pdf; 108Kb) from the EFF.

Last week, a group of legal academics—mostly from the US but some international representatives—sent a letter to Kirk’s USTR office demanding transparency in the TPP negotiations including release of the text and expanded stakeholder participation. The USTR response was shocking in its inability to pass the smell test. Kirk claimed the “USTR has conducted the most, active outreach to all stakeholders relative to the TPP than in any FTA [free trade agreement] previously, including, the proposed disciplines on intellectual property.” Free trade agreements, like TPP, are considered treaties and negotiated privately without congressional oversight. By way of contrast, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations are vastly more transparent.