An Edited Editorial

Our chapter on mass media explains that news items and editorials sometimes become the subject of later coverage.  An editorial yesterday is a case in point, as Dylan Byers explains at Politico:

The New York Times editorial board has quietly changed the language in the most widely cited line from Thursday's scathing editorial about the Obama administration's surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The line -- "The administration has now lost all credibility" -- was changed Thursday night to read, "The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue." No correction or explanatory note was appended.

"The change was for clarity's sake," Andrew Rosenthal, the Times editorial page editor, told POLITICO on Friday morning. "It was clear from the context of the editorial that the issue of credibility related to this subject and the final edit of the piece strengthened that point."

The "issue" in question is the Obama administrations' oft-repeated claim that an overreach of power -- from secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism to the subpoenas of reporters phone records to the collection of Americans' phone and now Internet data -- is required in order to keep Americans safe.

To the Times' critics, and to Obama's, the change may seem like an attempt to soften the blow. It shouldn't: The Times is still unequivocal in its condemnation of the president's abuse of his executive power. That is the important point, and it remains unchanged.

See the comparison at NewsDiffs.org 

 

Privacy and Government Power

The Guardian reports:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

Slate reports:

Recently, the FBI has been attacking the “going dark” problem—that is, its inability to read all electronic communications—from both legal and technological angles. It wants to be able to fine communications companies for refusing to comply with subpoena requests for the content of customers’ emails and chats. It’s also trying to create ways of decrypting any communication sent via a Web service, like Gmail messages Facebook chats, or Twitter direct messages. It believes it can work with companies to build secure methods for lawfully intercepting communications on the Web.

But a report released last week by the Center for Democracy and Technology and some of the top names in computer security points out that building so-called "back doors" in to these Web services will also increase the risk that bad actors will gain access to the communications content of all users of these services. Creating a back door in software is like creating a lock to which multiple people hold the keys. The more people who have a key, the higher the likelihood that one will get lost. But this is precisely the power that would be granted by proposed extensions to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA II).

AP reports:

U.S. border agents should continue to be allowed to search a traveler's laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal Homeland Security Department study. It contends limiting such searches would prevent the U.S. from detecting child pornographers or terrorists and expose the government to lawsuits.

The 23-page report, obtained by The Associated Press and the American Civil Liberties Union under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, provides a rare glimpse of the Obama administration's thinking on the long-standing but controversial practice of border agents and immigration officers searching and, in some cases holding for weeks or months, the digital devices of anyone trying to enter the U.S.

AP reports on Maryland v. King:

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday said police can routinely take DNA from people they arrest, equating a DNA cheek swab to other common jailhouse procedures like fingerprinting.

“Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s five-justice majority.

But the four dissenting justices said that the court was allowing a major change in police powers.

“Make no mistake about it: because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,” conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said in a sharp dissent which he read aloud in the courtroom. “This will solve some extra crimes, to be sure. But so would taking your DNA when you fly on an airplane — surely the TSA must know the ‘identity’ of the flying public. For that matter, so would taking your children’s DNA when they start public school.”

Economic Growth?

Politico reports:

The 2014 midterm election is shaping up as something the United States has not seen in nearly a decade: a campaign run in a strengthening economy with deficits on the decline.

No one is popping champagne corks yet, and risks remain. But the altered terrain, if it holds, could benefit Democrats and challenge Republicans whose rise to power in the House in 2010 came via a tea party movement that blasted President Barack Obama and his party for ignoring a stagnant economy and piling up an endless run of trillion dollar deficits.

Times have changed since 2010. Barring a fresh crisis — and there are certainly a few that could arise — many economists expect growth to return to a fairly healthy level by next year as house prices and the stock market continue to rise and the jobless rate falls closer to its historic average of 5.8 percent.

In fact, however, the economy is not in such great shape. The Los Angeles Times reports:

The country's tepid growth in its gross domestic product isn't creating enough good jobs to build a strong middle class, according to a UCLA report released Wednesday.

"Growth in GDP has been positive, but not exceptional," UCLA economists wrote in their quarterly Anderson Forecast. "Jobs are growing, but not rapidly enough to create good jobs for all."

The report, which analyzed long-term trends of past recoveries, found that the long-anticipated "Great Recovery" has not yet materialized.

Real GDP growth — the value of goods and services produced after adjusting for inflation — is 15.4% below the 3% growth trend of past recoveries, wrote Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast. More robust growth will be necessary to bring this recovery in line with previous ones.

"It's not a recovery," he wrote. "It's not even normal growth. It's bad."

Rating Institutions

The Wall Street Journal reports:

American institutions didn’t fare well in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, released Wednesday.

Of the 10 institutions listed on the poll – among them, large corporations, the national news media, and the Internal Revenue Service – only the military and the automobile industry received confidence marks of over 25%.

Two thirds of respondents – 67% — said they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in the military, by far the highest rating of any of the institutions included in the survey. But it’s not all good news for the military. Its number is down from 76% the last time the question was asked in the poll, in May 2012. And it marks an 18-point drop in confidence since January 2002, several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the reading stood at 85%.
...
Among the institutions with the lowest confidence ratings were social-networking websites, with a rating of 13%. Notably, this rating has decreased particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds. In 2012, 34% of that demographic said they were confident in social networking websites, while 31% had little or no confidence in them. In June’s poll, the confidence rating dropped 13 points to 21%, with 35% saying they had little or no confidence.

The financial industry’s rating dropped by 1 point since the 2012 poll, receiving an 11% rating this year. Health-insurance companies and the IRS tied for the lowest rating, at 10%. The health-insurance rating dropped by 3 points since last year’s poll. (The IRS wasn’t included in the poll last year.)

Paying to See the President: Update

USA Today reports:

The Democratic National Committee is rejecting the contribution of a California car salesman and electric car advocate who was forking over $32,400 out of his retirement savings to attend a private fundraiser Friday on the promise that he would get at least two minutes to lobby President Obama.

In rejecting his bid to attend the luncheon, the DNC expressed reservations about the media attention that has gone to Paul Scott, a self-described $50,000-a-year Nissan car salesman in Los Angeles, and the notion of paying for access. Scott's intentions were reported last Friday night by USA TODAY. Scott said he wanted to give the president some advice about better ways to advance the electric-car movement. Scott, 60, says he felt so strongly about the issue that he was going to dip into his savings so he could make the pitch face-to-face.

In a letter dated Saturday, DNC National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan says Obama shares a devotion to clean energy and promotion of electric cars, but that the committee had concerns. Contributors, says the letter obtained by USA TODAY, are supporting the president and Democratic candidates, not using off-the-record events "as a way to gain access." The letter noted "the media attention your contribution has garnered."

Jim Motavelli writes:

“The story got spun by the right into a ‘pay-for-play’ narrative, and I became a liability,” said Scott, who is nevertheless still very supportive of both Obama and the DNC. “The whole thing was twisted by the conservatives, who claimed that Obama was doing something wrong by talking to me at the event.”

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin’s headline was “Electric Car Advocate pays $16K a Minute to Personally Ask Obama to Push Carbon Tax.” There are a few other pieces like that, but this hasn’t become a radioactive story in the red-state blogosphere, at least not yet. It may be that the DNC’s decision to return the donation will give it some lift.

We’ve all gotten fundraising appeals like the one sent to Scott, we just usually hurl them into the circular file. “I got an email three or four weeks ago saying that Obama was coming to L.A. and for $10,000 I could have lunch with him,” Scott told me. “For $16,200 I’d get lunch and a photo. But for $32,400, I’d get lunch, a photo, and a chance to sit in on a roundtable discussion with the president, limited to 25 people. It was off the record, but we could talk about anything we wanted. I stared at the computer screen. The money was a big part of my retirement fund.”

Secret Emails and Fake Identities

Many posts have dealt with the issue of government transparency. AP reports:

Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged - but often happens anyway - due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."

A release from the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

Richard Windsor may not ever have existed as an employee at the Environmental Protection Agency. But he was up to date on his training for both ethics and records preservation, according to emails revealed today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Following up on revelations of former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s false-identity email account plainly in violation of the Federal Records Act and EPA policy, Christopher Horner, senior fellow at CEI, asked for any certification of Jackson receiving e-mail, recordkeeping and ethics training.

It turns out Jackson completed training in ethics for 2010, 2011 and 2012 as her alter ego/false identity, Richard Windsor, as well as training for document preservation and how to deal with whistleblowers.

‘Windsor’ scored a 100 on cyber security awareness, but had various scores – one as low as 75 – on whistleblower training.

Eric Wachter, director of the EPA’s Office of the Secretariat, said Jackson “completed the EPA-hosted, computer-based training while using [the Richard Windsor] account.”

‘Richard Windsor’ was the fake name Jackson used for an alternate email address created for certain correspondence with her inner circle both inside and out of government. EPA has claimed this account was for internal use only – one in a series of what seem to be false claims made to get past the seemingly endless revelations of unlawful behavior.

Paying to See the President

Announcing his candidacy for president in 2007, Senator Barack Obama said:

And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what's filled the void. The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page.

Carla Marinucci writes at The San Francisco Chronicle:

It's a scenario that's all too familiar: President Obama will visit Silicon Valley this week - but the only Californians who will see or hear from him will pay at least $2,500 for the privilege.

As the president begins his 20th trip to California since entering office, the seemingly endless capacity of the White House to vacuum up California campaign checks - without scheduling any public events - is becoming a cause for concern, even among loyal Democrats.

"It's a missed opportunity," said Democratic strategist Garry South, who gave the maximum donations allowed to Obama's two presidential campaigns.

"It's usually a mistake to just be making fundraising forays into a state like California without combining those political events with some sort of public activity," he said, noting public events offer alternatives to photos of Obama "hustled into the back of a ballroom."

Obama's latest Silicon Valley fundraising swing, to benefit the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, begins on June 6 and includes an evening reception at the Palo Alto home of Flipboard CEO Michael McCue and his wife Marci, where tickets start at $2,500 per person.

That's followed by an "intimate" $32,400 per person dinner at the Portola Valley residence of star venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, and his wife Neeru.

Chris Woodyard writes at USA Today:

A Los Angeles car salesman and electric car advocate is shelling $32,400 out of his retirement savings so he can make a pitch directly to President Obama at a "private, off-the-record" Democratic fundraiser next week.

Paul Scott, 60, says he isn't a rich guy. He's a $50,000-a-year Nissan salesman who plans to rub elbows with 24 bigwigs in a private luncheon that he says will put a crimp in his retirement plans.

But he says the goal is worthwhile. He wants to make a few points to Obama about on how to better support electric cars -- a cause that Obama already embraces -- and thought the private audience would be a fine way to do it.