A Single Voice

This weekend, back-to-back international conferences will take place in the United States, hosted by President Obama. The G8 summit which hosts “the world’s 8 largest economies” (which is not actually accurate since countries like China are excluded) will take place at Camp David in Maryland. The great eight countries include France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the U.S., Canada and Russia.

The NATO summit will take place in Chicago. Most of the countries from the G8 Summit will attend that starting on Saturday and the discussions will cover slightly different issues. NATO exists as an intercontinental defense alliance, which means its topics will reflect less economic issues and more concerns about protection or stability.

A lot goes into these kinds of meetings. The leaders present will deal not just with pressing world issues, but also forge personal and international ties. Just like personality differences in any organization, the dynamics of these meetings will carry overtones of each country’s independent identity. It’s almost impossible to summarize all the issues and topics that could arise; however, these are the top 5 things to be looking for this weekend:

1. Afghanistan

The withdrawal from Afghanistan will be the top issue at NATO. While President Obama has made efforts to remove American troops from the region, some other countries such as the new leadership in France will want to speed up the process. NATO has already agreed to offer support to Afghan forces through 2014, but discussions will cover what to do after that. Future costs to support the local security forces are estimated at $4.1 billion. (The U. S. is expected to cover at least half of that cost.)

2. Euro Zone Crisis

President Obama in particular has urged Europe to stimulate growth and prevent another serious recession. This outlook might be slightly self-serving as a collapse in Europe would surely affect North America (and anything related to the economy will affect the U. S. elections in November). Great Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has also some out with strong reproach for Greece. While no one foresees the creation of any policies during the G8 summit, there will certainly be plenty of conversation regarding this issue and possibly ways to forestall a complete collapse.

3. Leadership Changes (Russia, France)

Russia has re-elected Vladamir Putin as President of Russia. Well, debatably. President Putin declined to attend the G8 Summit. Most likely because his hands are full of the protests in his own country from the opposition who claims he came into power through election fraud and coercion. Even without Putin present, his reemergence as a world leader (and his known agenda) will certainly come up during discussions such as NATO’s missile defense.

The other newly elected leader, certain to turn heads, is France’s President Francois Hollande. President Hollande has already come out strongly against his predecessor, former President Nicolas Sarkozy who aligned himself with the U. S. The new French President has already made bold statements such as plans to pull all French combat troops from Afghanistan before the end of the year. He has also taken a stance against Europe’s recent focus on austerity (deficit-cutting through less spending). President Hollande promises to strike a controversial tone at both summits.

4. Stability in the Middle East

The ever-continuing saga of the Middle East will surely be picked apart. Iran’s threat of nuclear defense will continue economic sanctions on Tehran (which mostly consist of trade bans). NATO will do all it can to freeze this program, but so far its tactics have not appeared effective. The bloody reforms in Syria and Libya will also get attention, as well as other countries from the Arab Spring which have yet to truly stabilize. While elections and reformations go on in these countries, the outside world leaders will quietly discuss their fate here in the U. S.

5. Protests

While all these intellectual policy discussions happen behind closed doors, Americans will stand outside and protest these meetings. The protesters will come out from across the country for a variety of reasons: anti-war, anti-Obama, anti-intervention, anti-Europe; occupiers and tea-partiers alike could show up for media attention. Already Chicago has seen a number of demonstrations and arrests. This kind of reaction to major international summits is not new: violence often breaks out wherever these events are held. This time, though, they are taking place in our own backyard and close to a heated election. Sparks could fly in Chicago.

Last week, Governor Rick Scott opened up a new area of his website called Project SunBurst. The project will upload “executive emails”  within 7 days of creation. The officials subject to this rule includes the Governor and the Lt. Governor also with all their appropriate staff personnel.

Project Sunburst logo from FLGov.com

The goal is to push all of these emails online within 24 and make them readable for the public from the website. These are all emails that should already be subject to public record. Before Project Sunburst, you could request any email communication but would have to wait until it was given to you.

The Miami Herald covered the opening of the website extensively. Writer Mary Ellen Klas suggested Gov. Scott is “hoping to reverse the perception that he wanted to skirt the state’s open records law”. In 2010, there was a scandal about Gov. Scott’s staff destroying emails. Scott’s defense was a server problem but he then did not open an email account for almost a year into his term.

Of course, while the Governor’s office and others tag this as a success for transparency, some are less sure. In an interview with Scott Finn from WUSF, Peter Schorsch of St. Petersblog implied that this transparency is fake. Schorsch said this meant all real business was being conducted offline in person or via phone) and the release of these emails probably won’t make any difference. It is obvious based on emails from public records that the Governor’s staff try to avoid a paper trail. Emails include things such as “the info we discussed was hand-delivered to your office” instead of attachments or just suggest a phone call.

My question here is has transparency gone too far? We’ve have all these steps in place to try and keep our politicians honest but instead they just find new and better ways of hiding information. Also, this kind of level of scrutiny has put a fear in them. Any electronic record could get them in trouble. Have we, in fact, made ourselves less transparent by demanding so much?

Open to your thoughts.

A unique thing is happening in 2012: 4 out of the 5 permanent members (nick-named the P5) of the United Nations Security Council have major elections this year. These five countries, (China, Russia, United State of America, United Kingdom and France) all have the power to veto any Council resolution no matter how much support it may have. Only one country needs to provide a veto to stop any “substantive” draft.

The 4 countries with elections are Russia, France, the UK and of course, us.

Russia

At this point in time, Russia has already undergone its election, putting Vladamir Putin in charge. While this is not a major shift in Russia’s current international outlook, Putin will certain be bolder in his initiatives and will give Russia a fiercer voice. Russia continues to crawl forward in its actions to separate Eastern Europe into its own protective sphere (note the separatist regions as well as the missile defense problems, not to mention the quest for a EurAsia Union), that will only be sped up now that Putin has resumed control.

France

France is about to have their elections and currently the race is too close to call. Nicolas Sarkozy the current Presidential incumbent hails from the Union for a Popular Movement party which is the center-right political group in France. This Party, and Sarkozy in particular, has advocated greater alignment with the United States. His opponent, Francois Hollande, from the Socialist Party will probably be less supportive ofAmerica. He has very little foreign policy experience to begin with and has already announced his intentions to speed up French troop withdraw from Afghanistan. The French Socialist Party aligns itself heavily with the Europeans Socialists who push for more Pro-European Union policies.

Great Britain

The U. K. could be up for a serious shuffle, as well. With the recession hitting Britain as badly as the U. S., most voters want someone to blame. That person may as well be David Cameron. If local elections show any kind of trend, Cameron and his Conservative Party will not fair well in the futue.  The Labor Party seems to be gaining traction. While the U. K. has a long standing alliance with America, The Labor Party’s focus has been more on human rights and an alignment with the European Socialists. This means a more isolated EU and more “aid” styled missions instead of defense. This also could affect the “EU plot” just revealed today about the EU’s super-president and the desire to “scrap” Britain. While Cameron’s administration has been less Euro-friendly, the article implies that the current government is not taking steps to prevent a dictator style EU. However, a Labor Party majority would be much happier to become deeper involved with the European Union.

The United States of America

The United States also has a big election coming up, one that looks just as close as the French. We have suffered through our own economic recession, and had more than our fair share of interceding in foreign affairs. The current President Obama, with minimal foreign policy experience has received mixed reviews at best from our population but overall his stance could not be considered “strong”. Romeny, the Republican opposition, would most likely command a more typically conservative foreign policy which would put us back on strong defense. While the change in the outlook on international relations might not be drastic, it would still be a change.

China

China will remain stable throughout this year. However, as the other Party chess pieces move around, China will continue to make alliances. China’s current foreign policy can best be described as whatever is economically good for them. Bailing out America’s debt? Check. Supplying N. Korea under the table? Invisible Check. It doesn’t matter either way. And now with the developing story about “blind-activist” Chen Gaungcheng we can certainly see the tedious relationship we have with them.

Any shift in power (and we’ve already seen one in Russia) can lead to instability within the P5. This is an important year internationally, one that needs to be watched more closely as we chose our moves on the world stage. Human rights and the future of the EU will be fresh on the minds of the winners at the end of 2012.

Originally Posted at ToraRadical.com

Despite the protests over Putin’s recent elections (their alleged coercion and fraud) dying down, the problems for United Russia seem far from over. Putin’s regime had seemed to regain control of the media, shutting down the last of the protests from disenfranchised voters. However, the rush of anti-United Russia sentiment reared its head again in the local elections.

Oleg Shein, a candidate for Mayor of Astrakhan (which is a large city in the southwest of Russia) lost his race as part of the opposition. He gained only 30% of the vote, while the “approved” candidate received almost 60%. Shein claimed fraud in his election and since that date he went on a hunger strike for 40 days, drawing media attention and restarting many Russian protests.

During a press conference (of which many members of opposition movement A Just Russia walked out of) Putin seemed to belittle Shein. He called a hunger strike a non-legitimate form of protest. He suggested Shein take his case to the courts where the matter could be decided, legally, so no one could disagree.

Shein answered Putin by calling Astrakhan a “concentration camp”.  He also said a hunger strike is a legitimate form of protest in a concentration camp. Astrakhan has a de-facto curfew, is often occupied by military and journalists are often blocked from even entering so little information manages to get into the press. Shein’s supposition that an entire region of Russia has little to no freedom is a significant statement. Considerations should be made by Russia but also the United States.

It is not unheard of for Russia to overturn this kind of issue. In the past, contesting elections have sometimes been resolved. The situation is bad either way for Putin. He either ignores the claims, continuing to incite Shein and his followers, or he compromises his position by giving his opposition a victory and revealing corruption within his administration. This will continue to lend itself to the instability of Putin’s grasp on Russia.

The consistent problems in Russia should not be overlooked by the United States, that should be well noted. While the most supported opposition movement to Putin is Communism, right now there is a “vote-against” mentality as opposed to favoring a particular party. The Anyone-But-Putin coalition could lead to greater instability in the region.

The other lesson for Americans out of Russia comes straight from the mouth of Shein. No matter how terrible political events proceed in our country, no one can claim that their state is a concentration camp. If occupiers in Atlanta made this claim, they would be laughed at or considered mentally unstable. The average American cannot fathom the horrors of a true loss of freedom. But Shein’s claim has at least a basis in facts. Something that would be unheard of here. And yet this country is considered our first world ally.

Something to consider. Especially today as Occupiers celebrate May Day.

So, I’m standing in line, exhausted, and waiting to get through airport security in Charlotte, on my way home from #BLOGCONCLT. For whatever reason, the line seems particularly slow and long.

Finally, I got my bin and proceeded to go through the drill: shoes, laptop, watch, jacket–but midway through the TSA strip tease, I glanced over at the next line. A woman was carefully trying to explain to her daughter what was going on. The girl couldn’t have been more than 6, with the kind of perfectly blonde hair that brunettes like me can hardly fathom. She was nodding, listening to her mother but seemed obviously perplexed, on the edge of being frightened. First time flying I suspected.

She was a trooper. She allowed her shoes to be removed, all the while tightly hugging some kind of comforting stuffed toy. She loosened her grip only enough to take her mother’s hand and walk through the metal detector. But of course, it is never that simple.

TSA Agent: I’m sorry, she can’t bring that through.

Mother: Its just a toy.

TSA Agent: Ma’am, it needs to go on the conveyor.

Mother: All right fine. To her daughter. Honey, we need to put your bunny through the machine.

Little Girl: But its my bunny!

Mother: I know, it will only take a moment.

Little Girl: But, but—

Apparently the injustice was too great for words. To her credit, she did not throw a tantrum or even cry. She just solemnly gave up her bunny to another TSA agent who had stepped up to make sure the stuffed animal was appropriately handed over and searched. The agent then walked back around and ran a quick swipe over the bunny before even putting it on the machine.

This incident probably sounds tame compared to some of the horror stories about children being searched, the infirm humiliated and general injustice. However, to me, it was a poignant example of how much our “security” has lost touch with reality. The simple image of a girl having her stuffed animal, a symbol which should resonate with so many of us as an item of eternal love and safety, taken from her to be checked for explosives embodies everything wrong with this system.

I doubt anyone reading this doesn’t already feel violated, directly or indirectly, by these procedures. Therein lies the problem, no matter your political persuasion, TSA is universally regarding as having serious problems. STILL.

In September, a petition was created at We The People, an arm of the White House’s online outreach. The petition went live in September 2011 and requested to abolish the TSA. By December it had more than 30,000 signatures, gaining viral support. The rapidly growing number of signatures forced the White House to respond. Their answer? “Thanks for playing along but we aren’t actually going to do anything.” Only months earlier the White House promised to use these petitions to deal with the issues most important to Americans. But when Americans called them on it, the response was gutless redirection; merely an explanation on why the TSA exists.

Even Congress tried to take the TSA to task this past March. CSPAN showed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee admonishing the TSA about their budget. The hearing resolved nothing but the tone of the joint committees was anything but pleasant. Interestingly, right after this brutal review, the TSA rolled out their “PreCheck” program as something “coming soon, we promise!” But based on previous government promises, not only will it not fix anything, the definition of “soon” will transform into a date indeterminate.

And finally, let’s not forget Jonathan Corbett’s video showing the straight-up ineffectiveness of the TSA with his blog about the body scanners. (Note: he is going to court involving the TSA now, so consider donating to this guy.) The TSA blog laughed him off, pretty much running him down as just “some blogger”. It is the single most commented on post for their blog, with over 400 responses. Not a single one agrees with “Bob” the TSA writer. (It is also worth noting that the TSA blog only let’s you see about 10 posts and does not allow you to view previous posts without a direct link. However, the amount SEO connected to that piece will force it to come up in a google search.) Every response to this blog was angry. In fact, I assume this post led to the newly instated TSA policy about deleting “off-topic” comments from their blog.

This leaves us with only one question left: Why, with this reaction from the public, does the TSA still exist–and what will finally force it to disappear?

We all know it’s coming. A strange virus starts to bring bodies back to life, or at least exist in some kind of strange diseased state of rapid deterioration. It transfers between people through saliva and blood, usually aggravated by some kind of bite. The disease strikes rapidly. Once a person has contracted it, they may have only hours to live. Everyone knows but no one wants to say it: zombies.

If it happens like most zombie literature details, the population will dwindle, and people will enter survival mode. In this time of great need we will rely on surviving scientists and the Center for Disease Control to provide a cure. I, personally, believe our greatest minds will find some way to protect us from the ensuing Apocalypse.  Most likely, our salvation would come from a vaccination, some way for our body to build up defenses against the zombie curse.

However, the government, if it managed to survive this crisis, would not be able to force the vaccination on anyone. Despite it being for our own good, despite the people who refuse or cannot get the vaccine run the risk becoming the very disease we hope to prevent… forcing people to get this vaccination would be outside the role of government. This is the great burden of freedom: You can choose to save yourself or you can be a zombie.

And that is what I learned from listening to the oral arguments in the Supreme Court regarding the Affordable Care Act (Florida, et all v. Department of Health and Human Resources).

As tax season approaches, a recent flush of tax refund fraud has taken center stage. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida began a hearing on a bill to stop the fraud and speed up payments back to victims, yesterday. He proposed this legislation about a year ago.

Like most legislation, this one sounds great. It’s obviously designed to help people and combat a serious problem. There is one issue: the “how” of this bill. How would this legislation stop fraud?

By sharing more of your personal tax information with the police. This should immediately raise the privacy red flag. In Nelson’s bill, he proposes more information sharing between the IRS and local law enforcement. Despite making this information highly sensitive, further sharing always puts information at risk to be leaked. Reuters wrote that the IRS’s national taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson supported the bill but would need very clear parameters on when and how personal information was shared.

Right now, Nelson is advocating a sample program to roll out in Tampa. There is no date on this yet.

Personally, I feel jumping straight to sharing personal information is a problem. The government is pushing hard on privacy measures for the internet yet they want to let our most personal information, our finances, into a place of weakness. (Why not, I guess? They’ve already done that with our medical records.)

I’m not questioning the legitimacy of the problem, especially for Florida. Tax fraud and identity theft can be crippling. But this is not the only solution. Most of the fault lies at the with the IRS. The length of time it takes to process returns alone contributes to the problem. Yet, somehow process of checking for fraud somehow slips by. Third party debit cards unattached to real bank accounts are also an issue. Evaluating how and why fraud happens, then taking steps to correct it seems like the first line of defense before invading personal privacy.

CPAC 2012 rolled out an electronic straw poll for the first time during this year’s convention. The technology had a test run at the Florida CPAC event in 2011. CPAC’s official pollster, Tony Fabrizio called the previous system of paper ballots “cumbersome” during the Press Tech Briefing regarding the straw poll.

Data Security by Jon McGovern

The new electronic straw poll works like this: each registrant receives a unique pin which they put into the website. Once the pin has been entered, it cannot be used again, and once a question is answered the registrant cannot go back. The pins are one time only.

The press briefing centered more on a joint initiative with the Washington Times who is conducting a poll among self-identified conservative voters, asking them the same questions as those found in the CPAC Straw Poll. The responses will be released at the same time as the Straw Poll results for an “interesting comparison”.

However, ACU left the question of security mostly untouched. When asked about how secure the electronic polling process was, Tony Fabrizio reiterated the unique pin process. “You can go to it and see the url but you can’t access it without a pin that is verified.” He laughed off the idea of any hacking attempts. Fabrizio said the only way to break into the site would be to sit in front of a computer and just guess random numbes.  He also noted that the site was “encrypted” but gave no further details. He compared the security to the kind used for consumer surveys. Fabrizio promised that if a “Ukrainian hacker” attempted to break into the site the press would be the first to know.

Fabrizio is right, there isn’t much threat from a Ukrainian hacker, but a Ron Paul supporter from Portland is a much more credible possibility. This is nothing new; tech-tuned Paul supporters have been breaking into online polls for years. It’s easy to run a number sequencing program to look for acceptable pins (how do you think early hackers found accessible phone lines? Running a program that just dialed every number until one connected).  Nothing was said about how many possible pins can get into the site and how many were actually given out at CPAC, that discrepancy could leave multiple verified pins available. There was also no mention of any lock-out protocols, such as how erroneous pins could be entered before locking someone out.

Plenty of “encrypted” sites are broken into every day. So, what level of encryption is actually being used at CPAC? While ACU may have waved off the question of security, the issue is very real. CPAC’s straw poll draws huge headlines and would be worth tweaking the vote for. The bigger question, if CPAC or other organizations want to use this electronic polling model in the future, real technical details should be released about how secure the process truly is. In the meantime, don’t be surprised if Ron Paul manages to win the CPAC2012 Straw Poll.

This might be my last comment on the horse race.

Image by Ukanda

Without a Captain Republican, we lose. Therefore the outcome of 2012 looks inevitable.

A loss in 2012 will have one of two results:

1. The candidate choices will improve in 2016. No one will need to run against Obama and his machine. The new tea-party favorites will have a few years of experience. Obama’s policies will be in full-swing and easier to counter. This should lead us to a candidate who truly embodies our conservative values. Once we find that candidate, we will win.

Or

1. We repeat 2012. We look for a perfect candidate and come up short. Our high standards get the best of us, and the search for the flawless Republican becomes hopeless. We lose to the invisible Democrat. We are forced to seriously re-evaluate our party and our principles or face certain oblivion.

No one could predict how the Republican Primaries would go. It’s as if each state has decided to completely ignore early year projections from the professionals and derail the process, just to be difficult.

I think I have finally figured out why conservatives keep playing “gotcha” with the primaries instead of settling down and selecting one candidate. Not one of them reflects how Republicans see themselves. In fact, each candidate seems to reflect just one aspect of the perfect Republican nominee. It’s like each candidate represents one of the 4 elements. Or better yet, one power in a Saturday morning cartoon series. But with our powers combine, we make CAPTAIN REPUBLICAN.

Chart by Katrina Rice

When early polls showed “generic Republican” beating Obama, that’s exactly what we wanted: the generic Republican. Instead we have just one extreme element battling against another. Family values don’t outweigh business experience; most conservatives reflect both in their personal life. So why can’t our candidate? Is it too much to ask for a Superman? Isn’t that the point of a President: someone who embodies all the greatness of America as we envision it? Or is it impossible to find a Captain Republican?

I think that this primary proves that Republicans won’t be satisfied until that hero appears. We’ll continue to struggle with finding a substitute. We’re left electing a Robin when we really need a Batman. Republicans don’t have an identity crisis; they have a crisis of standards. We’ve set the bar (impossibly?) high. This internal conflict will probably cost us the election in 2012.