Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama. This is a defining moment in US history for many reasons, but it is also good to see that the people have spoken decisively and we will not have a repeat of the election challenges of the recent past.
I have been impressed with this campaign in that the issue of race has not been a major factor. In less than 50 years we have gone from de-facto segregation being the norm (in parts of the country) to an African-American president. Living in a city that experienced racially-motivated riots in the last decade I have a renewed hope that we can put the pain of racial discrimination behind us. So, congratulations to the people for moving on.
I still have concerns about the President-Elect’s policies but I think he was the better choice of the two candidates with a serious chance. He’s got his shot, let’s hope he lives up to the promise.
Just voted (OH), only a 45 minute wait for me. My polling location is divided into two lines however (based on first letter of street name) and the other line was over 2 hours long. This other line is always a lot longer… Bad for them, good for me I guess.
Only saw one major issue while I was there. A voter with an ID that had an old address was told he had to cast provisional ballot which is not exactly correct. If you are in the book you can cast normal ballot, it’s only if they have no record of you that you have to cast provisional. The information provided to the pollworkers is incorrect. It has been mentioned on the local news already. Incidentally it was cleared up on the spot because the voter in question was a trained poll observer and required the clerk to call the Board of Elections.
Now it’s a waiting game…Â If you haven’t made it to the polls, get moving!
A friend of mine has repeatedly criticized me for being dead-set against voting for McCain/Palin. I don’t like either presidential candidate but I am extremely worried about what would happen in another 4 years of Republican control.
The current administration has made quite a sport of shredding the Constitution. My friend wants me to believe it wouldn’t be the same under McCain/Palin, but check out this post by the excellent author Glenn Greenwald. If Palin doesn’t even understand one of the most well-known ammendments, what hope could there be for a return to an administration that respects the foundations of our government?
Sarah Palin Speaks… [Salon.com]
I highly recommend Glenn’s book How Would a Patriot Act?
Although I haven’t yet had a chance to read them, his other books should be interesting as well: Great American Hypocrites
and A Tragic Legacy.
All non-compete employment agreements are now void in California. I think that’s great, we can only hope that it spreads.
I have always felt that non-compete agreements were a bad idea. They don’t really work that well and it’s just another way for corporations to meddle in the lives of their employees. If they are so worried about investments they make in you such as training or certifications, then they should do what a former employer of mine did and specify that you have to repay those costs on a pro-rated basis if you leave (until a certain point.) This should be the only protection for the employer against losing you to someone else. Anything else is just trying to interfere with an individual’s right to make the best choices for their life.
Of course the companies always want as much control as they can get. If they can make it difficult (I don’t think most states allow a complete prohibition on working in your field) for you to leave, then they can treat you however they feel like. Of course in some areas, like where I live, they can also designate you as an “at-will” employee where either party can terminate the employment for any reason. So the catch-22 is you can leave, whenever you want, but you can’t work at a competitor which in some fields can make things quite tricky.
I am also lucky in that non-competes in my state are very hard to enforce although they are still legal. (But it cannot be an undue burden and prevent you from working in your field, just for direct competition.) Still, the threat has to be considered if only for the legal costs of defending yourself if your old employer feels like being difficult.
Bottom line… There will always be employee turnover and it’s just a cost of doing business. If you don’t want to lose people, treat them well and compensate them fairly. It could be worse for the companies, in Western Europe a lot of reductions in staff require government/labor group approval and it’s darn near impossible to fire someone. I’d say that sounds great, but that way lies socialism.
State Supreme Court Rejects Non-compete Clauses [sfgate.com]
I have been watching this issue for a while but this Washington Post article does a good job of summarizing it. All your stuff: laptops, cell phones, papers, etc. can be seized at the border with no suspicion of wrongdoing for as long as they feel like keeping them.
Remind me again, which country is the “land of the free”? Even the courts are an epic failure so far on this one.
Travelers’ Laptops May Be Detained At Border (Washington Post)
Although I have heard similar assessments before, a new study shows that the UK surveillance society isn’t protecting against crime. With more than 10,000 CCTV cameras in London, crime in general has not improved.
At the very least, it shows that the stated goal isn’t working. In the more cynical view, it was never supposed to. The government has successfully convinced the people that they need a nanny state in order to further their own goals. Sounds familiar here in the US.
You know the most ironic thing about the Patriot Act? The name. A true patriot respects the government’s critical checks and balances. It seems that the judiciary is slowly waking up to just how perverted the W clan’s view of the world is.
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said the government orders must be subject to meaningful judicial review and that the recently rewritten Patriot Act “offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers.”
Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot ActÂ
The Layer 8 blog over at Network World has a post indicating that the Department of Defense is closing down the TALON database in less than a month. TALON was widely criticized by privacy advocates and Congress alike for tracking ordinary citizens.
Setting aside my cynicism for a moment, this is a nice bit of news. Now the cynical person (looking at myself in the mirror) would assume this data won’t be destroyed but just go underground to a program we don’t know about yet. Nothing the Bush administration has done would dissuade me from this interpretation but since I am feeling slightly generous today, props to the DoD.
A post over at Consumerist reports on a small victory for consumers. The 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals has ruled the mandatory arbitration clause in Cingular/ATT’s contract in “unconscionable” under California law.
While the scope of this is limited, it is a crack in the armor of the mega corporations that attempt to strip consumers of any rights they still have.  Virtually every service contract you see these days includes this arbitration crap. Score one for the little guys.
Susan Landau of Sun Microsystems has an excellent post up at the Washington Post. The idiots in Congress caved in last week and gave even more latitude in surveillance of communications to the NSA. Applying for secret warrants which are almost never denied and can be filed up to 72 hours after surveillance begins is just too much due process for them to deal with.
Even setting aside the civil liberties issues (which is a huge deal on it’s own), this is just stupid. We just heard about what this kind of surveillance built in to the phone networks can result in with the Greek wiretapping scandal (see Bruce Schneier’s blog.) Regardless of how you feel about the “intelligence” community having this ability, reducing national security by adding what will most certainly be insecure back doors in the process is just asinine.
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