“Beyond An Honest Whistleblower”: Edward Snowden’s Relationship With WikiLeaks Should Concern Everyone
Amid calls for the clemency of Edward Snowden, many questions remain about the 30-year-old’s flight from America and asylum in Russia.
One major unresolved issue is the relationship between “the most dangerous leaker in American history” and WikiLeaks, an organization with an admitted antagonism toward the U.S. and a cozy history with the Kremlin.
Given WikiLeaks penchant for facilitating U.S. government leaks, its early involvement in the Snowden saga deserves scrutiny.
After the NSA contractor outed himself in Hong Kong on June 9, he parted ways with the journalists he met there and went underground.
On June 12, the same day he leaked specific details of NSA hacking in China to the South China Morning Post, Snowden contacted WikiLeaks. The organization subsequently paid for his lodgings and sent top advisor Sarah Harrison to help.
Harrison accompanied Snowden as he met with Russian officials (perhaps in the Kremlin consulate), and WikiLeaks bought his ticket to Moscow on June 23.
(Some suspect Russia and/or WikiLeaks contacted Snowden before June 12, but there is no clear evidence of that.)
Snowden and his closest supporters contend that he was on his way to Latin America when the U.S. government stranded him in Moscow, but there are several reasons to doubt that claim.
First, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Janet Reitman of Rolling Stone that he advised Snowden against going to Latin America because “he would be physically safest in Russia.”
Second, the U.S. revoked Snowden’s passport by June 22, and the unsigned Ecuadorian travel document acquired by Assange was void when Snowden landed in Moscow.
WikiLeaks told BI that the Ecuadorian document was meant to help Snowden leave Hong Kong. The organization has not explained why it would send the American to Russia knowing he was carrying a void passport and a bunk travel document.
On July 12, Snowden’s Moscow lawyer Anatoly Kucherena explained that Snowden “is in a situation with no way out. He has no passport and can travel nowhere; he has no visa.”
Third, even if Snowden had proper travel documentation, it’s unclear if Russia’s post-Soviet security services (FSB) would have allowed an NSA-trained hacker who beat the NSA vetting system and stole a bunch of intel to simply “pass through the business lounge, on the way to Cuba.”
On August 1 Kucherena, who is employed by the FSB, explained why Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum: “Edward couldn’t come and buy himself tickets to Havana or any other countries since he had no passport.”
Beyond its role in Snowden’s getaway and its friendliness with Russia, WikiLeaks is also connected to three of the main people with access to the leaked NSA files. This fact does not necessarily tarnish their reporting, but it is intriguing in light of Wikileaks’ deep involvement with Snowden.
Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, two journalists contacted by Snowden and then given tens of thousands of documents by Snowden in Hong Kong, sit on the board of a foundation that launched in December 2012 to crowd-source funding for WikiLeaks.
Jacob Applebaum, a close friend of Poitras and lead author of at least one Der Spiegel story citing the Snowden leaks, is known as “The American WikiLeaks Hacker” and has co-authored others articles drawing from “internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL.”
Applebaum is not a journalist and does not hide his disdain for the NSA. This week he ended a talk — during which he presented never-before-seen NSA documents — by saying: “[If] you work for the NSA, I’d just like to encourage you to leak more documents.”
Assange told the same audience to “join the CIA. Go in there. Go into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out … all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation.”
That is the same man largely credited with saving Snowden from extradition to the U.S. by sending him to Moscow. The 42-year-old Australian has also hosted a Kremlin-funded TV show. And his political party recently met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who is staunchly backed by the Kremlin.
No wonder Greenwald told Rolling Stone that “Julian stepping forward and being the face of the story wasn’t great for Snowden.”
Snowden also hurt his own cause. Although he initiated an important debate, his statements and actions also pushed him beyond honest whistleblower.
All things considered, Snowden’s affiliation with Assange and WikiLeaks raises a legitimate question: Is the fact that his life is now overseen by a Russian security more than an extraordinary coincidence?
Given that we still don’t know how many classified documents Snowden stole or when he gave up access, that question should concern everyone.
By: Michael Kelley, Business Insider, January 4, 2014
“Can A Cure Be Found For Obamacare Brain Meltdown Syndrome?”: Putting The Lie To The Anti-ACA Talking Heads
As we launch into 2014, I must regrettably report that we have yet to develop a vaccine or cure that can assist those who have contracted the insidious Obamacare Brain Meltdown Syndrome (OBMS)–a tragic illness affecting roughly 50 percent of Americans who now lack all ability to review ACA data with any measure of balance and reason.
While we await the critically needed medical advances and discoveries that can bring relief to the afflicted—assuming such a program has not been ground into the dust as a result of sequestration cuts to medical research—we continue in the attempt to bring actual data to the attention of the long-suffering, in the hope that the rumors, half-truths and outright lies can be retired through the presentation of the facts.
One of the more pervasive rumors, half-truths and outright lies making the rounds these days is the meme that more people have lost their insurance as a result of Obamacare than have gained coverage thanks to healthcare reform.
As the story goes, some five million people have had their insurance cancelled because of the ACA while the numbers of those who have gained coverage currently stands somewhere around two million—and we don’t even know how many of those who have enlisted will actually bother to pay the first premium for their newly acquired insurance policy. Based on these numbers the math is simple—the law has hurt three million more than it has helped.
This line of reasoning makes for a terrific story as it is a tale both easy to understand and clear in its result.
The problem is, the story is clearly not true.
A report out this week from the Minority Staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce reveals that 99.8 percent of those who received an insurance cancellation can now either re-up their existing plans for another year, as a result of the changes made in recent weeks, or, alternatively, obtain a catastrophic coverage policy. As a result of these changes, the report finds that about 10,000 Americans —representing 0.2 percent of those who received cancellation notices—will actually find themselves without access to an affordable health insurance alternative.
That said, I recognize that the report was issued by the Democrats on the committee— making the study something less than the best possible authority for those suffering from OBMS. I also recognize that 10,000 people lacking the access they once had to affordable health care insurance are 10,000 people too many.
Accordingly, let’s just pretend that the Minority staff report never happened and that we are still working off the suggestion that five million people really have been left fully exposed as the metric that should be used for comparison.
With that as our comparison point, surely the argument suggesting that Obamacare has hurt more Americans than it has helped can be justified, yes?
Actually, no.
In fact, based on the hard data, we are now able to see that at least 9.4 million Americans have health insurance coverage as a result of Obamacare.
Let’s go to the numbers—
We know that approximately 2.1 million people have purchased a health insurance policy from either a health care exchange operated by the federal government or from one of the 14 state operated exchanges. Indeed, even the harshest ACA critics appear to have accepted this number—although they insist on noting that, somehow, many of these people went to the trouble of buying a policy but will refuse to pay the first premium by January 10th, as required.
While I don’t doubt that there will be a few purchasers who will fall into this category, it would require the most extreme case of Obamacare Brain Meltdown Syndrome to imagine that the number of those who went to the bother of signing up—but won’t pay up—will be statistically significant.
Next, I remind you that, as of November 30, 2013, 3.9 million new participants were enrolled in Medicaid as a result of the program’s expansion. These are 3.9 million who were not previously qualified. As reported by Michael Hiltzik over at the Los Angeles Times and Josh Marshall—using the data that has been compiled by Charles Gaba who has been carefully tracking the Obamacare math (I strongly recommend you review Mr. Gaba’s spreadsheet) since the beginning—the number of Medicaid sign-ups through the end of the year have now risen to a total of 4.3 million.
As you add up these numbers, you quickly arrive at 6.4 million Americans who now have insurance as a direct result of the ACA—a number, while in excess of the 5 million allegedly left without insurance coverage as a result of Obamacare, thereby disproving the meme—does not equal the 9.4 million Americans being served by Obamacare that I suggested earlier.
Clearly, this can only be the math of an Obama loving liberal, yes?
Or might you be missing something? Might that something be the roughly 3 million young Americans who have yet to reach 26 years of age who remain on their parents’ health insurance policy thanks to Obamacare?
Because this provision has been in effect for a few years, those afflicted with OBMS have managed to simply erase this number from their minds as if these young Americans either do not exist or simply do not “count”.
They very much do count as, prior to the ACA, these were precisely the people who were among the least likely to purchase a health insurance policy yet, thanks to the law, now have healthcare insurance. They are also the people who add the badly needed healthy participants to the insurance pools.
Add these people to the mix and you reach 9.4 million Americans with insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
What’s more, the number is probably higher given that that we are not taking into consideration those who are purchasing their individual Obamacare policies off the exchanges by going to their insurance agent or directly to their insurance company. These are the folks who are not qualified for subsidies and, therefore, have no reason to deal directly with the exchange if they choose not to do so.
None of this data, by the way, proves that Obamacare is necessarily working. As I have long noted, success is far more tied to the composition of the insurance pools resulting from the ACA (the ratio of healthy to unhealthy) than it is tied to the raw number of sign-ups. This is data we do not yet have.
What this data does prove is that there are clearly far more Americans benefitting from Obamacare than those who are claimed to be losing coverage as a result of the law. The data also highlights that those with Obamacare Brain Meltdown Syndrome must fight through the fog that has descended upon them and try to face up to the actual numbers as, only then, can we continue a rational conversation about this law.
Until we find that cure for OBMS, we can only hope that those afflicted with this tragic illness will turn to that famous old saw that instructs, “then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, January 4, 2014
“The Scourge Of The Wingnut Hole”: Coverage Totals Would Be Far Greater If Not For “Red” States Refusing Medicaid Expansion
We have a reasonably good sense of how many Americans have enrolled in the health care system in recent months, signing up for coverage made available through the Affordable Care Act. For a more ambitious tally, Josh Marshall includes exchanges, Medicaid, young adults staying on their family plans, and those who were able to bypass exchanges to buy ACA-compliant policies directly from insurance carriers, for a grand total of about 10 million.
But every time these numbers are culled, it’s worth remembering that the coverage totals would be far greater were it not for “red” states refusing to accept Medicaid expansion.
The original plan, you’ll recall, was to simply mandate the greater access. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, said states must have a choice as to whether or not to accept the good deal. Most Republican-led states, naturally, rejected the policy, leaving millions behind for no particular reason.
But how many million? The Associated Press published a report this week with a striking figure.
About 5 million people will be without health care next year that they would have gotten simply if they lived somewhere else in America.
They make up a coverage gap in President Barack Obama’s signature health care law created by the domino effects of last year’s Supreme Court ruling and states’ subsequent policy decisions.
This coverage gap clearly needs a name. Ed Kilgore started calling it the “wingnut hole” months ago, and it’s certainly a descriptive phrase. Ryan Cooper added the other day:
It’s worth remembering that the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of the Medicaid expansion through 2016 and 90 percent of the cost afterward. It could very well work out that refusenik states will not even save money because of additional spending on the uninsured in emergency rooms and elsewhere.
But regardless of the pitiful sums involved, make no mistake: This action is utterly gratuitous.
Quite right. In fact, as we’ve discussed many times, Republicans at the state level who refuse Medicaid expansion generally struggle to explain their position in any kind of coherent way.
What’s more, let’s not forget the irony of the larger context: congressional Republicans spent most of their waking hours complaining about a sliver of the population receiving “cancellation notices” through the Affordable Care Act because of changes to the individual market. Indeed, GOP officials routinely claim this will leave 5 million Americans behind with nothing (a total that appears to have been exaggerated by a factor of 500).
And yet, if their concern were genuine, wouldn’t Republicans necessarily be outraged by these 5 million Americans who are suffering because some red-state policymakers are acting out of petty partisan spite?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 3, 2014
“An Intellectual Hollowness”: Why Republicans Have No Ideas About Mass Unemployment
Last Saturday, the extension of unemployment benefits originally passed at the outset of the economic crisis expired. The position of Democrats in Washington, backed by a growing mountain of economic research, is that macroeconomic and humanitarian considerations alike both argue for an extension of unemployment benefits.
The position of Republicans in Washington is rather strange — less a moral or economic argument than an expression of indifference. “These have been extraordinary extensions, and the Republican position all along has been ‘we need to go back to normal here at some point,'” argues Representative Tom Cole. “[W]hat we did was never intended to be permanent. It was intended to be a very temporary solution to a very temporary crisis,” echoes Representative Rob Woodall. Of course nobody intended for the crisis of mass unemployment to last five years. Nobody intended for the crisis to happen at all. It is simply weird to argue that, since the problem has gone on longer than intended, the response to the problem must end as well. The fire trucks don’t shut off the hoses simply because the fire should have been put out by now.
Yet the weirdness, far from being random, reveals something deeper at work. The most obvious thing, of course, is a general lack of concern for the fate of the unemployed — or, at least, a casual assumption that the unemployed themselves must be to blame for their plight. But even a more generous reading of the Republican position, taking its most serious defenses at face value, reveals an intellectual hollowness. Half a decade into the economic crisis, the Republican Party has no serious ideas about the Great Recession.
One of the few Republicans to directly defend his party’s refusal to extend unemployment benefits is Rand Paul. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, Paul’s ideas about unemployment insurance are cracked. Paul has repeatedly cited studies that show that employers discriminate against job candidates who have been out of work a long time. Paul simply assumes that people are staying unemployed so they can continue collecting unemployment benefits. But the economics paper Paul cites, according to the economist who wrote it, suggests the opposite of his conclusion.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal editorial page gamely defends the Republican stance:
The Administration claims that every $1 of jobless benefits creates $1.80 in economic growth, based on the notorious “multiplier” in Keynesian economic models. This is the theory that you can increase employment by paying more people not to work, and that you can take money out of the private economy by taxes or borrowing without cost.
The argument here is that there’s a “cost” to “taking money out of the economy” to pay for unemployment benefits. What is that cost? Well, in normal conditions, higher deficit spending will cause interest rates to rise. But these are not normal conditions. Interests rates are as low as they can be. The zero bound is the policy dilemma of the moment. The Journal editorial page has been warning for years that rising interest rates are on their way, or already occurring. The utter failure of these predictions has not even slightly dented its jaunty confidence.
It is true that some research has shown that cutting off unemployment benefits can force the unemployed to search more aggressively (or desperately) for work — say, an out-of-work machinist might take a job for lower wages at the 7-11. But those studies all take place in the context of a normal economic cycle, not the mass unemployment we see today. The conditions of mass unemployment from the Great Recession dictate that cutting off benefits from the unemployed simply immiserates them because there are no jobs.
Republicans in North Carolina proactively demonstrated their party’s stance by cutting off benefits to the unemployed before it was tried elsewhere in the nation. The result was dismal: The state’s labor force is shrinking. Rather than getting jobs, the unemployed have simply stopped looking for them, because they don’t exist.
Sharp conservative ideas about the recession can be found on the margins of the political debate. (See, for instance, Michael Strain in the Weekly Standard.) It’s certainly possible to reconcile conservative doctrine about the size of government with specific plans to address mass unemployment. But Republicans in Congress have not bothered to adopt any of these alternative proposals. Nor have conservatives in general displayed much of an interest in the topic of unemployment benefits. There’s an asymmetry of partisan interest on the subject somewhat akin to Benghazi, which obsesses the right and bores the left. Republican thought on mass unemployment is a restaurant with tiny portions that taste terrible.
This is not to say that the GOP lacks any ideas about economic policy. Both parties have fairly well-defined ideas about the general role of taxes, spending, and regulation. The difference is that the Democratic Party also has a policy agenda that is specifically related to the special conditions of high unemployment and low interest rates. The Republicans are still merely asserting that their normal agenda applies just as well now as ever. The unique, dire conditions of the Great Recession shouldn’t be expected to undo all the party’s program, or to alter its general long-term ideas. (Democrats have not, and should not, given up their preference for universal health insurance, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and so on, nor should Republicans have to abandon their preference for the opposite.) What they lack is any legislative response to the economic crisis. They just want to get back to normal, and since normality has not arrived, they’d just as soon pretend it has.
By: Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, December 31, 2013
“Bad News For The Jobless And America”: How Our Economy Lost $400 Million In One Week Alone
Long-term unemployment benefits expired on December 28, meaning an absence of checks this week for more than 1 million jobless Americans. That’s bad news for them, of course—but also the rest of us. According to a new analysis from the minority staff of the House Ways and Means Committee released Friday, $400 million was drained from state economies this week alone thanks to the lapse.
Unemployment benefits are one of the more effective forms of stimulus because the money is badly needed and thus spent right away. The Congressional Budget Office says 200,000 jobs will be lost this year if the benefits are not restored, and this week the damage began.
Big states were obviously the hardest hit, naturally: nearly $65 million came out of the California economy in one week alone, according to the analysis. And of course, states represented by Republicans who oppose the extension each suffered some economic harm. Senator John Cornyn twice blocked a vote on an unemployment insurance extension before the holiday recess, and his home state of Texas lost $21.8 million this week.
Yet Republicans, so far, have not expressed any desire to extend the benefits. “Every week that Republicans fail to act tens of thousands of additional long-term unemployed Americans lose this vital lifeline as they look to get back on their feet after the worst recession in generations, and the economy in each state is taking a hit,” said Representative Sander Levin, the ranking member on Ways and Means.
Senator Harry Reid has promised a vote early next week on a bill by Senators Jack Reed and Dean Heller to extend the benefits for three months, with no offsetting spending cut, so that a longer-term bill can be worked out. But Heller is the only known Senate GOP sponsor to date, and House Speaker John Boehner has said he doesn’t want any bill without a pay-for attached.
If that bill fails, Democrats have a couple options this month: an extension of benefits could perhaps be folded into either the farm bill, which is in conference negotiations, or into the several omnibus spending bills that need to be finalized soon. In those latter two cases, Republicans would no doubt extract some sort of price from Democrats for extended benefits, but perhaps a solution is still possible.
But, again, Republicans seem to have other plans. House majority leader Eric Cantor announced Thursday his plans for the new year: yet another vote to modify Obamacare, this time adding new security requirements to the health insurance exchanges. The White House has said there is no danger of breaches, and some observers, like Steve Benen, think Cantor’s bill is simply a ploy to scare people away from the exchanges.
In any case, while Cantor fiddles around with his messaging bill on Obamacare (which will never be signed into law), his home state of Virginia lost $2.8 million in economic activity this week, as 9,700 people lost benefits. That’s going to be hard to justify as time goes on, both for Cantor and his colleagues.
By: George Zornick, The Nation, January 3, 2014
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