Category: news

Stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and realize the long game moments

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My stomach fell out when the decision on Thursday rolled down.  I was a staunch believer that any variation of the individual mandate was a legal faux pa and had to be struck down.  Then I read the Roberts decision and was illuminated to an entirely new way of operating in the government.  I was seeing, for the first time, not a decision based on party politics or personal interest.  No, I saw a straight out of myth ruling based on pure constitutional reasoning. Okay, there may have been some political wranglings in there, and I am thrilled that other pundits and writers like Michael Medved and Paul Begala were quick to point out the true victory for Republicans in the bill.

At the root of the Roberts decisions, aside from defining the mandate as a tax and throwing the life of the bill back into the hands of Congress which may very well fall into Republican hands in November, there was this little gem:

2. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the
Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.
(a) The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. This Court’s precedent reflects this understanding: As expansive as this Court’s cases construing the scope of the commerce power have been, they uniformly describe the power as reaching “activity.” E.g., United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560. The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by
purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. (link)

Roberts effectively stopped the government from mandating that a lack of participation in a specific filed of commerce amounted to having a direct impact on interstate commerce.  In writing the decision this way he took the congressional, and largely Democratic, insistence to tell Americans what to do with their money, even when they are not spending it, and locked it away in that nasty little box known as ‘unconstitutional’.

Labeling the mandate as a tax was something the President was specific about avoiding during the creation and vote on the bill.  Even after it was enacted they President and Democratic members of congress were adamant that it was not a tax, but when they went to the line the only legal way to argue it, and to save any resemblance of the mandate, was to label it just that. However, in doing so it lost that shiny aspect of a social program that could be administered by an Executive Branch organization, and was put back in the hands of Congress.

Lastly, there is the matter of the tax itself.  I’ve seen the posts on social websites and heard my conservative friends gnash their teeth and scream to the heavens about how individual liberty is dead, how freedom is no longer found in the United States, and I chuckle.  The issue will be revised. CNN pointed out, not 30 minutes after the decision was made, that the tax can only be challenged, by law, after it has gone into effect.  That means in January of 2014, the first year the penalties, excuse me, Taxes are in place, there will be another lawsuit, another challenge, and another Supreme Court decision,

Chief Justice Roberts looked to the future on this decision, and he ruled, not as a conservative or a liberal, but as any judge should.  He put the balls back in their respective courts, taking the power to create taxes away from the executive and giving it back to the legislative, and told the nation that the President would not be playing with that ball anymore.  At least, not in that capacity.

UPDATE: A site I frequently visit (www.neveryetmelted.com) has a fantastic article on this and links to several other articles.  I’d strongly recommend bookmarking it if you get a chance.

Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?

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I thought the quote from the Avengers was appropriate here.

Two sides in Wisconsin, genuinely believing they are working for the greater good but coming from wildly different directions, engaged in a full scale brouhaha to make their point known.  I’m still not certain as to who would wear the tights, but I call dibs on the Iron Man suit.

Fashion jokes aside, the fight was largely pointless, and  the essence of american voters, played by Captain America in this little production, stopped the fight between two petulant powerhouses.  In the end vox populi spoke loud and clear, and Gov. Walker remains in place for two more years, but has lost his majority in the State Senate.

The day-after recovery is over, the analysis is done, and we found out that 38% of voters who supported Walker came from homes that have at least one member in a union.  We found out that while roughly $75 million was spent on this campaign, walker trudging up $30 million of that on his own through Super PAC donors, the real story remains that the turnout, percentage-wise, was almost identical to the election two years prior, even with a higher voter turnout.

I’m tired of the Citizens United decision being touted as the evil grandaddy and reason everyone is winning.  I call BS.  You can throw millions at a campaign and if the message sucks, or the candidate is less than stellar, looking at you Gingrich and Santorum, you will accomplish next to nothing except transferring wealth from donors to local businesses.

The issue with the Walker recall was that he did exactly what he said he was going to do.  The politically connected unions and loyal opposition were taken aback when an elected official decides to follow through on campaign promises.  Were those promises heavy handed?  Some can argue as much, but these are desperate times, and the voters selected desperate measures, and thus they were delivered after much bally who and childish shenanigans by the State Senators unhappy with the legislation.

So, in response to a governor who did what he swore he would do, despite some of the blatantly childish political behavior I have seen in my life, and the result was a nationally supported recall.  I don’t mean that the entire nation supported the recall, but that interests well outside the borders of Wisconsin became involved.  It was no longer about just about a losing side’s dissatisfaction with being thrown out of office and then having to suffer the political fallout that comes from failing to represent the people rather than representing the interests that fill the campaign coffers.

Sanity reigns in the Old Dominion but it isn’t stopping the show

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On Friday a highly anticipated decision regarding the appearance of Primary candidates who couldn’t muster enough support to be placed on the Virginia ballot came down, and it was an absolute delight.   The Hon. John A Gibney Jr. echoed what many had said over the weeks leading up to this (copy of the decision provided care of Politico): “In essence, they played the game, lost and then complained that the rules were unfair.”

I saw former Speaker of the House New Gingrich as being the sole individual who might even have a modicum of a chance in the challenge, with the disparate rules regarding those who get over 10,000 signatures and those who get over 15,000 signatures.  So, when he didn’t file the suit, and it was Rick “I barely pulled off half of what was required” Perry, it was doomed to fail.  When Santorum and Huntsman jumped on board, it was an obvious grab, like those who aren’t directly affected by a particular event, but jump onto a civil lawsuit pocket some ill-gotten reward, the theatre of the situation only worsened. The most galling of notes, aside from the Huntsman/Santorm scam attempt, was that Gingrich did not file  notice of intent to run for office in Virginia until 22 December 2011.  For those unaware, signature collection began on 1 July 2011.

The argument that if the candidates had access to the horde of out-of-state petition gatherers (of the paid variety I imagine) that they would have easily trumped the 10,000 signature requirement is dubious at best.  Judge Gibney pointed out in his decision that there are over five million registered voters in Virginia, and close to two million participated in the last statewide election.  Cut down the middle that means that there were one million active voters that should have been available to had their doors knocked and said yes or no.  If all candidates had hit those doors, and assuming a one in ten chance of success, that still leaves roughly 100,000 voter signatures, more than enough for all of the candidates combined, and room for a few more.  Another point of disclosure, a registered voter can sign for more than one candidate.

I will give a local example to ply exactly how poorly these men failed: Ben Loyola, a local businessman, ran for State Senate last year.  During his campaign he is said to have knocked on over 50,000 doors personally.  After the campaign events were done for the night, barring it wasn’t too late, he along with his campaign manager and body man would head out to a section of the district he was running for and started on a block, and away he would go.  Sometimes only 20 houses in a night, sometimes north of 100.  Either way, he was on the ground personally.  Come election day Mr. Loyola, sadly, did not win, but pulled in over 10,000 votes.  Those in the game have said the door to actual vote ration is somewhere in the 10:1 range.  If a local businessman can walk from the Hampton Roads area to the border of Maryland looking for support on what would be even less than a shoe-string budget compared to a national campaign, then all of these individuals running for President could have gotten the word out, or, at the least, made a damn appearance in the state.  A Gingrich event at a park, cordinated with one of the Tea Party organizations would have brought hundred, mayhaps a few thousand.

What happened in earnest, is that the candidate didn’t put their foot forward, and in the case of Santorum and Huntsman, they flatly didn’t give a damn (Santorum did gather signatures, but since he never filed a notice to run in the state of Virginia, the signatures were turned away).  Those in Virginia now roaring to the Heavens about the intolerable nature of it all, and the vile laws that govern the way it goes have forgotten that their signature and their options on the ballot are driven not only by their keen interest in a candidate, but in the candidate’s campaign to do the bare minimum.  Santorum is a perfect example with the  thousands spent in Virginia to gather the roughly 8,000 signatures, then to have them turned away because he didn’t fill out the needed paperwork.  He, himself, and his campaign managers, national and Virginia, are bearers of  blame there.

Virginia is not some evil society of string-pulling puppeteers winnowing the field of choices down to the guy they kinda-don’t-like and the one that is getting run over because he sounds crazy saying in public what we’ve been chatting about over kitchen tables for the last twenty years.  The law is in place, followed for decades, and performed as intended.  Should someone fail to follow the letter of the law, there is a punishment that goes along with that.  Those who cannot even follow that simple dictum have no place running for the highest office in the land.  If they can’t figure out one state’s requirements for a simple primary petition, how can we have any faith that they will be able to grasp the issue then  provide educated insight and leadership on topics far, far more complex?

Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…

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We’ve now seen the full Circus.  The major players have performed their acts.  The clowns are in their car puttering off the floor, the rings are thoroughly beaten down with the prints of every elephant contending for the spotlight, and the audience is just as confused and disoriented than they were upon entering the tent.  Tragic, is it not, how easily the pageantry and absurdity of the circus reflects the ebb and tide of the pre-primary seasons for the Republican party.

What we saw was a rise of individual stars who would burn out as quickly as they blazed into the spotlight leaving behind only hollow bodies in the vast expanse of the political space.  Like those burned out stars, they leave husks that either disappear with time, or continue to flicker on, acting more as an irritant or pouring out continuous drivel and noxious commentary that provides nothing more to the current political discourse than a nauseating reminder that at one point a significant number of people believed them capable of winning an election for President.

No, this thirteen ring circus has done nothing for our party, and it surely has done no good for the political process.  A fellow follower of politics stated that he believed this was a maturing of the party’s political savvy.  A method by which the body politic separated the wheat from the chaff and would winnow our candidates down to those most deserving.  I wanted to agree with him, but I had the feeling that this was too “celebrity” with the likes of Palin and Trump toting about the ever ambiguous hash of a campaign not yet announced.

I, along with a goodly number of people, look back and realize that it wasn’t about winnowing the wheat from the chaff.  The process was not about locating the best candidate, nor was it about finding the best Republican to run.  There was an ebb and flow to the entire affair.  Someone came in, shined brighter because the harsh spotlight was on someone else, and they, by lack of close scrutiny, became the best candidate for the job by proxy.  The light would shift, the audience would become enthralled with the new champion of the right, and so the cycle began anew.  It was faddish in the most derogatory form of the word.  The herd ran where the press led with signs highlighting word choice and bold, but ultimately mindless, plans.  Catchphrases replaced worldly experience, education on policy trumped by showmanship, and knee-jerk responses became the headlines rather than the cultured response of, not those who happened to read the paper from the day before, but from those who had done this sort of thing before.

The most sickening part of the show comes from two sad players in the run of any show.  There is a director, an individual who through instruction and cultivation of his actors has created the spectacle before you.  In this sad and sallow case we happen to have two on hand.  The litany of Tea Parties and the surprisingly quiet Republican National Committee.

The Tea Party has rushed to the center of the ring as a barker possessed of a need to upstage the existing ringmaster.  It has become a monumentally disastrous initiative that has done little more than chisel away at a what little firmament there was in the base of the party.  All the while the RNC, the chosen ringmaster of this show for nigh on decades now sits somberly by, not wishing to interfere or to interject itself into state level politics, having been burned or spurned by those groups in the last round of elections.  The rally cry and subsequent victories of the tea party in the public eye shocked the RNC into a sort of fugue state that now threatens to undermine the organization as a whole.

We have one ringmaster who has a faint idea of what they are doing and another who appears to be asleep at the wheel, and one wonders why the field has yet to be winnowed down.  I understand that are arguments to the effect that the voters must decide who is the most viable candidate, and to those arguments I will concur wholeheartedly, but that only applies if the voters are willing to decide.  The day of the primaries is not the time to hop into a booth and play enie-menie-minie-mo with the candidate pictures on the touch screen.  If they have been weighed and measured then the truest test comes when asking if they are found wanting.  Only when the audience decides to boo one of the shows off the stage will the ringmasters even begin to pay attention.  Then, and maybe then we will see some serious discussions.  The time for debate is, sadly, over, and now we are to march out of the tent and to the polls to decide which elephant danced the best in the center ring.  To wait for one of the performers to be shamed off stage out of their own self-interest rather than because the audience finds them unfit is a horrifying indications of how desperate the voter base is to hang on to an idol no matter how temporary.

Should we ever reach the conclusion that none of the candidates could put on a noteworthy performance and were being held up by gross expectations of the biggest player in this entire farce we are well and truly lost because “a good try” will guarantee a failure in 2012.

It is something we have been saying all along, and, apparently, so has the President

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The decision handed down yesterday in Florida upped the ante in the high-stakes poker game of national healthcare legislation.  For those curious, or those who haven’t read the news since Saturday, you can find the Reuters story here.  My moment of impish glee came when I saw that the Presiding Judge nailed the mandate to the ground and drove a stake through its heart (something, you should note, you won’t find in the Reuters story).  He then went on to validate his approach by quoting  possibly the most damning of experts on the matter, the President himself, if ever so briefly.

Speaking in 2008, the President said, on the subject of healthcare mandates, “if a mandate was the solution, we can try to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a home”.  Short, yes.  Simple, yes.  Erred in quoting…eh, not even close.  Back in the hay days of 2008, when the wet behind the ears Senator from Illinois was aiming to take on the, then, most powerful family of Democrats at the time (i.e. the Clintons) a major separation point between the to-be President and the to-be Secretary of State was that Clinton’s healthcare proposal included the now infamous mandate.  The lack of a mandate in one of the heaviest points of contention would open Obama to the moderates, along with several other middle-of-the-road stances, and eventually win him both the Democratic ticket and the Presidency.

So, now, here we sit, nearly a year has gone by, as of Saturday 722 waivers have been handed out to companies and it appears that the SEIU is getting more than their fair share when compared against the rest of the businesses out there.  The Medicare program’s head actuary is saying that the ‘savings’ from the healthcare bill are unsustainable and may, in the long run, cost taxpayers upwards of $311 billion over the next eight years.

Mind you, this is still a battle over health care.  Democrats are still firing on all cylinders saying we will be able to take care of everyone while the 535 members of congress can’t balance a budget, Republicans lay down useless legislation that will never pass, but is a token gesture to their ‘hardcore’ constituents so they can come back in 2-6 years and say, while shrugging their shoulders, “we tried”.  We have a congressman who spent 16 years in the House of representatives and the last ten in the Senate but can’t remember that the three branches of the government are the executive, legislative, and judicial rather than just a motley crew of folks getting together to hammer out legislation.  Least we forget, that we are barreling northwards of $14 trillion dollars and borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar spent, and the apparent champion of the cause to battle this titanic financial monstrosity is a congresswoman who has the gall to call herself tea party, but tags a big “R” next to her name come campaign season and around big donors.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are only a few of the “issues” we have to deal with, and, tragically, all those propogating those “issues” are running the show.

A villain by any other name…

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There is a frank and honest story on the Huffington Post by Will Bunch over the Austin IRS v. Joe Stack in a small plane.  I read the manifesto that Stack left, and his situation sounded rough.  What dulls the edges of his plight are the house he burned down and the aggressive nature by which he pursued his agenda.  What he, and many that champion his actions, fail to realize is that the occupants of the Echelon Building in Austin were not the fiends twisting the supposed thumb-screws that hammered away at his financial well-being, legislation that he attempted to counteract while part of an anti-tax group in California was.  Stack gave up the high road by descending from rational discourse, and found an irrationally violent solution.  That is not Maverick-y, it is not patriotic, it is not what defines a hero.

Those who have been championing Stacks attack in Austin call him a first shot in the revolution, a hero.  So, now heroes attack civilian that work for the government, unaware, unarmed, and unable to defend themselves.  His anger boiled over and he used this incident of violence to encourage a change in the way things are.  He wanted to alter the discourse through violence.  I would suggest to those who call Stack a champion of the every man to think long and hard on the implications of those actions.

He wasn’t a revolutionary mind and he was not a repressed citizen.  By every account and a reading of his manifesto, his failure lay not in the hands of the government and despicable agencies, but in his pursuit of the American Dream.  He couldn’t stomach the known pangs of climbing up the financial ladder, and so attacked what he thought was a giant, faceless aggressor.  He was a megalomaniac that thought he was special.  He didn’t follow the tax codes and rules he did not agree with, he did not qualify for tax break X so he became angry at the system and those that the break applied to.  His manifesto reads like the works of a frothing-at-the-mouth madman who feels that being mildly successful isn’t enough for his chops, and that the entities that be are repressing him and only him.  In short, he felt singled out and aggravated.

There are a lot of very aggravated people in this country at the moment.  With lost jobs to the tune of six million plus, a national underemployment/unemployment rate around 16 percent, and home foreclosures at their highest rate in years Stack wasn’t alone.  Stack chose to burn his home, which he owned at the time, to the ground.  Last I checked, arson invalidates an insurance policy, meaning he left his family with only an ashy plot of land that used to be a home, torched memories, and no way to replace their belongings.

A gun was never held to Stacks head.  He was given a choice.  He could negotiate, he could deal, he could have filed his taxes and worked with another accountant, he could have declared bankruptcy and started from scratch like the thousands of Americans that do so every year.  He made his decision to take the road less traveled, and didn’t give anyone a warning.  Guy Fawkes at least bothered to warn half of Parliament before attempting to blow ti up, whereas Stacks couldn’t even give that single courtesy to all the innocent lives he put at risk.  If he had made a call or bomb threat to clear out the building before slamming into it, he would have given his final middle finger to the IRS a Robin Hood-esque aura, rather than an undertone of murder.  He would have pinned a noted to the chest of the IRS symbolizing the collective anger many share with what they feel are unjust or restrictive policies.  Instead, blood stains his hands and his agenda.  There was no warning, there was no concern for human life.  There was premeditation, there was planning, there was intent, there was hideous symbolism in a plane slamming into a building in the United States of America.  He is, by the letter of the law, a murderer.

Ron Paul is a terrifying, horrible, evil man…until we need him, even then he’s still terrifying

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It was rather surreal to find out that after the solid ribbing that Rep. Paul (R-TX) received in the last Presidential election from the likes of the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups that his clout with them would have dropped into the abyss of political obscurity.  Somehow, logic apparently got it very, very wrong:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/20/conservatives.meeting/index.html?section=cnn_latest

If someone had asked in 2008 if Paul would have been the forerunner for the Republican party’s return to power, most of us would have scoffed at the notion that a representative with such radical views (albeit somewhat appealing) on economics, spending, and general reduction in the size of the federal government would even be considered.  Especially after The drumming the Republican party took in 2008, the odd duck out, who placed consistently in the top three candidates during the primaries, is now the forerunner for those tired, those mildly poor, and those with enough time on their hands to go out and protest government spending.  To be fair to those Tea Party members, I concur with them on issues like a reduction in government spending, in looking at the policies that led to a surplus in the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s.  I would love to see the government file legislation that is in tune with the Constitution and have serious debates about the quality rather than quantity of legislative documents that roll out of the halls of congress.  On those subjects we agree, and I’d be fine with Rep. Paul in those regards.

However, Rep. Paul is a staunch isolationist, and, to be frank, in this day and age, that won’t fly.  Hell, it hasn’t flown since 1945.  The United States, for better or worse, is the current superpower of the world.  Political Scientists accept this notion, and it is the basis for an understanding of how the gears spin in international circles.  One of the definitions of a superpower is that in events that occur half way around the world, we are directly or, most of the time, indirectly impacted by those results.  It is the price that comes with our prolific and immense economic and political base.  Isolationism will do jack-all for us.  He has called for leaving both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to better protect state sovereignty in a day and age where state sovereignty is a paper tiger hiding monstrosities like genocide in Sudan.  Do we need to give up our rights to acquiesce to an international body, no.  Will either of these organizations ever ask us to give up something that we hold dear to our Republic, hell no.  The United States pays for 22 percent of the UN’s annual budget, ringing in at $458.3 million in 2008.  I, like many others and quite a few fans of Rep. Paul, am not a tremendous fan of the UN.  The process is lumbering, slow, painfully convoluted, and rife with the potential for corruption.  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I was talking about the House or Representatives or Senate at length, but I digress.  In their massive approach, and nearly universal representation, they gain a legitimacy that is, largely, unquestionable.  Laws that passed by the US government are not ignored out of pure spite or conjecture, and if they are, there are penalties.  The same goes for the UN.  Follow their rules, or sanctions will fall.

We jest of strongly worded letters from Ban Ki-Moon to Sudan, Iran, or Myanmar, but in all due honesty, the men and women of the UN are doing what they can with what they have.  Same goes for NATO.  Isolationism doesn’t work because of the interconnected nature of the world today.  Without some sort of standardized international community in which to address issues, the big will continuously screw over the small, the violent will oppress those who have fewer firearms, and the world would be, generally, a giant mess…moreso than it is now.

It is noted that the international issue is not the only place where Rep. Paul and I differ, however, it is painfully obvious that my Libertarian beliefs will be challenged at great lengths should he continue to gain popularity amongst the Tea Party goers.

In closing, it is particularly odd to me that the Libertarians, and by proxy the constitutionalists and median Republicans, were for the longest time shoved aside. The message is similar, there are hooks that keep us from joining the party en mass.  They’re not doing any better at bringing us in.  Rather, the ‘big tent’ philosophy that ‘failed’ the Republican Party in 2008 was a sham at best.  You were in the big tent if you agreed with the big tent.  Right now, the big tent includes populist ideas amongst those who think Obama isn’t an American citizen, those who think he is Islamic and trying to torpedo this nation, and those who vow that obstructionism and a grinding halt to any legislative progress is considered advancement, not of the people of this nation, but of a political agenda.  It is not a party of ideas, of new notions, or suggestions and creativity, but of chalk-white, stark terror.  Fear seems key, and for a short time, fear works.  Men and women can only be afraid for so long, then, when the other contemptible shoe never falls, the fear abates, the anger boils out, and you are left with a political body that, instead of having a legislative history to stand on, has a thin layer of ideas held up by a bilious gas.  Ladies and gentlemen of the right.  Welcome to the first political bubble of the 21st century.  I can’t wait to see this one burst.

An extended hiatus and forthcoming apologies followed by vitriol


It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.
John Viscount Morley, of Blackburn

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So, I’ve been gone for a bit.  School, as it turns out, is a little more arduous than expected this semester.  Planning is now coming together, and I should have my acts in order now.  Apologies to those who have read what little I’ve written and found interest.  My intention was never to leave you wanting, or to wander off into the dark expanses of the internet to never be seen again.  In a shorter phrase, “shit happened”.  Now,  on to more pressing/interesting matters.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/189844/did_a_school_use_webcams_to_spy_on_students_at_home.html

So, the remote desktop feature, something available on pretty much every Mac computer and, in several unique cases, was used to locate missing or stolen hardware, was apparently used to observe a student in his home.  The laptops are school issued, but, according to ever report I’ve seen on the matter, there is nothing in the contract the parents and students sign regarding off-campus observation.

So, now we have a young man who was approached by an Assistant Principal on a matter in which he was apparently doing something she did not approve of.  This would venture two questions:1) how long were they observing him doing whatever it is they are displeased with, and 2) were they informed that he was doing something illicit or did they just magically turn the webcam on to find him in a compromising position or role?

The second is statistically improbable, and the first implies a hideous revelation about how long those who have been abusing this technology have been at the game.  I believe the parents concerns are warranted regarding the possibility of students being observed in compromising positions or possibly, as one article put it, in “states of undress”.  Now the FBI is investigating and there are records of 42 remote access actions to recover 28 missing laptops.  The number of unrecorded webcam activations could be in the low hundreds.

To be frank, a question needs must raised about the intellectual capacity of the Principal and Superintendent on the matter.  As the invasive capacity of technology grows, the inclusion of technology into the educational environment must come at the pace of educating those who will be responsible for said technology.  The remote desktop feature could have been modified to exclude the webcam, as well as not relying on the webcam at all.  Rather, utilization the webcam as an anti-theft and item recover device work on the principles that the laptop is online, and that the offending individual hasn’t left it in a bag or similar carrying case.

No, software like Lo-Jack, designed specifically for the purpose of locating stolen equipment, was not used to my knowledge.  Furthermore, Lo-Jack only sends out communication signals daily unless the school reports the item stolen, then every 15 minute updates are issued until the laptop is recovered.  The use of the webcam as a device by which they ‘locate’ goods is a half-ass excuse at best since most stolen laptops, I imagine, are going to be closed off, and possibly active.  Lo-Jack will tell you where a laptop is if it is connected to the internet.  A webcam on a shut laptop will give you a black screen that tells you jack all about your position.

The simple fact that they managed to recover 28 of 42 reported missing laptops speaks to the level of responsibility and due diligence of a student to not forget their laptop at home rather than to track a thief.

Lastly, while the school feels it is necessary to ‘track down’ thieves that might try to lift their property, it is not their job to hunt down thieves and brigands.  A computer goes missing, a report to the police is generated, and then, and only then, is the webcam activated to locate the equipment.  Anyone operating outside the realms of their job as an information technician or as an administrator of an educational facility should be sacked on the spot.  Leave the law enforcement to those who wear the badges.