Tag: Premium

Kelsey Atherton unpacks an unsettling new proposal that would make it easier for the FBI to gain access to your online communications:

In 2006, the FCC expanded the [Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act] to include Internet access providers, but there’s a tricky caveat: court orders under existing law only instruct internet communications providers to offer technical assistance to law enforcement. That gives the tech companies some leeway if they’re uncomfortable handing over information; they can just say they were unable to make the technology work the way the FBI wants.

Under the new proposal, that wiggle room disappears. FBI officials can notify a company (with a wiretap order, say) that they need the tech to be surveillance-ready in 30 days. If not? Fines, starting at $25,000/day that the capability isn’t there.

Susan Landau explains why the idea of a “wiretap” needs updating:

This view of wiretapping is mired in the 1960s, when each phone was on a wire from the phone company’s central office, and a wiretap consisted of a pair of alligator clips and a headset.

In the 1990s, cellphones and advanced services eliminated the wire and made it harder to tap. … Now we have a new world with myriad services: Facebook, gmail, Skype, Republic Wireless, each one with a different architecture, some centralized (and thus with information “in the clear” at the provider), some peer-to-peer, some a mix. None of these are traditional carriers, so [the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act] doesn’t apply.

But the real issue, which the FBI does not seem to recognize, is that the providers of the infrastructure, the wire—or wireless signal, are different from the providers of the service. What this means is that sometimes the infrastructure provider has the content, sometimes the communications provider has the content, and sometimes no one does but the sender and receiver (which is actually the most secure way to communicate).

Not everyone is saying “not in my backyard”:

On Tuesday, voters in Youngstown, Ohio, gave the fracking industry carte blanche to continue pumping chemicals into the ground beneath them and pumping natural gas out. A city charter amendment that would have outlawed hydraulic fracturing in the city was rejected by voters, with the unofficial final vote tally showing 3,821 votes against and 2,880 in favor. The ballot measure would also have banned new pipelines in the city and prevented oil-field waste from being transported through the city.

Philip Bump notices that these battles are increasingly happening in municipalities rather than at the state or federal level:

Dryden sits in the Finger Lakes region of New York, just east of Cayuga Lake. It’s a region that’s dependent on tourists who come for the beautiful foliage in the fall and pristine water in the summer. Which is why opinions on fracking in the region have been split — the threat of pollution in the lakes hard to offset with the promise of jobs. Less so Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown, a city hit hard by the collapse of the steel industry, has hard a hard time regaining its footing.

Adam Briggle encourages more local control over the allocation of fracking permits:

The view from local places is far more accurate: fracking is like Frankenstein’s monster, an unholy creature out of sync with the order of things. The local perspective is the more human one. It is from this angle that the most important questions come into focus: what can happen in my neighbourhood and what will it do to my children, my lungs, and my water? That’s the stuff of local government and that’s why its power should trump state and federal laws.

But this is not about saying “no” to fracking as much as it is about simply having a say. It is only at the local scale of political activity that we can genuinely exercise “public freedom,” the capacity to take part in the decisions that directly affect our lives. If a well is planned near your home or your child’s school, you ought to be involved in that decision, and local government is the only political institution that will be responsive. Take it from those in unincorporated areas living near wells governed only by the bare bones rules of state agencies concerned primarily with getting the minerals out of the ground. If you don’t live in an area with police and zoning powers, you are treated not as a person in a place but as a node on a network.

Reihan wonders:

[I]magine 2016 in the unlikely but not completely impossible event that a budget surplus does materialize [in 2015]. Republican elevation of the deficit issue will allow the Obama administration and its Democratic allies to declare “mission accomplished,” all without taking the blame for entitlement reform. The House-passed budget that promised a balanced budget within the ten-year budget window by making unrealistically deep cuts in Medicaid and domestic discretionary spending will continue to be hung around the necks of congressional Republicans. One hopes that one or several of the GOP presidential candidates will devise a more compelling economic message and reform agenda. But this will have to be done in a near-vacuum, as conservative lawmakers have been emphasizing deficit reduction above almost everything else.

Justin Green encourages the GOP to restructure its agenda “no matter what the fiscal outlook looks like over the next three years:

The Republican coalition is shrinking because its solutions are less and less pertinent to the needs of actual voters. While it can be comforting to retreat to tried and true during midterm elections that favor conservative purists, the long-term demographic numbers are not great for committed conservatives.

That’s why it’s so important that Republicans look to 21st century ideas such as helping alleviate the woes of student debt, making it easier for young people to form healthy and stable families, and looking to different ways to ease peoples’ tax burdens and ensure they too will be able to count on a secure retirement.

Ryan Cooper rates 15 “reformish” writers on the political right. From his intro:

The average conservative reformist output consists of about three articles bashing liberal statism for every one questioning Republican dogma. To retain an audience among Republicans, one must be “considerate of the contours of conservative opinion,” Ponnuru told me. By being careful in what they say, a number of these writers have built audiences among party elites, and increasingly so since November, according to interviews with Republican House and Senate staffers. “They’re addressing ideas in policy spaces where there may be gaps,” says Neil Bradley, an aide to Eric Cantor. “Ramesh is widely regarded as a smart and insightful thinker,” agrees a Senate Republican aide. The reformists are read in Marco Rubio’s office; Paul Ryan’s office is a fan of [Yuval] Levin.

It is easy, however, to exaggerate their influence. “There is a cultural gulf,” says John Feehery, a former staffer for Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert, between the reformist writer-intellectuals, with their New York/Washington sensibilities, and Republican officeholders, with their base of voters in Texas, Kansas, and Georgia. The reformists “are speaking the language of policy,” notes Feehery, while the base “is speaking the language of hating Obama.”

Jacob Heilbrunn singles out one of the Dish’s biggest go-tos:

Larison is in some ways the most unpredictable member of this gallery of conservative authors. He is aptly described: “An acerbic critic of American interventionism in both parties, Larison has few fans among the GOP’s neoconservative wing. However, his brand of paleoconservatism is on the upswing among the more libertarian-minded Republicans, most recently on display during Rand Paul’s famous filibuster.” Cooper may go somewhat astray in suggesting that with “Obama’s relative hawkishness,” Larison’s views could gain greater traction in the GOP. Actually, unless I am misreading him, Larison has at times been complimentary of what he views as Obama’s realist proclivities. So the gulf may not between the paleocons and Obamaites may not be all that great—unless, of course, Obama buckles and intervenes in Syria.

Frum goes against the grain by backing the Heritage study. He reminds its critics on the left and right that the report was not investigating the economic benefits of immigration but the “fiscal cost”:

Fiscal measures, by contrast, look at the effects – not on the economy as a whole – but on the revenues and expenditures of government. And it’s been a notorious fact for years that immigration’s modest economic benefits are offset by very large fiscal costs. … Unless you posit that the newly legalized immigrants will dramatically outperform the existing immigrant population, you will reach a result very like that of the Heritage Foundation: that the taxes paid by the newly legalized will not begin to equal the costs of their Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other benefits. …

Let me put this in boldface: Heritage’s cost estimates are driven not primarily by welfare, but by healthcare.

Every newly legalized immigrant, no matter how ambitious and hard-working, will get old. When he or she gets old, he or she will qualify for Medicare. Medicare is very, very expensive, and getting more expensive all the time. Fewer and fewer Americans – whatever their ethnic origin – pay enough in taxes to cover their predicted future health care costs. Inevitably, Medicare is becoming a more redistributionist program. People on the left get this point when they scoff at the imputed Tea Party slogan, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Why do they forget the point when they speak of immigration?

It’s one theory at least:

The physical world of hoarders, [Psychology professor Randy] Frost has observed, is much more expansive than what the rest of us perceive, and is often free of the rules that we are wont to impose. Even more intriguing, Frost told me that some of the neurological hallmarks of hoarding might indicate a giftedness in the aesthetic appreciation of the physical world, rather than pure illness. One of his patients had a pile that built up in the middle of her dorm room over the course of a week; she started perceiving shapes, colors, and textures, and it became a work of art—something with aesthetic value. “She couldn’t dismantle it, because that would destroy it,” Frost said.

Kevin Spacey and Steny Hoyer recently discussed the question:

“One of the phrases that I hate the most is when people say ‘well, that’s politics,’” Hoyer said, “and your show is a lot about, ‘well, that’s politics.’” People already have an unfairly negative view of politics, Hoyer explained, and “House of Cards” plays into a nihilistic and venal portrait of politics that goes farther than reality.

Spacey acknowledged the point, but chalked it up to the medium, noting that Hollywood makes plenty of movies about the film business than are grimmer than Hollywood really is. That’s drama. And despite Underwood’s tremendous faults, Spacey said he’s found that people appreciate the conniving fictional politician, “because he gets shit done.” The Washington in “House of Cards” may be more morally bankrupt and soulless in the way it does things than the one that exists in reality, but at least it does things — that’s appealing when nothing’s happening in real Washington, he noted. Those are the kinds of roles that appeal to Spacey, he said, noting that he loved “Lincoln” because it grappled with “Lincoln the politician,” as opposed to the saintly figure we usually think.

Well, technically 2 am:

[Gregory Hicks] testified that, from on the ground in Libya where he had been among the last people to speak to Ambassador Stevens before he was killed, he spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directly by phone at 2 a.m. Benghazi time. He briefed her on the terrorist attack — it was never regarded as anything but a terrorist attack — and on the then-ongoing search for Ambassador Stevens, who was feared to be at a hospital controlled by terrorists (to whom Hicks referred, in his testimony, as “the enemy”).

It’s pretty clear to me that by now this is all about wounding Clinton for 2016, when she would be a formidable opponent for the GOP, which lacks anyone close to her stature or popularity, except for Christie, who is now being purged. But it seems to me the kind of wound designed to rile up Hillary-haters in the base rather than moderates in the middle. And make no mistake: Fox’s new-found love for Hillary was all about stopping Obama. Ailes will turn on a dime and demonize her as effectively as the campaign against her in the 1990s. Mike Crowley sizes up the stakes for Clinton:

Whether or not Republicans intended it, the shadow of national politics loomed over Wednesday’s hearing. Hillary Clinton completed a generally well-reviewed tenure of Secretary of State, as evidenced by her sky-high public approval ratings. But Benghazi is a clear black mark on her Foggy Bottom record, one that could haunt Clinton if she runs for president in 2016. Conservatives seized on Hicks’s testimony that, in a call with Clinton on the fateful night, he told her that a terrorist attack was underway–a fact that was slow to appear in the administration’s public rhetoric. Still, despite repeated discussion about what Clinton knew and when she knew it, no smoking gun emerged from Wednesday’s hearing, leading one Congressional Democrat to dismiss questions about her role as a “witch hunt.”

But a member of Hillaryland has suddenly entered the spotlight:

[Hicks] charged that Clinton’s key State Department lieutenant and longtime family retainer, Cheryl Mills, made a concerted effort to block him from meeting with a Congressional delegation and that he had never been interviewed by the FBI in connection to the attack. Hicks said that he had been demoted after asking too many questions of his superiors about their response to Benghazi.

Republicans repeatedly raised the fact that Mills, a former deputy White House counsel and Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, personally called Hicks to express that she was upset that he had met with Rep. Jason Chaffetz without a lawyer present. So was the fact that administration lawyers had told Hicks and the Regional Security Officer not to speak with congressional investigators, as well as Hicks’ claim that he briefed Clinton the night of the attack and characterized it as an act of terror. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio referred to Mills’ as Clinton’s “fixer” and “as close as you can get to Secretary Clinton.”

The above video shows an interview with Pat Smith, the mother of one of the four consulate victims. The father of the slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods is also making the rounds:

When I was approached by Hillary Clinton at the coming home ceremony of the bodies at Andrews Air Force base and she said we are going to go out and we are going to prosecute that person who made the video, I knew that she wasn’t telling the truth, and I think the whole world knows that now.

Steve Brill’s piece on healthcare costs in America is getting results:

Acting on the suggestion of her top data crunchers at the department’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Sebelius will release a data file that shows the list — or “chargemaster” — prices by all hospitals across the U.S. for the 100 most common inpatient treatment services in 2011. It then compares those prices with what Medicare actually paid hospitals for the same treatments — which was typically a fraction of the chargemaster prices. CMS public-affairs director Brian Cook told me that Sebelius’ action today comes in part in response to TIME’s special report on health-care-pricing practices in the March 4 issue, “Bitter Pill.”

Brill’s advice on the next steps the administration should take:

The feds need to publish chargemaster and Medicare pricing for the most frequent outpatient procedures and diagnostic tests at clinics — two huge profit venues in the medical world. This will be harder — the government doesn’t collect that data as comprehensively — but those outpatient centers and clinics provide a huge portion of American medical care.

But an even bigger step in transparency would be collecting data that Medicare doesn’t have: exactly what insurance companies pay to the various hospitals, testing clinics and other providers for various treatments and services. After all, as the hospitals themselves concede in downplaying their chargemasters, these insurance prices are the ones that affect most patients. But it’s also where there is close to zero transparency.

Previous Dish on Brill’s piece here, here and here. His recent Ask Anything series here.

A reader writes:

I am a leader in the Jewish community who regularly influences the thinking of American Jews. I consider myself a loving critic of the state of Israel in the sense that I have been there enough to understand its imperfections and am committed enough to have credibility amongst people Israel takes seriously. I see it as my responsibility to regularly speak out when I think Israeli government policy undermines its long term strategic interests and moral standing. I think settlement expansion is a fool’s errand.

And Stephen Hawking’s boycott is making my job immeasurably harder. The people I most need to listen to my loving criticism become hardened by what they see as a global double standard when it comes to Israel and a convenient self righteousness expressed towards the only democracy in the Middle East that would even register such protests.

Yes, the Netanyahu policies have been corrosive to the vision of a Jewish and democratic state. And yes, the historically earned instinct among Jews not to trust the world is emboldened by overtures like Hawking’s. Please Andrew, stop supporting the grandstanding and start partnering with the people most likely to move the needle. Boycotts, divestment and sanctions make it too easy for Israel supporters to point the finger at Palestinian acts of terror and not the internal changes that the Israeli government must make.

I take my reader’s points, but I see no way to end and reverse the settlements if we stay on our current track. Imploring Israel to reverse the de facto annxation under Netanyahu is like spitting into a hurricane. If I saw any sign that the American Jewish establishment or the US Congress or the Christianist right were prepared to put a scintilla of pressure on Israel to reverse the settlements, I’d “start partnering with the people most likely to move the needle.” But the people most capable of moving the needle refuse to, and have been actively complicit in Israel’s democratic death-wish, and actively McCarthyite in their smearing of those who resist. At some point, you either look away or look for alternative strategies.

Another upset reader points to this item:

“Hawking’s decision to join the boycott of Israel is quite hypocritical for an individual who prides himself on his whole intellectual accomplishment. His whole computer-based communications system [he needs because of his motor-neuron disease] runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat HaDin.

A chip is a chip, for goodness’ sake. There’s no hypocrisy there, unless your mindset is irretrievably tribal. Another dissent:

I generally agree with your criticisms of the Netanyahu government, and your justified disdain for the hardening of Israel towards the Palestinians and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. But “David has become Goliath”?

Not when Israel is surrounded by extremely well-funded, well-armed and well-populated Arab and Muslim states that still deny its existence, actively talk about wiping it off of the face of the earth, either have or are developing nuclear capability, who encourage the use of violence as the exclusive means to solve the current problems, and who also indulge in some of the most offensive racial stereotyping derogatory to Jews in the primary school education of their children. Israel’s enemies were equally opposed to pre-1967 Israel and post-1967 Israel, to Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, to Menachim Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, and now to Netanyahu. But we tend to forget or overlook the Arab world’s hatred of pre-1967 Israel because Netanyahu has made it so easy to be critical of post-1967 Israel’s conduct as a state.

I think it would be more appropriate to say that David (i.e., Israel) is a more complex and ambiguous figure than the Bible would have us believe, at times acting in ways we don’t like because of its conviction that it knows more than we do about what it needs to do to survive given the reality on the ground, the reality that it confronts on a daily basis, and the reality that you and I can discuss in the abstract from our safe perch across the Atlantic. And make no mistake about it, while this guy David is a remarkable and worthwhile character, he is at times selfish, inconsiderate, arrogant, narcissistic, impulsive and more than a little dickish, and you just want to hit him upside the head and tell him to straighten out before it’s too late. But he doesn’t chop off peoples arms for stealing, he doesn’t seek the complete and permanent destruction of his neighbors, he lives in fear of Boston Marathon-style terrorist attacks in public places on a daily basis, and he is a democracy, where there is almost even division between those who support the right wing government’s hard line on settlements and border settlements, and those who oppose with the same passion and intensity as you do.

There is no David, and there is no Goliath. That is media oversimplification at its laziest.

(Chart of relative military power in the Middle East compiled by Global Firepower)