How long does anyone think that our personal health information will remain private? Of course, this was the usual Friday news dump. Our gal Sebelius comes up with another 253 pager to add to the thousands of pages of “implementation” rules. There is a 30 day period for comment, but don’t hold your breath that there is anyone in Congress that has any interest in the matter. Throw in the IRS and Big Brother knows all. Here we go:
A new 253-page Obamacare rule issued late Friday requires state, federal and local agencies as well as health insurers to swap the protected personal health information of anybody seeking to join the new health care program that will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service.
Protected health information, or PHI, is highly protected under federal law, but the latest ruling from the Department of Health and Human Services allows agencies to trade the information to verify that Obamacare applicants are getting the minimum amount of health insurance coverage they need from the health “exchanges.”
The ruling, explained on pages 72-73 of the book-thick guidance, does not mention any requirement that applicants first OK the release of their PHI. HHS already allows some exchange of PHI without an individual’s pre-approval, especially when for a “government program providing public benefits.” Officials said the swapping of information is simply meant to help figure the best insurance coverge of Obamacare users.
“The exchange would submit specific identifying information to HHS and HHS would verify applicant information with information from the federal and state agencies or programs that provide eligibility and enrollment information regarding minimum essential coverage. Such agencies or programs may include but are not limited to Veterans Health Administration, TRICARE, and Medicare,” said the new rule, which HHS is seeking public comment on.
Maggie’s Notebook brings us this: Arizona Proof of Citizenship Voter Registration Law Struck Down at Supreme Court – Thomas, Alito Dissent. Wander over for her thoughts on the matter. (Two posts today).
Arizona’s voter registration law (Proposition 200) was struck down by the Supreme Court today with Justices Thomas and Alito dissenting. The law required showing proof of citizenship at the time of registering:
U.S. Supreme Court
In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the state law was preempted by language in the federal statute saying that states must “accept and use” a federal registration form.
The state law ordered officials to reject the form if there was no accompanying proof of citizenship. Source: Reuters
Alabama, Georgia and Kansas have similar laws and joined Arizona’s case.
Look at this from Justice Sotomayor:
At an oral argument in March, Thomas Horne, a lawyer for Arizona, told the justices that the state was within its rights to ask for additional information beyond the simple federal form.
“It’s extremely inadequate,” Horne said. “It’s essentially an honor system. It does not do the job.”
“Well,” answered Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “that’s what the federal system decided was enough.” Source: USNews-NBC
Just wait until we get 30 million more “immigrants” on the non-books. Washington State does not even have polling locations. All is done by mail. What with same day registration, some states voting for over a month, no standards whatsoever, but now we must “accept and use” a federal registration form? Even Banana Republics require I.D.
Apparently, Congress has not received the message from the voters. It is going to be “pork’ on steroids. Amazing that these same people will present themselves for re-election in 2014. For the House, all of them. So while they wail about the massive over spending that is a threat to the survival of our nation, the debt we are burdening the next generations that will be impossible to repay, it’s spend, spend, spend. So they roll food stamps into the farmers pork bill. Better to see you my dear. And we do. A nice piece over at Hot Air that let’s us know what is going down while the thieves in chief spy on our behaviors.
This behemoth and pork-filled bill is going to be directing a full decade’s worth of federal policy, but it’s going to fly on through under the radar to the tune of a trillion dollars paying for all kinds of miscellaneous programs, like expanding broadband in rural communities and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay; it’s nothing short of a raging party funded by the taxpayer’s dime, and everybody’s invited!
The Heritage Foundation points out, this is all a lot of hemming and hawing over what is a much more expensive bill than the last go-around, plain and simple:
As the WSJ points out, peanut, cotton, and sticky-rice farmers are going to be some of the big winners of the price guarantees in the bill:
The federal subsidy in the House bill guarantees farmers of Japonica Rice that if market prices drop below 115% of the average price of all types of rice, they will get a government payment to make up the difference. …
The move shines a light on guarantees against drops in commodity prices that are in some ways replacing the much-maligned direct payments to farmers Congress is seeking to end. Subsidies for products such as corn, wheat and cotton cost taxpayers about $5 billion a year. Rice growers have received a total of more than $2.6 billion in subsidies since 1995, according to the Environmental Working Group…
The sticky-rice provision won strong support from, among others, two Northern California lawmakers from neighboring districts, according to congressional aides and people working with the rice industry: Freshman Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a fourth-generation Japonica Rice farmer who sits on the House agriculture committee; and Democratic Rep. John Garamendi, a rancher and pear farmer.
Something for a Sunday respite. Almost. Apparently they could use some help from the kind folks over at the IRS who got their line dancing moves down. Politicians dancing and singing with a celebrity while surrounded by statues of some of the Founding Fathers of our country. I wonder what they would say… And the song? STOP in the name of love. Quite apt!
It is a Saturday, and thought it might be good to give you an update on some older news. Especially since we apparently have new best friends in Syria and we will be giving our treasure, if not our blood. There was much discussion about Gore benefitting from all of this oil money, but not so much from what will be our need to fight the jihadists propaganda right here into our living rooms via Al Jazeera. Tell your cable company no, not one dime to them from our subscription. They are in negotiations now.So let’s check this out:
In his latest message to the Muslim world, Al-Awlaki defends the journalists of one such “trustworthy” Muslim source, Al-Jazeera, and praises the Western media source WikiLeaks. The message, a six-minute video of his speech “A Message to the Members of the Media,” was released February 14, 2011 by the jihadi forum Shumukh Al-Islam.[4] In it, Al-Awlaki also accuses the U.S. and the West of using liberty and freedom of expression as a pretext to take over the world’s resources and treasures, and to oppress and deprive people of their rights. He said that whenever anyone tries to expose “the truth about the U.S. and its agents,”
“Like it or hate it, it is really effective,” Clinton said. “In fact, viewership of Al-Jazeera is going up in the United States because it is real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news that is not providing information to us, let alone foreigners.” Has she really watched it? I have…so much better than Fox News…
And it was the most prominent new programmer at this week’s annual confab looking to establish itself in cable’s mainstream. “We’re having encouraging meetings” with distributors including Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, and Cox, Al Jazeera Media Network’s international operations executive director Ehab Al Shihabi tells me. He could use some deals: At this point AJA should reach about 49M pay TV homes at launch, mostly subscribers with Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, AT&T U-verse, and Verizon FiOS.
Al-Jazeera is filled with anti-American propaganda. It is also awash in anti-Semitism. The material broadcast stokes terror and violence.
Why would the person who Barack Obama appointed to be the Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, advocate American cable companies carry the channel-a channel that cannot help but inflame tensions and anger and one that is not known for unbiased accuracy.
Kayyem comes from a Lebanese-American family and was the first Arab-American inidvidual to work as a homeland security adviser on the state level.DHS, “Secretary Napolitano Names Juliette Kayyem as Assistant Secretary,” March 5, 2009(1)She was also the only Arab-American to serve on the National Commission on Terrorism, which examined “the changing threat of international terrorism” from 1999 to 2000.Los Angeles Times, “Arab American named to US terorr panel,” July 31, 1999(2)Los Angeles Times, “Arab American named to US terorr panel,” July 31, 1999National Commission on Terrorism, 2000(3) Washington Post Who runs Gov
We have enough terror apologists in the media already without an entire station devoted to obscuring the truth being beamed into America’s homes.
Set to start in earnest this August.
“we will cover celebrities and how they’re attached to Main Street. They are doing a lot for their communities and that has not been highlighted.” And we appreciate their main stream conservative views
FOR THE past few weeks, a parallel plot line to the revolutions in the Arab world has been playing out in the media. With rare exceptions, the largest American cable and satellite providers simply do not provide viewers access to Al Jazeera English, the cousin to the powerful Qatar-based world news network. AJE has launched a full-fledged campaign – including advertisements quoting, of all people, major US news figures – to convince cable carriers to open their programming. But most have declined: Burlington, Vt., is the closest city to Boston where viewers can see the network on television.
AJE’s battle with the cable carriers is major news in the Middle East. Not carrying the network sends a message to the Arab world about America’s willingness to accept information, unfiltered, from the very region we spend so much time talking about. These television wars began not in Tunisia or Egypt, but in Iraq.
The absolute absurdity of the hearings regarding the spying on Americans. All of the participants lying through their teeth, and the Congressmen and women feigning outrage of what all of them have to know, that indeed our government does do massive surveillance. Even better, we now have this character Snowden supposedly revealing these secrets that have been out for over a decade. It goes back to the 1970′s, but let us pick up the story in 1999 and 2001. My tin foil rests its case.
So what’s the problem with Echelon? It isn’t only industry that’s at risk. The report says that in the process of industrial spying, Echelon is eavesdropping on millions of daily communications between ordinary people.
The worry is that Echelon could become a cyber secret police, eroding individuals’ right to privacy. The MEPs have warned the government that Britain could be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights because of its participation in Echelon.
As National Security Agency expert James Bamford explains in his book Body of Secrets: “The real issue is whether Echelon is doing away with individual privacy, a basic human right.”
Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s true.
Two of the chief protagonists – Britain and America – officially deny its existence. But the BBC has confirmation from the Australian Government that such a network really does exist and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for an inquiry.
On the North Yorkshire moors above Harrogate they can be seen for miles, but still they are shrouded in secrecy. Around 30 giant golf balls, known as radomes, rise from the US military base at Menwith Hill.
Linked to the NSA
Inside is the world’s most sophisticated eavesdropping technology, capable of listening-in to satellites high above the earth.
Facility is said to be capable of 2m intercepts per hour
The base is linked directly to the headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Mead in Maryland, and it is also linked to a series of other listening posts scattered across the world, like Britain’s own GCHQ.
The power of the network, codenamed Echelon, is astounding.
Every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission can be listened to by powerful computers capable of voice recognition. They home in on a long list of key words, or patterns of messages. They are looking for evidence of international crime, like terrorism.
Open Oz
The network is so secret that the British and American Governments refuse to admit that Echelon even exists. But another ally, Australia, has decided not to be so coy.
The man who oversees Australia’s security services, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security Bill Blick, has confirmed to the BBC that their Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) does form part of the network.
“As you would expect there are a large amount of radio communications floating around in the atmosphere, and agencies such as DSD collect those communications in the interests of their national security”, he said.
Asked if they are then passed on to countries like Britain and America, he said: “They might be in certain circumstances.”
But the system is so widespread all sorts of private communications, often of a sensitive commercial nature, are hoovered up and analysed.
Journalist Duncan Campbell has spent much of his life investigating Echelon. In a report commissioned by the European Parliament he produced evidence that the NSA snooped on phone calls from a French firm bidding for a contract in Brazil. They passed the information on to an American competitor, which won the contract.
“There’s no safeguards, no remedies, ” he said, “There’s nowhere you can go to say that they’ve been snooping on your international communications. Its a totally lawless world.”
Breaking the silence
Both Britain and America deny allegations like this, though they refuse to comment further. But one former US army intelligence officer has broken the code of silence.
Colonel Dan Smith told the BBC that while this is feasible, it is not official policy: “Technically they can scoop all this information up, sort through it, and find what it is that might be asked for,” he said. “But there is no policy to do this specifically in response to a particular company’s interests.”
Legislators on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to sit up and take notice. Republican Congressman Bob Barr has persuaded congress to open hearings into these and other allegations.
In December he is coming to Britain to raise awareness of the issue. In an interview with the BBC he accused the NSA of conducting a broad “dragnet” of communications, and “invading the privacy of American citizens.”
He is joined in his concerns by a small number of politicians In Britain. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has tabled a series of questions about Menwith Hill, but has been met with a wall of silence.
“There’s no doubt it’s being used as a listening centre,” he said, “There’s no doubt it’s being used for US interests, and I’m not convinced that Britain’s interests are being best served by this.”
Avril D. Haines – Legal Adviser, Department of State now becomes the CIA deputy director. For some reason I though the CIA was supposed to worry about intelligence. Silly me. Might as well move someone from State over since its been hard to get the stories straight. Of course, it begs the question why the present fellow Michael Morell is getting out of dodge. I bet a couple of us have our suspicions.
Retiring CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell Swears He Just Wants More Family Time
Michael Morell, the deputy director of the CIA who announced his retirement today, last found his name in the news after the White House released a trove of e-mails detailing how the much-maligned Benghazi talking points came to be. The documents suggest it was Morell who insisted on removing references to terrorism from the talking points, which U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used on the Sunday talk shows after the attack. That omission has helped fuel cries that there was a cover-up of the nature of the attack. But Morell insists his departure a month later has nothing to do with the fact he was left holding the talking points bag.
The CIA’s deputy director plans to retire and will be replaced by White House lawyer and agency outsider Avril D. Haines, Director John O. Brennan said Wednesday.
Haines, who will succeed career officer Michael Morell on Aug. 9, has served for three years as President Obama’s deputy counsel in charge of national security issues and as legal adviser to the National Security Council. Although she has never worked inside the intelligence agency, “she knows more about covert action than anyone in the U.S. government outside of the CIA,” Brennan said in his first interview since becoming CIA director in March. Sure, sure, sure, but it helps to have a lawyer around these days!
