The Morning Roar: Greenwald To Publish List Of U.S. Citizens Spied On By The NSA, VA Turns To Private Hospitals For Help, A Modest Proposal To Ban Volunteering
Welcome to your Tuesday edition of The Morning Roar!Greenwald To Publish List Of U.S. Citizens Spied On By The NSAGlenn Greenwald has announced that he is set to publish the names of those in the United States that were spied on by the NSA. The names that are listed and the reasoning the government used to justify making these individual targets of the U.S. government could be Greenwald’s most dramatic story yet. That is significant when considering the vast amount of nefarious behaviors that have already been exposed from the treasure trove of documents dumped on Greenwald’s lap by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.The Washington Times reports:
“One of the big questions when is comes to domestic spying is, ‘Who have been the NSA’s specific targets?’ Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we’d regard as terrorists? What are the metrics and calculations that go into choosing those targets and what is done with the surveillance that is conducted? Those are the kinds of questions that I want to still answer,” Mr. Greenwald told The Sunday Times of London.Mr. Greenwald also pointed to the failures of the NSA to catch Mr. Snowden during his download and theft of 1.7 million documents, and said that’s further evidence of the government’s inability to guarantee data security.“There is this genuinely menacing [spy] system and at the same time, [they] are really inept about how they operate it,” he said, Newsmax reported. “Not only was he out there under their noses downloading huge amounts of documents without being detracted, but to this day, they’re incapable of finding out what he took.”
The names will be published on Greenwald’s new website, The Intercept.I’ll be curious to see just how many names Mr. Greenwald includes on the list. Will it be a listing of every single person in the United States?Most assuredly it will not be a listing of every U.S. citizen. Greenwald has already published article detailing the NSA’s practice of collecting and storing email and phone data of all U.S. citizen’s. So I assume he will be focusing on those individuals that have the distinct pleasure of being labeled a specific NSA target. That's my guess at least.Do you think you’re lucky enough to make the list?VA Turns To Private Hospitals For HelpIs anyone else amazed that scandal after scandal government officials in charge of the embroiled agency are never fired? In the real world (not the crony capitalist world) private companies would fire their entire executive teams if they ever allowed a comparable ethical or financial disaster as Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Obamacare or the current VA hospitals scandal to occur on their watch. Heck, their own employees would probably run them out the door!Why is it that in each of the aforementioned scandals and pretty much every government scandal that comes to mind, the agency head directly responsible is never held accountable for the failure? It’s not unreasonable to fire someone if their agency allows innocent people to die on their watch, as has been reported in the VA scandal. Yet VA Secretary Eric Shinseki still has his job and President Obama still has his back. If the VA were a private company Shinkseki would probably be charged with murder or be facing civil lawsuits from patient’s families that died under his care.But in Soviet Russia….wait I mean the United States, Shinseki still has a job and he’s turning to the private sector for help. The Hill reports:
The Department of Veterans Affairs says it will let more veterans obtain health care at private hospitals, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki announced Saturday.Shinseki, who faces calls to resign amid reports of lengthy waiting lists and preventable deaths in the VA’s healthcare system, said the agency is "increasing the care we acquire in the community through non-VA care,"Translation, Non-VA care means that patients are receiving care from “private” hospitals. The healthcare system in this country may not be a shining example of a free market, but it is still immensely better than the conditions at the government run VA hospitals.
If you have been on the fence about the controversial Obamacare and you aren’t sure exactly how best to create an efficient marketplace in healthcare, then look no further than the VA debacle for a case study. The VA hospitals are a preview of what the future holds for medical care in this country if competition is not introduced back into medical care and the slimy tentacles of government are removed. Don’t say you were not warned.A Modest Proposal To Ban Volunteering Please take a moment out of your day to check out a brilliant satirical piece on Reason.com written by A. Barton Hinkle. Hinkle does lose a point for only listing the first initial to his first name, but don’t let that take away from the relevant comparison he makes between volunteering and minimum wage laws.
President Obama and congressional Democrats are hoping they can make political hay out of campaigning to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray wants to raise it to $15. And social-justice activists there say even that falls far too short. How right they are!But if we are serious about addressing economic inequality and restoring social justice, then a minimum wage increase should be just the start. We also need to outlaw volunteering.The corporate media have brainwashed Americans into thinking that volunteerism is a good thing. Maybe people wouldn't think like that if we called it what it really is: working for nothing. Sixty million U.S. suckers put in nearly 8 billion hours last year doing this so-called "service work" for deep-pocketed churches, civic groups, PTAs, Little Leagues and animal shelters. Why should those fat cats get rich off the backs of the toiling and exploited masses?Anybody who has ever done a stretch for a charitable cause knows just how hard it can be. Organizing a weekend camping trip for a dozen Cub Scouts makes the invasion of Normandy look like a game of musical chairs. Moving all the food and equipment, setting up the tents, cooking over a fire, keeping the boys from stabbing one another to death with sticks — it's hot, sweaty, exhausting work. With mosquitoes to boot.If Scouting asked somebody to do it for money, the organization would have to pay at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Even if somebody were willing to do the job for $5 an hour — for the experience or the résumé-padding or whatever — s/he couldn't. It's against the law. Well, then! If we don't let someone work for $5 an hour, why do we let anybody work for $0 an hour? We're a better country than that, people.Now some are going to say there's a difference between working for a for-profit corporation and a nonprofit corporation. Don't you believe it. Nonprofits still have to obey other federal laws, don't they? Can a nonprofit ignore occupational safety standards? Can it flout environmental rules? Of course not. So why do nonprofits get a free pass on wages for "volunteers"?
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