Monthly Archives: June 2015

Some Thoughts on US-Israeli Relations and Iran

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An Israeli has some. Michael Oren, lately Israeli Ambassador to the US and current Member of Knesset had this, in part, from his op-ed in Monday’s Walls Street Journal.

The abandonment of the “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program. Throughout my years in Washington, I participated in intimate and frank discussions with US officials on the Iranian program. But parallel to the talks came administration statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly struck Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to deter Israel from striking Iran pre-emptively.

Finally, in 2014, Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy. The talks resulted in an interim agreement that the great majority of Israelis considered a “bad deal” with an irrational, genocidal regime. Mr Obama, though, insisted that Iran was a rational and potentially “very successful regional power.”

The daylight between Israel and the US could not have been more blinding. And for Israelis who repeatedly heard the president pledge that he “had their backs” and “was not bluffing” about the military option, only to watch him tell an Israeli interviewer that “a military solution cannot fix” the Iranian nuclear threat, the astonishment could not have been greater.

What he said.

Then he concluded:

Now, with the Middle East unraveling and dependable allies a rarity, the US and Israel must restore the “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles. Israel has no alternative to America as a source of security aid, diplomatic backing and overwhelming popular support. The US has no substitute for the state that, though small, remains democratic, militarily and technologically robust, strategically located and unreservedly pro-American.

The past six years have seen successive crises in US-Israeli relations, and there is a need to set the record straight. But the greater need is to ensure a future of minimal mistakes and prevent further erosion of our vital alliance.

That, Sir, must unfortunately await a change in the administration. I hope and pray that Israel can hang on that long.

YGTBSM

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The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through Obamacare, putting significant taxpayer funding “at risk,” according to a new audit report.

HHS’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) said

[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act during the first four months that these payments were made.

Three findings from the audit [emphasis added]:

  • did not have systems in place to ensure that financial assistance payments were made on be half of confirmed enrollees and in the correct amounts,
  • did not have systems in place for State marketplaces to submit enrollee eligibility data for financial assistance payments, and
  • did not always follow its guidance for calculating advance CSR payments and does not plan to perform a timely reconciliation of these payments.

That last is mindboggling.

This administration’s performance, both with Obamacare and with information security generally, just keeps on getting better and better. The audit can be seen here.

Demographics

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Iran has launched its first official matchmaking website, hoping to encouraging millions of singles to marry.

In a ceremony marking the launch of the site on Monday, Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Mahmoud Golzari said the estimated 11 million young unwed Iranians “justified the launching of the site.”

They need to do something. They have a fertility rate of 1.85 children born per woman, sharply lower than the population-maintenance rate of roughly 2.1.

Their impending demographic implosion (although not for a couple of generations; these things take time) also makes them the more dangerous and puts a premium on us monitoring them very carefully and alertly.

Federal Security and Privacy

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A government data warehouse stores personal information forever on millions of people who seek coverage under President Obama’s health care law, including those who open an account on HealthCare.gov [ObamaMart] but don’t sign up for coverage.

The Feds are proud of that, too:

The health care system, known as MIDAS, is described on a federal website as the “perpetual central repository” for information that the Affordable Care Act authorizes federal agencies to collect.

“Data in MIDAS is maintained indefinitely at this time,” says another document, a government privacy assessment dated Jan 15.

Never mind that

Marilyn Tavenner, the Medicare administrator at the time, told a congressional hearing that the program’s technology infrastructure was designed “to minimize all possible security vulnerability.”

“And we especially focused on storing the minimum amount of personal data possible[.]”

Or that proper information security technique has data destroyed after a fixed period of time, not held in perpetuity, or for as long as convenient to the holder of those data.

And this gem:

The Obama administration says MIDAS is essential to the smooth operation of the health care law’s insurance markets and meets or exceeds federal security and privacy standards.

The Obama administration has shown us, with OPM, just how shockingly low those security and privacy standards are.

Hmm….

Couple Thoughts about Academic Censorship

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The American Association of University Professors has decided to censure the University of Illinois because the school decided to withdraw it offer of employment to a “professor” who went off on an anti-Israel tirade on Twitter.

First thought: U of I Chancellor Phyllis Wise is taking the AAUP’s censorship seriously. Why? The man objected, loudly and vociferously, to Israel’s defending itself against the Palestinian Authority’s terror war that it launched from Gaza.

Second thought: the censure was done by voice vote. It was carefully anonymous. How can any action by a body like this be taken seriously by a body like a university when the voters are so timid or so ashamed of their votes that they avoid being on the record with their vote?

Third thought: Anita Levy, Associate Secretary for the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, & Governance said that U of I’s decision

violated Professor [Steven] Salaita’s [the professor in question] academic freedom and cast a pall of uncertainty over the degree to which academic freedom is understood and respected[.]

This is facially untrue. Salaita’s rants cast a pall over his own ability to respect the academic freedom of his peers and more importantly, of his students, and to teach and to grade in an objective manner. By withdrawing their offer of employment, the U of I was acting to preserve true academic freedom, not the freedom to behave in the manner selected academics deem appropriate.