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Another Facebook change, another privacy uproar. Read the headlines and you might have thought the social network was planning to open the books on private cellphone numbers and home addresses to any advertiser willing to slip them some cash, rather than adding some more sharing options along with the usual granular control over who gets to see what of your digital details. Unsurprisingly Facebook froze its plans pending a reassessment of its privacy controls; unfortunately, nobody is taking Facebook users – and the online community in general – to task over taking some responsibility for what they share.

If you haven’t been following the story, here’s the situation in a nutshell. Facebook announced on Friday that it was planning to add address and mobile number to the personal information that could be shared with applications, websites and advertisers. As with other personal details, the degree to which that data was accessible would be managed under each user’s permissions settings: everything from a come-and-get-me open pipe to a complete block on anything being revealed. Facebook billed it as a way to “easily share your address and mobile phone with a shopping site to streamline the checkout process, or sign up for up-to-the-minute alerts on special deals directly to your mobile phone.”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m under no illusion that Facebook is doing this for altruistic reasons. Making online purchases quicker is undoubtedly handy to those who actually click through Facebook adverts, but for the social network itself it’s all about making money from its most valuable asset: its millions of registered users. Just like with a free newspaper, Facebook makes its money by showing you adverts, and it can use your personal information to tailor those ads more appropriately. Access to personal contact details, meanwhile, is even more valuable.

However, just because there’s profit to be made for Facebook, it doesn’t mean this is either bad for the user or a sign of Evil Big Business taking advantage of the general public. We manage the degrees to which we disclose personal information all the time, long before Facebook arrived and gave us a simple privacy settings page to work with. Every time you avoid giving your phone number to a door-to-door charity worker, tick the no-junk-mail box on a bank form or refuse to give your address to someone you just met at a bar, you’re exercising your own, personal privacy filter.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. After all, it only takes a quick glance at sites like Lamebook (often NSFW) to see that many Facebook users have problems with over-sharing, accidentally making public posts out of what were meant to be private messages, and generally forgetting who out of their friends and family can read what they’re saying. Maybe Facebook does have some intrinsic responsibility to shepherd its members through the difficult journey that is online life; perhaps the privacy pages really won’t be complete until there’s color coding, pop-up warnings and a virtual cash register showing just how much you’ve lined Mark Zuckerberg’s pocket.

This constant push-me-pull-me with Facebook does users no favours. Every time the privacy patrol scream, and Facebook backtracks, it reinforces the idea that the site itself is solely responsible – should be responsible – for making safe use of the information we share online. Don’t get me wrong, if Facebook was looking to sneak in a “we can sell your identify” clause into the T&Cs, that’s something worth shouting about. When, though, we muster the same amount of vitriol for sharing options that already have safeguards – safeguards that satisfactorily protect our email address and other details – it looks more like abdication of responsibility. We want to trust Facebook do “do the right thing” – based on our own interpretation of what “the right thing” is, exactly – so that we won’t have to. We can spend our time looking up old crushes, posting photos of ourselves looking fierce in clubs, and commenting on videos of cats.

Privacy is important, but the responsibility begins at the individual level. Just as you don’t hand out your address to strangers in the street, maybe giving it to every website that asks isn’t all that sensible either. Relying on other people, or companies, to protect us universally is a naivety we abandon before adulthood in the real world, yet something many seem determined to cling to online. That’s before you get to the thorny issue of lost or stolen data. In the end, it’s your life, your number, your face: it’s up to you whether it’s an open book.

Let me repost this.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/09/3310523/anatomy-of-browns-budget-plan.html

Anatomy of Brown's budget plan

The budget Jerry Brown will propose Monday includes deep program cuts, a June election to extend tax increases and a broad reordering of state and local government to close a deficit estimated at $25 billion to $28 billion, according to sources familiar with the plan. Here are some of the elements:

PROGRAM CUTS

Brown's proposed cuts would be felt throughout state government.

• Education: Provide K-12 schools with Proposition 98 minimum guaranteed funding. If June tax extensions fail, the guarantee would be suspended to allow deeper cuts.

• Higher education: Make deep cuts to both UC and CSU systems, in ways targeted to minimize fee hikes and enrollment reductions.

• State employees: Reduce spending in the six bargaining units that have not reached contract agreements, with savings similar to the 8 percent to 10 percent to which other units agreed.

• State organization: Consolidate some state departments and agencies.

• Governor's Office: Reduce budget by 25 percent ($7 million), including elimination of education secretary, Cabinet secretaries and first lady's staff.

• Parks: Shut state parks with lowest attendance.

• Libraries: Cut state funding for local libraries.

• Medi-Cal: Require patients to provide co-payments for services, limit doctor visits and reduce rates paid to health providers.

• Healthy Families: Increase participant premiums and co-pays, eliminate vision care.

• Welfare: Cut grants, impose stricter time limits on recipients getting grants, eliminate child care for 11- and 12-year-olds.

• SSI-SSP: Cut grants to the federal minimum for low-income elderly, blind and disabled individuals in the program.

• In-home care: Reduce the number of hours In-Home Supportive Services workers could care for elderly and disabled residents, cut domestic services like cleaning and laundry in cases in which caregivers live in the same home as recipients, typically family members.

• Developmental services: Make deep cuts to the system of 21 regional centers that oversee care for the developmentally disabled.

• Mental health: Use voter-approved Proposition 63 money to replace general fund money now spent on mental health.

• Children's programs: Ask voters to amend Proposition 10 to allow the state to use tobacco tax money now reserved for use by "First 5" commissions.

• Foster care: Eliminate transitional housing aid for 18- and 19-year-olds.

• Cal Fire: Reduce staffing on wildfires.

• Courts: Deep unallocated reduction to trial courts.

• Fairs: Cut all state funding for county fairs.

• AIDS: Require higher co-payments for AIDS drugs.

REVENUE

Brown will propose a variety of measures to increase revenue, in some cases directing the money to local governments.

• Taxes: Ask voters in June to extend 2009 increases to sales, vehicle and income taxes, raising $8 billion to $10 billion over 18 months. If approved by voters, the revenue from extensions of the vehicle and sales taxes would flow to local governments to help finance government realignment.

• Dependents: Indefinitely extend the $99-per-dependent tax credit. The credit was lowered from $309 per dependent in 2008.

• Enterprise zones: Eliminate business tax relief in depressed areas that have been designated as enterprise zones, saving the general fund hundreds of millions of dollars.

• Redevelopment: Eliminate hundreds of local redevelopment agencies, eventually redirecting property tax revenue they receive to cities, counties and schools.

• Borrowing: Continue borrowing from special funds and take a portion of Indian gambling revenue to general fund.

• Corporations: Require all multistate businesses to calculate their tax liability solely on their sales in California. Businesses could no longer use an old formula that accounted for property and payroll size.

• Transportation: Use truck weight fees for debt service on state transportation bonds, circumventing Proposition 22's restrictions on taking local transportation dollars.

REALIGNMENT

Brown will propose several plans to shift programs to local governments.

• Juveniles: Eliminate the state Division of Juvenile Justice, instead sending money to local governments to house juvenile offenders.

• Adult prisoners: Low-level, nonviolent, non-sex offenders without serious prior convictions would be housed in county jails. Money would be sent to local governments to increase jail capacity and bolster rehabilitation programs.

• Mandates: Reduce the number of services local governments are required to provide and perhaps give them greater latitude to raise revenue to pay for them.

And this

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/01/california-budget-bal...

California Budget Balancer Interactive Map from LA Times Misses the Mark

I just took the interactive LA Times California Budget Balancer exercise.

I vehemently protest.

This was a blatant effort to force people into accepting a need to raise taxes. To balance the budget I made every possible program cut offered. It was not enough. To balance the budget I had to raise sin taxes and gas taxes.

There are worse solutions of course, like hiking income taxes or corporate income taxes.

Exercise Misses the Mark

Where was a proposal to privatize the prison system using non-union labor?

Where was the proposal to eliminate prevailing wage laws?

Where was the proposal to eliminate defined benefit plans for all government workers?

Where was the proposal to virtually privatize every conceivable government job to the private sector?

What about programs that could be eliminated entirely?

California Agencies

Look at this disgusting list of California Agencies.

I sorted out some but not all of the more ridiculous ones.

Does the state need a ....

Acupuncture Department

Office of AIDs

Air Research Board

3 different agencies for alcohol and beverages

2 Apprenticeship Councils

Art Council

Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus

Bureau of Automotive repair

Barbering board

Biodiversity council

Calvet Loan program

Climate Change Portal

Coastal Commission

Cool California

4 Delta agencies

Digital Library

Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair

Employment Training Panel

Energy Commission

Equalization Board

2 Fair Employment agencies

Film Commission

Flex Your Power

Healthy Family Program

Hearing Aid Dispensers Bureau

Home Furnishings Bureau

Humanities Council

Independent Living Council

Indoor Air Quality Program

Economic Development Bank

Interagency Ecological Program

Labor and Workforce Development

Latino Legislative Caucus

Learn California

Little Hoover Commission

Maritime Academy

Managed Risk Board

Museum for History

MyCali Youth Portal

Native Heritage Association

Natural Community Planning Program

Naturopathic Medicine Community

Outreach

Peace Officer Standards Board

Postsecondary Education Commission

Prison Industry Authority

Privacy Protection Office

Psychology Board

Railroad Museum

Recovery Task Force

Refugee Branch

Regents of the U of C

Save Our Water commission

Smart Growth Caucus

Status of Women Commission

Take Charge California

We Connect

Wetlands Information System

Workforce Investment Board

California does not need ANY of those. Moreover I assure you I missed dozens more that could be cut back if not eliminated entirely. What the heck do those cost? And how much can be saved by my suggestions above.

I propose the LA Times re-do their preposterous exercise meant to convey the idea that taxes have to be raised. They don't. In fact, I bet they could be lowered.

Here is the LA Times Discussion Thread on California Budget Balancer

For more ideas on how to Fight California Tax Hikes please visit the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

And this

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chowchilla-20110107,0,4007963.story

San Joaquin Valley's Chowchilla defaults on a bond

And finally this

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/07/in-black-america-the-depression...

In Black America, The Depression Rolls On...

A deeper dive past the headline numbers reveals a reality that ought to trigger national alarm but hasn't for the simple reason that it is already embedded in the country we have unfortunately become: the Divided States of America.

Among white people, the unemployment rate dropped in December to 8.5 percent -- hardly acceptable, but manageable were the government spending more to expand a fraying social safety net and generate jobs. For black Americans, the unemployment rate was 15.8 percent.

Professional economists will not pause for an instant at those figures. It is a truism that the black unemployment rate generally runs double the white one, and yet when did that become acceptable? How can there be so little discussion about a full-blown epidemic of joblessness in the African-American community, as if the commonplace incidence of despair -- and, more recently, reversed progress -- somehow amounts to old news?

"Can you imagine any other group at that level of unemployment and the media dismissing it as not important?" the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked during an interview this week.

He described deteriorating inner-city, predominantly-black communities in Chicago and Detroit. In New York, a recent study found that more than one-third of African-American men aged 16 to 24 were unemployed between early 2009 and the middle of last year.

"These are the same areas that were targeted for foreclosure by the banks, through reverse redlining," Jackson said, referring to the way subprime lending operations preyed with particular dispatch on minority communities. "These are the same areas that have less access to transportation, which makes it nearly impossible to get to where the jobs are. You are structurally locked out of economic participation and growth." blockquote .mid_article_ad_label { border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); }Advertisement

The picture becomes more vivid still using a broader Labor Department measure known as underemployment, which counts jobless people along with those who are working part-time for lack of full-time work, or who have given up looking for work but are eager for jobs. Among African-Americans, the underemployment rate was running just under 25 percent late last year, according to an analysis of government data by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. That compared to a rate of about 15 percent for white Americans.

( I know someone is going to bitch about linking instead of posting the whole fucking thing. So I saved you the trouble, now just comment on the fucking trends you see in the stories.)

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Monday, January 24, 2011

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