Case-Shiller, CoreLogic and others report nominal house prices. However it is also useful to look at house prices in real terms (adjusted for inflation), as a price-to-rent ratio, and also price-to-income (not shown here).
Below are three graphs showing nominal prices (as reported), real prices and a price-to-rent ratio. Real prices are back to 1999/2000 levels, and the price-to-rent ratio is also back to 1999/2000 levels.
Nominal House Prices
The first graph shows the quarterly Case-Shiller National Index SA (through Q1 2011), and the monthly Case-Shiller Composite 20 SA (through March) and CoreLogic House Price Indexes (through March) in nominal terms (as reported).
Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.
In nominal terms, the Case-Shiller National index is back to Q3 2002 levels, the Case-Shiller Composite 20 Index (SA) is slightly above the May 2009 lows (and close to June 2003 levels), and the CoreLogic index is back to January 2003.
Note: The not seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller Composite 20 Index (NSA) is back to April 2003 levels.
Real House Prices
The second graph shows the same three indexes in real terms (adjusted for inflation using CPI less Shelter). Note: some people use other inflation measures to adjust for real prices.
In real terms, the National index is back to Q4 1999 levels, the Composite 20 index is back to October 2000, and the CoreLogic index back to November 1999.
A few key points:
• In real terms, all appreciation in the last decade is gone.
• Real prices are still too high, but they are much closer to the eventual bottom than the top in 2005. This isn’t like in 2005 when prices were way out of the normal range. In many areas – with an increasing population and land constraints – there is an upward slope to real prices (see: The upward slope of Real House Prices)
Price-to-Rent
In October 2004, Fed economist John Krainer and researcher Chishen Wei wrote a Fed letter on price to rent ratios: House Prices and Fundamental Value. Kainer and Wei presented a price-to-rent ratio using the OFHEO house price index and the Owners’ Equivalent Rent (OER) from the BLS.
Here is a similar graph using the Case-Shiller Composite 20 and CoreLogic House Price Index (through March).
This graph shows the price to rent ratio (January 1998 = 1.0).
Note: the measure of Owners’ Equivalent Rent (OER) was mostly flat for two years – so the price-to-rent ratio mostly followed changes in nominal house prices. In recent months, OER has been increasing – lowering the price-to-rent ratio.
On a price-to-rent basis, the Composite 20 index is back to October 2000 levels, and the CoreLogic index is back to December 1999.
Just about every day now, a ‘crisis’ unfolds somewhere in the world as if carefully adapted from the pages of Atlas Shrugged.
It’s such a massive aberration and departure from the free market… yet amazingly enough, this elitist system of sociopathic narcissism passes as democracy– “rule of the people.”
The real irony is that the west, which fancies itself the paragon of modern, civilized society, has it the worst. Day in, day out, the developed world gets plundered and violated more by its kleptocratic leaders than any tinpot dictatorship. The stroke of genius is how well they masquerade their thievery.
The US Senate, for instance, introduced a bill late last week to limit the amount that the Defense Department spends… on printing. Never mind multiple front wars, unlawful invasions, and million dollar Tomahawk missiles… they’re focusing on the big picture: print costs.
Meanwhile, NATO forces continue waging war in Libya, now escalating the air campaign with supplemental rotary wing squadrons. When they introduce attack helicopters to the battle space, you can be sure that ground forces are not too far behind.
Needless to say, this all carries tremendous cost to taxpayers. To a normal person, the math is simple… each of us is forced to live within our means, and any deviation outside of that is quickly squashed by the credit market.
In the consequence-free environment of politics, however, costs are magically pushed forward to the distant future, while benefits and goals are muddled amid grandiose, unquantifiable platitudes like “freedom,” “security,” and “prosperity.”
It’s amazing that people demand more accountability from their favorite sports team. Any head coach who notoriously overspends a team’s budget and has no strategy for success other than eloquent speeches about “victory” and “sportsmanship” would quickly be shown the door…
… and yet, a political system in which malignant forces steal resources from the productive, waste the vast majority on folly, and redistribute the breadcrumbs in order to buy votes and maintain the status quo, is hailed as ‘rule of the people.’
Around the world, people are voicing their utter disgust with this system… in some places violently (Egypt, Syria), and in others at the polls (Spain, Finland). In either case, governments are reaching deep into their playbooks to maintain the status quo of kleptocratic elitism, including:
- sending government forces to open fire on their own people
- confiscating public and private pension funds
- banning protests and public demonstrations
- lying about secret bailout meetings
- conjuring villains to justify huge spending programs (like $150,000 body scanners)
- printing trillions of dollars and denying price increases
- fraudulently misstating macroeconomic indicators and sovereign balance sheets
- engaging in military conflict to distract the population at home
- eliminating financial privacy
- allowing police agencies to spy on their own citizens without a warrant
- imposing exchange controls and restricting the free flow of capital
- raising taxes, without warning, overnight
Eddie Sales looks over some of the trimmed crape myrtles on the grounds of Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church. Diedra Laird – dlaird@charlotteobserver.com
Every two to three years, Eddie Sales trims and prunes the crape myrtles at his church, Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church.
But this year, the city of Charlotte cited the church for improperly pruning its trees.
“We always keep our trees trimmed back because you don’t want to worry about them hanging down in the way,” said Sales, a church member.
The church was fined $100 per branch cut for excessive pruning, bringing the violation to $4,000.
“I just couldn’t believe it when I heard about it,” Sales said. “We trim our trees back every three years all over our property, and this is the first time we have been fined.”
The fine will be dropped if the church replaces each of the improperly pruned trees, said Tom Johnson, senior urban forester for city of Charlotte Land Development Division.
“When they are nonrepairable, when they have been pruned beyond repair, we will ask them to be replaced,” Johnson said. “We do that for a number of reasons but mainly because they are going to come back unhealthy and create a dangerous situation down the road.”
Charlotte has had a tree ordinance since 1978, and when trees are incorrectly pruned or topped, people can be subject to fines, Johnson said.
Trees planted as a result of the ordinance are subject to the fines if they are excessively trimmed or pruned. These include trees on commercial property or street trees. They do not include a private residence.
“The purpose of the tree ordinance is to protect trees,” Johnson said. “Charlotte has always been known as the city of trees. When we take down trees, we need to replace these trees.”
Individuals who would like to trim their trees should call the city foresters to receive a free permit to conduct the landscape work.
Foresters will then meet with the person receiving the permit and give instructions on how to properly trim their trees, Johnson said.
The state Division of Forestry recommends that anyone trimming trees should be certified by the National Horticulture Board, but certification is not required to receive a permit.
On private property, fine amounts are based on the size of the tree improperly pruned. For small trees such as cherry trees or crape myrtles, the fine is $75 per tree. Excessive cutting can increase that fine to $100 per branch.
For large trees such as oaks or maples, the fine is $150 per tree.
Because there is a widespread lack of understanding on how to prune crape myrtles in the Charlotte area, Johnson said, residents found in violation regarding these trees are asked to simply replace them, and the fine will be lifted.
Sales said trees found in violation at the church must be cut down and replaced with new trees by October, but the church plans to appeal. Sales doesn’t know how much it would cost to replace the trees.
“We trimmed back these trees in the interest of the church,” Sales said. “If we were in violation, we certainly did not know we were.”
Typically during the course of a year, Johnson said, about six private residents are found in violation of improper topping or pruning.
“We are trying to be pro-active and not trying to fine people excessively,” Johnson said.
Brittany Penland is a freelance writer for the Observer’s University City News. Have a story idea for Brittany? Email her at penland.brittany@gmail.com.
On May 28, 2011 Television host Adam Kokesh and several other activists participating in a flash-mob were arrested at the publicly-funded Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Their crime? Silently dancing, in celebration of the first amendment’s champion; a clear violation of their right to free-expression. In an excessive use of force, video was captured of Adam being body slammed and placed in a choke for his non-crime.
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, “Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping” by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication “To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead” (Source: Duke University’s Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920). While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it’s difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860′s tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.
General John A. Logan
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-B8172- 6403 DLC (b&w film neg.)]
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 – 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.
In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms.Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children’s League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans’ organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their “Buddy” Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans. In 1948 the US Post Office honored Ms Michael for her role in founding the National Poppy movement by issuing a red 3 cent postage stamp with her likeness on it.
Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.
There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50′s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.
To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to ‘Taps.”
The Moment of Remembrance is a step in the right direction to returning the meaning back to the day. What is needed is a full return to the original day of observance. Set aside one day out of the year for the nation to get together to remember, reflect and honor those who have given their all in service to their country.
But what may be needed to return the solemn, and even sacred, spirit back to Memorial Day is for a return to its traditional day of observance. Many feel that when Congress made the day into a three-day weekend in with the National Holiday Act of 1971, it made it all the easier for people to be distracted from the spirit and meaning of the day. As the VFW stated in its 2002 Memorial Day address: “Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”
On January 19, 1999 Senator Inouye introduced bill S 189 to the Senate which proposes to restore the traditional day of observance of Memorial Day back to May 30th instead of “the last Monday in May”. On April 19, 1999 Representative Gibbons introduced the bill to the House (H.R. 1474). The bills were referred the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Government Reform.
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WASHINGTON — Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pledged during his run for office to be a veritable stick in the mud on issues of philosophical concern even if it meant agitating his fellow Congressional Republicans. Now, as the Senate rushes against the clock to pass an extension of the USA Patriot Act, he’s living up to his word.
The Kentucky Republican has objected to an attempt by Senate leadership to consider the national security measure on an expedited basis. His objections are not necessarily driven by ideological opposition to the bill, though he remains an outspoken critic. Instead Paul has dug in his heels because Senate Democrats have refused to consider several amendments that he wants offered, chief among them language that would restrict national security officials from examining gun dealer records in an effort to track potential terrorists.
Paul’s objections mean the Patriot Act will likely expire Thursday night before both the House and Senate can vote on an extension — now likely to come sometime Friday morning. Whether the law’s expiration will disrupt counter-terrorism efforts as drastically as some government officials claim is an open question. But the basis of Paul’s objections and the reaction to them does provide a window into how difficult it has become to manage personalities and get legislation passed in an undramatic fashion in both chambers.
On Tuesday, Senate Democratic leadership seemed willing to at least try to acquiesce to Paul’s demands. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was trying to craft a deal with Republicans to consider six PATRIOT Act amendments — three of them from Paul — on a unanimous consent agreement. Doing so wouldn’t guarantee the passage of those amendments. They would all still face a 60-vote threshold. But it may have persuaded those affected lawmakers to allow the larger bill to be considered without insisting on the two 30-hour windows that come with cloture votes: one to start debate on the bill the other to stop it.
Alas, it didn’t work. Late Tuesday night, Democratic leadership announced that they couldn’t reach an agreement. Reid, taking to the floor on Wednesday, said “unfortunately, in order to continue his political grandstanding, [Paul] rejected that offer.”
A Democratic Senate aide, however, told The Huffington Post that at least one other member said that they would object to the unanimous consent proposal, deeming it too risky to even allow Paul’s gun records proposal to come to a vote.
Gun safety groups had been frantically trying to draw attention to the amendment — which had gone largely under the radar — arguing that it would it would curtail the Department of Justice’s already limited authority to inspect the records of firearms licensees.
Paul’s office did not return a request for comment, but the Senator told the Washington Post that, “They ramrodded me. … We’re going to get no debate and no amendments.”
Paul isn’t the only one aggrieved over the procedural underpinnings of the Patriot Act vote. Democratic Sens. Mark Udall (Colo.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) have also tied their opposition to extension to Senate leadership’s decision to block any amendments from being considered.
“Reid filled the tree,” said a Republican Senate aide, “despite his promise of an open amendment process.”
In the end, their objections won’t likely submarine the vote — just delay it. But it is still a vivid example of the frantic nature of Congress in which pet issues can threaten major bills and individual Senators can stall legislation up to — and even past — its drop-dead deadline.
The Senate is now expected to vote on ending debate on the Patriot Act extension at 1 a.m. Thursday morning. Final passage will likely come on Friday morning — as early as 7 a.m. — after which the House of Representatives will cast a vote on the bill.
“The hope is that by tomorrow, when we are staring down the prospect of the Patriot Act expiring … that [Paul] will relent and not let it expire,” said the Senate Democratic aide.
UPDATE: The AP is reporting that a deal of sorts may have been reached between Reid and Paul that would allow for votes on some amendments in exchange for quicker consideration of the Patriot Act’s extension.
An agreement to hold a test vote early Thursday was the first progress all week toward resolving an impasse between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and tea party favorite Rand Paul, R-Ky., before three provisions of the act expire at midnight Thursday. Just before he closed the Senate on Wednesday night, Reid said there likely would be votes on amendments to the extension.That could go a long way toward meeting Paul’s demand that Reid make good on a promise earlier this year to hold a full debate on proposed changes to the post-9/11 law, which empowers the government to find terrorists on American soil…
It’s not entirely clear whether the gun records amendment will get a vote, though the AP report suggests it will not.
UPDATE II: The Hill reports that the first cloture vote will now take place Thursday at 10 a.m. — another sign that a potential procedural deal has been reached.
Reid said that while the vote is being held at 10 a.m., hours will begin accruing at 1 a.m. toward the 30-hour percolating period required for passage by Senate rules.”In short we don’t have to have a vote at 1 a.m.,” Reid said. “Everyone has been most cooperative to get us past that. Hopefully we will be able to make everyone happy.”
by William Grigg, LRC Blog Between March 2006 and November 2010, Officer Daniel Alvarado of San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District Police was suspended four times. Four times he was informed by supervisors that he faced “immediate termination.” For some reason, when it came time to fire Alvarado, his superiors just couldn’t bring themselves to pull the trigger. Alvarado displayed no similar scruples on November 12, 2010, when he murdered 14-year-old Derek Lopez, who had just taken part in a brief scuffle with another student.
Owing to his own troubled past, Lopez was a student at the Bexar County Juvenile Justice Academy. At around 4:30 PM on the fatal day, Lopez sucker-punched a 13-year-old classmate at a bus stop.
“He just hit me once,” the student later recalled in a sworn deposition. “It wasn’t a fight. It was nothing.”
Unfortunately, Alvarado happened to be prowling the intersection in his patrol car, and witnessed the trivial dust-up.
“Freeze!” Alvarado shouted at Lopez, who bolted from the scene. Alvarado, in his mid-40s, briefly gave token pursuit before relating the first of several self-serving falsehoods.
“I just had one run from me,” wheezed the winded tax-feeder. “I saw an assault in progress. He punched the guy several times.” (Emphasis added.)
A supervisor instructed Alvarado “not [to] do any big search over there” in pursuit of the assailant. “Let’s stay with the victim and see if we can identify [the suspect] that way.”
Rather than doing as he was ordered, Alvarado bundled the “victim” — who was probably more terrified of the armed functionary than of his obnoxious classmate — into the patrol car and went in pursuit of Lopez.
Lopez vaulted a nearby fence and hid in a backyard shed containing Christmas decorations. The homeowner saw the intrusion, and a neighbor flagged down Alvarado’s patrol car. The officer drew his gun “when he came up the driveway,” recalled the homeowner. Within a minute or so, a single gunshot resonated through the neighborhood. When asked by the horrified homeowner what had happened, Alvarado — who reportedly looked “dazed or distant” — replied that Lopez “came at me.”
“The suspect bull rushed his way out of the shed and lunged right at me,” the timorous creature later claimed in an official report. “The suspect was literally inches away from me, and I feared for my own safety.”(Emphasis added.)
Alvarado was lying, of course. An autopsy revealed “no evidence of close range firing [on] the wound,” and no gunpowder stains were found on the victim’s bloody t-shirt.
By this time, the boy who had taken the punch at the bus stop had called his mother via cell phone. She arrived shortly after Alvarado had gunned down Lopez.
Alvarado, who four times was on the cusp of being fired for insubordination, disobeyed a direct order on November 12. He falsified key details of the shooting in his official report. A 14-year-old boy was gunned down execution-style for the venial offense of engaging in an adolescent scuffle, and for compelling an overweight middle-aged badge-polisher to run a few hundred yards. According to the San Antonio Police Department, this is all perfectly acceptable: The department ruled that the murder of Derek Lopez was a “justified” shooting.
Although he’s been removed from patrol duty, Alvarado remains on the force, albeit in a tax-subsidized sinecure. Although he had repeatedly been threatened with termination for sloppiness or defiance in carrying out administrative duties, Alvarado faces neither criminal prosecution nor professional censure for murdering a 14-year-old boy. Apparently, insubordination in carrying out office functions is a much graver matter than insubordination that results in the needless death of an adolescent Mundane.
Despite the fact that this incident involved two teenage boys who attended a special school for troubled juveniles, parents should understand that students in practically any government-run “educational” institution can fall prey to sudden — and potentially lethal — police violence.
“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that increasingly have come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning,” observes investigative reporter Annette Fuentes in her infuriating and valuable new book Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse. Federally subsidized “zero tolerance” policies growing out of the “War on Drugs” have created what Fuentes and other critics of the system call the “school-to-prison pipeline”: “If yesterday’s prank got a slap on the wrist, today those wrists could be slapped with handcuffs.”
As the case of Derek Lopez illustrates, a childish prank could be treated as a capital offense, with summary execution carried out by a corrupt cop who doesn’t have to endure so much as a slap on the wrist.
Thanks to numerous sensors, Smartphones make it easy for their owners to organize certain parts of their lives. However, that is just the beginning. Darmstadt researchers envision entire “smart” cities, where all devices present within municipal areas are intelligently linked to one another.
Computer scientists, electrical and computer engineers, and mathematicians at the TU Darmstadt and the University of Kassel have joined forces and are working on implementing that vision under their “Cocoon” project. The backbone of a “smart” city is a communications network consisting of sensors that receive streams of data, or signals, analyze them, and transmit them onward. Such sensors thus act as both receivers and transmitters, i.e., represent transceivers. The networked communications involved operates wirelessly via radio links, and yields added values to all participants by analyzing the input data involved. For example, the “Smart Home” control system already on the market allows networking all sorts of devices and automatically regulating them to suit demands, thereby allegedly yielding energy savings of as much as fifteen percent.
“Smart Home” might soon be followed by “Smart Hospital,” “Smart Industry,” or “Smart Farm,” and even “smart” systems tailored to suit mobile networks are feasible. Traffic jams may be avoided by, for example, car-to-car or car-to-environment (car-to-X) communications. Health-service systems might also benefit from mobile, sensor communications whenever patients need to be kept supplied with information tailored to suit their healthcare needs while underway. Furthermore, sensors on their bodies could assess the status of their health and automatically transmit calls for emergency medical assistance, whenever necessary.
“Smart” and mobile, thanks to beam forming
The researchers regard the ceaseless travels of sensors on mobile systems and their frequent entries into/exits from instrumented areas as the major hurdle to be overcome in implementing their vision of “smart” cities. Sensor-aided devices will have to deal with that by responding to subtle changes in their environments and flexibly, efficiently, regulating the qualities of received and transmitted signals. Beam forming, a field in which the TU Darmstadt’s Institute for Communications Technology is active, should help out there. On that subject, Prof. Rolf Jakoby of the TU Darmstadt’s Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Dept. remarked that, “Current types of antennae radiate omnidirectionally, like light bulbs. We intend to create conditions, under which antennae will, in the future, behave like spotlights that, once they have located a sought device, will track it, while suppressing interference by stray electromagnetic radiation from other devices that might also be present in the area.”
Such antennae, along with transceivers equipped with them, are thus reconfigurable, i.e., adjustable to suit ambient conditions by means of onboard electronic circuitry or remote controls. Working in collaboration with an industrial partner, Jakoby has already equipped terrestrial digital-television (TDTV) transmitters with reconfigurable amplifiers that allow amplifying transmitted-signal levels by as much as ten percent. He added that, “If all of Germany’s TDTV‑transmitters were equipped with such amplifiers, we could shut down one nuclear power plant.”
Frequency bands are a scarce resource
Reconfigurable devices also make much more efficient use of a scarce resource, frequency bands. Users have thus far been allocated rigorously defined frequency bands, where only fifteen to twenty percent of the capacities of even the more popular ones have been allocated. Beam forming might allow making more efficient use of them. Jakoby noted that, “This is an area that we are still taking a close look at, but we are well along the way toward understanding the system better.” However, only a few uses of beam forming have emerged to date, since currently available systems are too expensive for mass applications.
Small, model networks are targeted
Yet another fundamental problem remains to be solved before “smart” cities may become realities. Sensor communications requires the cooperation of all devices involved, across all communications protocols, such as “Bluetooth,” and across all networks, such as the European Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile-telephone network or wireless local-area networks (WLAN), which cannot be achieved with current devices, communications protocols, and networks. Jakoby explained that, “Converting all devices to a common communications protocol is infeasible, which is why we are seeking a new protocol that would be superimposed upon everything and allow them to communicate via several protocols.” Transmission channels would also have to be capable of handling a massive flood of data, since, as Prof. Abdelhak Zoubir of the TU Darmstadt’s Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Dept., the “Cocoon” project’s coordinator, put it, “A “smart” Darmstadt alone would surely involve a million sensors communicating with one another via satellites, mobile telephones, computers, and all of the other types of devices that we already have available. Furthermore, since a single, mobile sensor is readily capable of generating several hundred Megabytes of data annually, new models for handling the communications of millions of such sensors that will more densely compress data in order to provide for error-free communications will be needed. Several hurdles will thus have to be overcome before “smart” cities become reality. Nevertheless, the scientists working on the “Cocoon” project are convinced that they will be able to simulate a “smart” city incorporating various types of devices employing early versions of small, model networks.
Over the next three years, scientists at the TU Darmstadt will be receiving a total of 4.5 million Euros from the State of Hesse’s Offensive for Developing Scientific-Economic Excellence for their researches in conjunction with their “Cocoon — Cooperative Sensor Communications” project.
BOGOTA, Colombia – Forget bulk cash. It’s not the most convenient cross-border conveyance for a 21st-century money launderer.
A safer and increasingly attractive alternative for today’s criminal is electronic cash loaded on stored-value or prepaid cards. Getting them doesn’t require a bank account, and many types can be used anonymously.
U.S. crime fighters consider the cards a burgeoning threat that regulators haven’t adequately addressed.
In the past year, said John Tobon, a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the cards have become the preferred means of paying couriers who transport illicit drugs across the U.S.
No one knows how big a role the cards play in moving more than $20 billion in drug earnings that U.S. authorities estimate crosses from the U.S. to Mexico annually. While anyone crossing that border with $10,000 or more in cash must declare it, prepaid cards are legally exempt.
“These prepaid cards are offering them (criminals) a great alternative to sneak into our financial system,” Tobon said.
It was bank and wire-transfer records that enabled law enforcement to identify the 9/11 hijackers and their overseas cells. “Had the 9/11 terrorists used prepaid (stored-value) cards to cover their expenses, none of these financial footprints would have been available,” a U.S. Treasury Department report observed.
The cards are barely distinguishable from credit or debit cards and the most versatile let users reload them remotely without having to reveal their identity. Some cards can process tens of thousands of dollars a month.
“I’m not so sure we have a sophisticated understanding of how to deal with this,” said Richard Stana, who oversaw a report on prepaid access for the General Accounting Office, the U.S. Congress’ research arm.
Prepaid cards also are changing the way law-abiding citizens, businesses and governments handle money. Walmart uses them to distribute payrolls, U.S. government agencies to deliver benefits and migrant workers to send money home.
In the U.S. alone, an estimated $107 billion moved on branded prepaid cards last year, according to Aite Group, a financial-research firm. Globally, the Boston Consulting Group forecasts, transactions with reloadable prepaid cards will reach $840 billion a year by 2017.
An October report by the 34-nation Financial Action Task Force cites just a half dozen laundering cases involving prepaid cards in their short history – each involving from $200,000 to $5 million and most in the U.S.
The Treasury wants businesses selling cards that can be used internationally to keep customer identity records and report suspicious transactions. That would affect more than 43,000 U.S. sellers. The prepaid-card industry objects, saying that would hike administrative expenses, with the costs passed on to consumers.
I must be getting old. I remember “full service” gas stations. Actually, I worked at one in high school. When I car passed over the rubber hose across the driveway and the bell rang, I’d come running out to “filler’up, regular or unleaded,” wash the windshield and check the oil. Those days are gone — now it’s all “self service,” pump the gas yourself after shoveling money through the slot in the bulletproof window.
Progressives and other naifs once dreamed of the “full service” state: Cradle-to-grave health benefits, guaranteed job security and a complimentary mint on your pillow from Uncle Sugar. What we got instead, and what we’re always going to get, is the “self service” state: You help yourself if you can, while the state helps itself to anything and everything it wants.
The purpose of the state is to serve the state. To protect the state. To perpetuate the state. To grow the state’s power.
I’m not arguing the metaphysics of identity or the epistemology of individualism versus collectivism here. It’s simply an observable fact that the state, regardless of the putative reasons underlying its formation, acts like an organism in and of itself, with its own interests and its own survival imperative.
That’s why Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid get together behind closed doors, unvexed by trivialities like public debate, to ram an extension of the USA PATRIOT Act through the US Senate. It’s certainly not something they did for their constituents. It benefits only the state.
It’s why Congress is giving President Barack Obama a pass on his illegal war in Libya, entered into without congressional declaration. That war has now continued past even the unconstitutional “War Powers Resolution” deadline without the requisite congressional approval — but hey, he sent a polite note informing Congress he doesn’t give a damn about the law and appreciates their support in violating it. And they’ll blink — beacuse once the state has acted, its actions must always be supported and never, ever questioned.
It’s why it never seems to have crossed Obama’s mind that the “legitimate” job of White House staff might not involve actively propagandizing America on the Inherent Goodness of Dear Leader. Whatever justification we’re offered for creating the position of “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response,” the position’s purpose is to … gently assist … the serfs in learning to love their master.
“To secure these rights …?” If you’re still buying that one, let’s talk real estate. I’ve got some for you. Oceanfront. In Arizona. Priced to sell.
“To serve and protect?” Yeah, right. Ask Jose Guerena about that one. Wait, you can’t. He’s dead. After diligent service to the state himself, he fell inadvertently ran afoul of one of his own employer’s death squads earlier this month.
The state serves only itself — and demands that you serve it too. Like any parasite, it will happily kill its host to further engorge itself. Your only possible escape from that fate is to pry its teeth out of your skin, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it, hard.
Between March 2006 and November 2010, 
