Tag: ek Politics

Reid Announces Opposition to ‘Fast Track’ on Trade

By Siobhan Hughes, Wall Street Journal

January 29, 2014, 2:47 p.m. ET

“I’m against fast track,” Mr. Reid told reporters one day after President Barack Obama renewed his call for Congress to pass fast-track legislation, which means Congress must consider trade bills on an expedited basis in an up-or-down vote with no amendments. “I think everyone would be well-advised just not to push this right now.”

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Fast-track authority is seen as crucial to cementing the trade deals because of the reassurance it would provide negotiating partners in the final, politically-sensitive rounds of talks. Other nations are typically reluctant to make trading concessions unless the U.S. can offer assurances trading pacts won’t be amended or rejected by Congress at the last minute.

“You can kiss any new trade deals goodbye,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas.) “I think the majority leader’s focus is on the November elections and he doesn’t want to expose his vulnerable members to controversial votes.”

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On Wednesday Mr. Reid made clear that he has expressed the depth of his opposition plainly, including to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.), who recently unveiled the fast-track bill, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), who is presumed to become chairman of the committee when Mr. Baucus steps down to serve as U.S. ambassador to China.

“Everyone knows how I feel about this-Senator Baucus knows; Senator Wyden knows; the White House knows,” Mr. Reid said, declining to say whether he would stop fast-track legislation from coming up for a Senate floor vote. “We’ll see,” he said.

Mr. Wyden has expressed concerns about the existing fast-track bill and thinks it needs to be rewritten, an aide said.

An aide to Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp said the Michigan Republican would like to have bipartisan support before moving fast-track legislation forward in the House.

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Many Democrats are skeptical of recent free-trade agreements, saying they don’t do enough to stem the flow of jobs overseas and don’t require trading partners to observe strict labor and environmental rules similar to those in the U.S. Some are concerned the Asia-Pacific pact under negotiation will siphon U.S. jobs to low-income countries such as Vietnam.

“It seems there’s a great opportunity to get off the fast track to bad trade deals and open the policy window to a better deal for workers,” Celeste Drake, a trade expert with the AFL-CIO, said.

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A poll released on Wednesday showed that 62% of voters oppose fast-track negotiating authority for Mr. Obama. The poll, conducted by Hart Research Associates and Chesapeake Beach Consulting, shows that Republican voters are more concerned about giving fast-track authority to Mr. Obama than Democrats.

Mirabile Dictu! Reid Tells Off Obama on Fast Track, Killing Toxic Trade Deals for 2014

by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Posted on January 30, 2014

(M)y Congressional correspondents think another gambit is more likely: to make some cosmetic changes and try to get the bill passed during the lame duck session, on the assumption that some Democrats (particularly those who are leaving office) will use the cover and change positions.

However, that cheery view assumes that the situation is static, when opposition to these bills is becoming even more pronounced.

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And the repudiation by Reid and the stiffening resistance to these bills won’t go unnoticed overseas. The Wikileaks publication of drafts of two critical chapters showed a wide gap between the US positions and that of many of its supposed partners. Our reader Clive has also described how the Japanese media (and Japan is essential to the TPP being consummated) is being uncharacteristically direct in saying the US was not negotiating, and it would need to make significant concessions to reach an agreement. The TPP was already going pear shaped, and whatever sense of momentum the US had been able to create is now kaput.

Considering that much of the operations against terrorists is a mere chimera designed to keep money flowing into the pockets of the grifters and con artists of the military industrial security state, it’s hard to look at the ‘zero option’ as a scary concept.

Afghanistan Exit Is Seen as Peril to Drone Mission

By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT, The New York Times

JAN. 26, 2014

If Mr. Obama ultimately withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan, the C.I.A.’s drone bases in the country would have to be closed, according to administration officials, because it could no longer be protected.

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The C.I.A.’s drone bases in Afghanistan, including one in the eastern part of the country, allow operators to respond quickly to fresh intelligence. The proximity to Pakistan’s tribal areas also allows the Predator drones and their larger, faster cousin, the Reaper, to fly longer missions without having to return to base.

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Other allied countries are within the Reaper’s range – in the Persian Gulf, for example. But the distances would be too great to carry out drone operations effectively, officials said, and it is very unlikely that any of those nations would approve launching the diplomatically sensitive strikes missions from their soil.

This is bad news only if you think the indiscriminate remote bombing of wedding parties and shepherds and the first responders who come to identify the dead and tend the wounded is a good idea.

What is becoming clear is that tomorrow’s “big” State of the Union speech will be a vacuous exercise in gasbaggery.  Not that they aren’t all that way, but this one is so obvious that even the Beltway Bootlickers are compelled to notice it.

For Obama, Investing in Brighter Futures Remains a Tough Sell

By JOHN HARWOOD, The New York Times

JAN. 26, 2014

As aides draft their 2015 budget plan, their 2014 version shows this bottom line for Mr. Obama’s sixth year in office: Government investments in infrastructure, research and development, and education and training, at 3.3 percent of the nation’s economy, match the level from President George W. Bush’s sixth year in office.

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“It has not been possible to significantly shift the needle,” said Laura D’Andrea Tyson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who headed Mr. Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. “We should be raising those levels, and we’re not.

“I guess the good news,” Ms. Tyson added, “is that the share hasn’t been plummeting.”

Over the last half-century, though, it has plummeted. Spending on what the federal government classifies as investments peaked in 1968 at 6.6 percent of the economy, twice the current proportion.

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“We’ve been playing on a Reagan playing field – a cut-government, shrink-programs field – since 1981,” (Democratic Senator from New York) Mr. Schumer said in an interview. “It’s all turning around now.”

Yah think?  Really?

Oh, and I’d never use plummeted, plummeted.  How about ‘falling’ idiot?  Buy a damn Thesaurus you cheap bastard.

Let’s Try Giving ‘Net Neutrality’ a Less Boring Name

By Caroline Winter, Business Week

January 21, 2014

Network neutrality is a very important issue that suffers from terrible branding. “It’s one of those names that kind of glides by you, it doesn’t generate a lot of interest,” says David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding. “I would really consider thinking about a new phrase.” But what?

Coined by Columbia law professor Tim Wu, net neutrality refers to the principal that Internet service providers treat all content, websites, and platforms equally. It’s a principle that may now be dead: Last week a federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules, opening the doors for providers to charge companies such as Netflix fees for faster, more seamless streaming. Consumer advocates say those costs may be passed on to customers, and that the ruling may result in a tiered Internet whose providers can even block websites at will.

Norway’s curling team has wild pants for Winter Olympics

By Cindy Boren, Washington Post

January 22 at 9:03 am

Luckily, curling isn’t a sport with a lot of fast, violent movement.

The Norwegian curling team has outdone itself with its latest duds for next month’s Winter Olympics in Sochi. Norway’s team has become known for its pants and even has an unofficial Facebook page (The Norway Olympic Curling Team’s pants, natch, with well over 500,000 likes).

Encore, for the Norwegian Curlers and Their Pants

By MARY PILON, The New York Times

JAN. 21, 2014

The curlers have gotten used to people paying attention to their clothes. In 2010, at the Vancouver Games, where the Norwegians won a silver medal, they made a splash when they made the sheet of curling ice their runway, competing in pants of bright red, white and blue, the colors of their country’s flag.

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Representatives of Loudmouth, the company in Foster City, Calif., that made the pants, said orders out of London went up tenfold, and the company’s servers crashed.

“It was enough to cause a stir in the curling world,” said Tony D’Orazio, a curler in Rochester, N.Y., who started the fan page and has chronicled the team’s fashion for the last four years. “For them to do what they did in 2010, it was revolutionary to curling. It took the traditions of the sport and re-energized it for a new generation.”

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“These pants would be great to win in,” Vad Petersson said. “But they’d be terrible to lose in. We decided that when we wear them, we have to really try and win and go the whole way.”

Shell’s Arctic drilling set back by US court ruling

Terry Macalister, The Guardian

Thursday 23 January 2014 07.34 EST

Shell’s hopes of drilling in Arctic waters off Alaska this summer faced a serious setback when a US federal court ruled that the full range of environmental risks had not been assessed by the government.

The 9th circuit court of appeals ruled in favour of green groups and Native Alaskan tribes which want Shell and its partners to call off their exploration programme for fear of an oil spill.

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Greenpeace said the court case was a “massive blow to Shell’s Arctic ambitions” and capped a miserable first few weeks in office for Shell’s new boss.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, added: “The court decision means the USA interior department has to go back to the drawing board before it can reissue any new licence to Shell. This is a massive blow to Shell’s Arctic ambitions. Shell had already lost the case for Arctic drilling in the court of public opinion – today they have lost the case in a court of law as well.”

Judges say Arctic offshore lease sale was flawed

By Dan Joling, Associated Press

January 22, 2014

A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled in favor of environmental groups that claimed the federal government conducted a flawed environmental review before selling $2.7 billion in petroleum leases off Alaska’s northwest coast in 2008.

A three-member panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a split decision that the Minerals Management Service, now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, prepared an environmental assessment for a sale in the Chukchi Sea based on minimal development – just 1 billion barrels of oil.

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“President Obama now has the chance to do right by the Arctic and the planet by keeping oil drilling out of the Chukchi Sea,” said Earthjustice attorney Eric Grafe, who represented the groups, in a prepared statement. “It makes no sense to open up the fragile, irreplaceable, and already melting Arctic Ocean to risky drilling for dirty oil that will only exacerbate climate change already wreaking havoc on the Arctic and elsewhere.

Federal court deals latest blow to Arctic oil drilling

By Joel Connelly, Seattle Post Intelligencer

Posted on January 22, 2014

The case was remanded back to U.S. District Judge Ralph Bestline in Alaska.  Bestline has already once before, in 2010, held up Arctic exploration because of flaws and inadequate evaluations of environmental risks.

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Shell launched its Chukchi drilling in the summer of 2012.  Just about everything that could go wrong DID go wrong.

Drilling ships were late in arriving from the “lower 48.”  The spill-containment barge, being prepared in Bellingham, failed its tests.  The drilling ship Noble Discoverer lost its moorings and nearly went ashore on Unalaska Island in the Aleutians.

Last but not least, the conical drilling ship Kulluk – which had been re-equipped at great cost – broke loose from its moorings and ran aground on New Year’s Eve on an island in the Gulf of Alaska.

Watchdog Report Says N.S.A. Program Is Illegal and Should End

By CHARLIE SAVAGE, The New York Times

JAN. 23, 2014

The program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said. “As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.”

While a majority of the five-member board embraced that conclusion, two members dissented from the view that the program was illegal. But the panel was united in 10 other recommendations, including deleting raw phone records after three years instead of five and tightening access to search results.

The report also sheds light on the history of the once-secret bulk collection program. It contains the first official acknowledgment that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court produced no judicial opinion detailing its legal rationale for the program until last August, even though it had been issuing orders to phone companies for the records and to the N.S.A. for how it could handle them since May 2006.

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“It may have been a laudable goal for the executive branch to bring this program under the supervision” of the court, the report says. “Ultimately, however, that effort represents an unsustainable attempt to shoehorn a pre-existing surveillance program into the text of a statute with which it is not compatible.”

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The report also scrutinizes in detail a handful of investigations in which the program was used, finding “no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.”

Still, in her dissent, Ms. Cook criticized judging the program’s worth based only on whether it had stopped an attack to date. It also has value as a tool that can allow investigators to “triage” threats and provide “peace of mind” if it uncovers no domestic links to a newly discovered terrorism suspect, she wrote.

NSA’s mass phone data collection is illegal, says government privacy board

Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Thursday 23 January 2014 08.35 EST

The US government’s privacy board has sharply rebuked President Barack Obama over the National Security Agency’s mass collection of American phone data, saying the program defended by Obama last week was illegal and ought to be shut down.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent and long-troubled liberties advocate in the executive branch, is to issue a report on Thursday afternoon that concludes the NSA’s collection of every US phone record on a daily basis violates the legal restrictions of the statute cited to authorize it, section 215 of the Patriot Act.

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The PCLOB, which briefed Obama on its findings before his speech last week, reportedly recommends instead that the bulk collection ought to be ended outright, owing to its assessed lack of necessity and dubious legality.

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Two of the board members, Rachel L Brand and Elisebeth Collins Cook, both lawyers in the George W Bush-era Justice Department, dissented on the finding that the bulk phone data collection was illegal.

The three other members – chairman David Medine, retired federal judge Patricia Wald, and civil liberties advocate James X. Dempsey – rejected the government’s argument, reaffirmed for years by a secret surveillance court, that the mass phone records collection was justified under a section of the Patriot Act that permits the government to amass records “relevant” to a terrorism inquiry.

“The approach boils down to the proposition that essentially all telephone records are relevant to essentially all international terrorism investigations,” the three-member majority is reported to have found.

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The PCLOB is not finished with its assessment of NSA surveillance. It plans in the coming weeks to issue another report evaluating the NSA’s collection of bulk foreign Internet communications, which have included those with Americans “incidentally” collected.

Independent review board says NSA phone data program is illegal and should end

By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post

Thursday, January 23, 8:29 AM

“We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation,” said the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.”

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(T)he board found that it is impossible that all the records collected – billions daily – could be relevant to a single investigation “without redefining that word in a manner that is circular, unlimited in scope.” Moreover, instead of compelling phone companies to turn over records already in their possession, the program requires them to furnish newly generated call data on a daily basis. “This is an approach lacking foundation in the statute,” the report said.

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The report concluded that the NSA collection raises “constitutional concerns” with regard to U.S. citizens’ rights of speech, association and privacy. “The connections revealed by the extensive database of telephone records gathered under the program will necessarily include relationships established among individuals and groups for political, religious, and other expressive purposes,” it said. “Compelled disclosure to the government of information revealing these associations can have a chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

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In its assessment of the program’s value, the board scrutinized 12 terrorism cases cited by the intelligence community that involved information obtained through the Section 215 program. Even in cases where the data related to contacts of a known terrorism suspect, in nearly all of them the benefits were minimal–“generally limited to corroborating information that was obtained independently by the FBI,” the report said.

The board rejected the contention made by officials from Obama on down that the program was necessary to address a gap arising from a failure to detect an al Qaeda terrorist in the United States, Khalid al-Mihdhar, prior to the 2001 attacks. Mihdhar was in phone contact with a safehouse in Yemen, and though the NSA had intercepted the calls, it did not realize at the time that Mihdhar was calling from San Diego.

“The failure to identify Mihdhar’s presence in the United States stemmed primarily from a lack of information sharing among federal agencies, not of a lack of surveillance capabilities,” the report said, noting that in early 2000 the CIA knew Mihdhar had a visa enabling him to enter the United States but did not advise the FBI or watchlist him. “…This was a failure to connect the dots, not a failure to connect enough dots.”

Second, the report said, the government need not have collected the entire nation’s calling records to identify the San Diego number from which Mihdhar made his calls. It asserted that the government could have used existing legal authorities to request from U.S. phone companies the records of any calls made to or from the Yemen number. “Doing so could have identified the San Diego number on the other end of the calls,” though, it noted, the speed of the carriers’ responses likely would vary.

The board also stated that the program played no role in disrupting the 2009 plot to bomb the New York City subway. That case is often cited in discussions of the program’s utility.

“The Board believes that the Section 215 program has contributed only minimal value in combating terrorism beyond what the government already achieves through these and other alternative means,” the report said. “Cessation of the program would eliminate the privacy and civil liberties concerns associated with bulk collection without unduly hampering the government’s efforts, while ensuring that any governmental requests for telephone calling records are tailored to the needs of specific investigations.”

NSA’s Spying on Phone Calls Illegal: U.S. Privacy Board

By Margaret Talev and Chris Strohm, Bloomberg News

2014-01-23 13:55:31

The bombshell nature of the report’s central conclusion may explain why Obama, after meeting with the board on its planned recommendations weeks ago, decided to announce his proposals on Jan. 17. Obama defended U.S. electronic spying as a bulwark against terrorism. He proposed changing aspects of the phone metadata program, which may require Congress to sort out details such as whether the government, the phone companies or an unidentified third party should retain the data.

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Obama had deferred decisions regarding the NSA’s Internet data collection to Congress and a new panel expected to be appointed.

Members of the privacy board briefed Obama on their planned recommendations ahead of his Jan. 17 announcement. The recommendations from the bipartisan, independent agency housed in the executive branch also follows a December report by a separate, independent review panel appointed by the president.

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Obama said he would require judicial review of requests to query phone call databases and ordered the Justice Department and intelligence officials to devise a way to take storage of that data out of the government’s hands.

He left other steps to limit surveillance up to a divided Congress, meaning that other changes may be months away if they are adopted at all.

Obama gave Attorney General Eric Holder and intelligence officials 60 days to develop a plan for storing bulk telephone records outside of government custody, one of the most contentious issues arising from Snowden’s disclosures.

Phone companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, have resisted being required to retain telephone metadata for the government because of the potential cost and legal exposure. An entity to take on that role doesn’t yet exist. The administration plans to deliver a proposal on data storage to Congress by the end of March.

US withholding Fisa court orders on NSA bulk collection of Americans’ data

Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Tuesday 21 January 2014 13.16 EST

US attorney Preet Bharara of the southern district of New York informed the ACLU in a Friday letter that the government would not turn over “certain other” records from a secret surveillance court, which are being “withheld in full” from a Freedom of Information Act suit the civil liberties group filed to shed light on bulk surveillance activities performed under the Patriot Act.

The decision to keep some of the records secret, in the thick of Edward Snowden’s revelations, has raised suspicions within the ACLU that the government continues to hide bulk surveillance activities from the public, despite US president Barack Obama’s Friday concession that controversial National Security Agency programs have “never been subject to vigorous public debate”.

In his letter, written on the day Obama gave a long-awaited speech on surveillance that pledged additional transparency, Bhahara said that Friday’s release will be the last disclosure under the terms of the ACLU’s lawsuit.

“As discussed by telephone this morning, the government in fact has processed all of the remaining FISC Orders responsive to the FOIA request in this case that relate to bulk collection, regardless of whether the order contains any additions and/or adjustments to the implementation procedures, minimization procedures, and/or reporting requirements set out in other FISC orders,” the US attorney wrote.

“The government cannot specify the total number of documents withheld in full from this final set of responsive documents because the number itself is classified.”

Alexander Abdo, an ACLU attorney, noted that the government’s bulk surveillance disclosures have yet to include, among other efforts, a reported CIA program to collect international money transfers in bulk, revealed in November by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

“It appears that the government is concealing the existence of other bulk collection programs under the Patriot Act, such as the CIA’s reported collection of our financial records,” Abdo said.

“In other words, on the same day that President Obama recognized the need for a vigorous debate about bulk collection, the government appears to be hiding the ball. We can’t have the public debate that President Obama wants without the facts that his agencies are hiding.”

Obama Lectures Those Outraged by NSA Surveillance Programs in Speech Announcing Reforms

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Friday January 17, 2014 2:40 pm

The president delivered a speech on changes his administration would support to National Security Agency programs and policies, but what most stood out was not the announced reforms. It was how the speech focused on him and what he had done and how it seemed like he was lecturing Americans who have been outraged by what they have learned about massive government surveillance in the past six months.

President Barack Obama seemed deeply offended that anyone would think he had done an inadequate job or had enabled surveillance state policies.

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Like Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Obama took shots at journalists who had reported on documents released by Snowden, suggesting what had emerged over the past months consisted of “crude characterizations.” And, adding, “Fortunately, by focusing on facts and specifics rather than speculation and hypotheticals, this review process has given me – and hopefully the American people – some clear direction for change.”

Twenty minutes later, when Obama finally arrived at the part where he outlined the reforms he supports-what he was willing to support to placate civil liberties advocates while at the same time avoiding a “backlash from national security agencies,” Americans would have been forgiven for feeling their president had just scolded them for being concerned about government surveillance run amok. It was abundantly clear that Obama wished he did not have to be there at the Justice Department giving this speech.

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This reform was couched in extremely disingenuous statements about how the administration has declassified information. All documents declassified by the government since Snowden’s disclosures were not released because Obama voluntarily wanted to give the public access but because the Electronic Frontier Foundation won a lawsuit and a court was going to order the information to be released.

Obama NSA Speech: Pretty Words, No Real Change

By: Peter Van Buren, Firedog Lake

Saturday January 18, 2014 11:06 am

Bottom Line Up Front: The details of Obama’s most recent speech about “changes” to the NSA’s surveillance practices reveal that sadly little of substance will change. A few cosmetic touchups, some nice words, issues tossed into the pit of Congress to fade away in partisan rancor, and high hopes that the issue will slip away from the public eye as “fixed.” Not word one about how absent Edward Snowden’s historic disclosures the president would not even be offering this lip service, happy to allow the tumor of spying to continue to grow in secret as he had done for the last six years of his presidency.

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These are for all intents and purposes just throwaways. Obama knows as well as anyone that a hyper-partisan Congress, already divided on what if anything should be done with the NSA, heading into elections, will never act on these issues. Obama can take the high road and deflect any criticism from his progressive base by pointing a finger at Congress. Democrats can blame Republicans and vice-versa, so everyone wins in the calculus of Washington.

For the record, even Obama’s Congressional changes are limp. Having private companies instead of the NSA hold data for the NSA to search? What kind of practical change would result from that? A public advocate in the FISA court? A possible, but how many, what staff and resources, what actual role would they play, under what rules of disclosure by the government would they function? The adversarial judicial process that otherwise fuels our legal system, prosecutors and defense attorneys, rules to compel disclosure, cross examination and so forth would not exist as new FISA-only “advocate” rules are created in a pseudo-parallel system. And since the whole process would remain highly-classified, no one outside the government would ever know if such advocates indeed played any role in protecting our privacy.

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What was not even mentioned by Obama is sadly the largest category of all. The list could fill dozens of pages, but the use of National Security Letters without judicial oversight is one of the most significant omissions. In 2012 the FBI used 15,229 National Security Letters to gather information on Americans. In addition, not a word was mentioned about pulling back the NSA’s breaking into the Internet backbone, accessing the key Google, Yahoo, Microsoft servers, the NSA use of malware to spy on computers, the NSA’s exploitation of software bugs, the NSA’s efforts to weaken encryption that puts our data at risk to ease the burden on the Agency of decoding things, the use of offensive cyberattacks, indiscriminate gathering of data in general contrary to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against General Warrants and on and on and on and on, at least until the next revelations from Edward Snowden reveal even more NSA tricks being played on innocent Americans.

But the mother of all omissions from the Obama speech is this one: there is no proof that all of the spying and surveillance, at the sake of our basic Constitutional rights, has resulted in the purported aim of keeping us safe. The White House’s own review panel on NSA surveillance said they discovered no evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records thwarted any terrorist attacks.