Someone Should Go Hungry

As a staff full of people who grew up in or now live in Nebraska, there are some traits we share that are prototypically Nebraskan.

We all enjoy working hard, and we usually enjoy a "see food" diet - when we see food, we eat it, especially if it's good. We also tend to enjoy old-fashioned, common sense sayings about topics like work and food. For example, 'Those who do not work, do not eat."

That particular saying, in fact, has been on our minds recently as we've watched members of the U.S. Senate struggle, argue, and eventually come to a compromise on the 2013 Farm Bill, which they passed with solid bipartisan support on Monday, 66-27.

Of course, while the U.S. Senate was busting its ass, working hard to find compromise to get that farm bill passed, members of the U.S. House were effectively sitting on their asses, throwing placating remarks into the media about passing the farm bill, even as they continued to toss political and verbal darts at President Obama. Like immigration reform and the background check bill, serious doubts remain that the farm bill will even make it to the floor of the House this year.

That makes us more than a little bit angry with the do-nothing House of Representatives, where too many of its intellectually lazy and dishonest members - especially on the Republican side - have done little actual work this year.

Frankly, in line with that old work and food axiom, we're wondering if more of those House members shouldn't literally starve a bit, for motivation.

Yes, we're aware the "Farm Bill" isn't strictly about farms, but is really more about food for all Americans - how it's grown, what crops are subsidized, what happens to those crops when bad weather comes, and finally, how the food our nation raises and grows can be distributed to all Americans, not just the richest among us.

Brad Plumer over at Wonkblog did a fantastic job of dissecting the farm bill, and he breaks down the many component parts, from crop insurance and commodity programs, to subsidies and conservation. The biggest sticking point however, remains the portion of the farm bill that deals with food stamps.

While the Senate wants to cut about $4 billion from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for poor and elderly, tea party extremist Republicans in the House want to cut food stamps and other food programs for the poor by $20 billion or more. Hypocrites like GOP Rep. Stephen Fincher have displayed brutal attitudes towards the poor, even while he's been receiving his own farm bill welfare subsidies - $3.5 million worth - since 1999.

As The Economist magazine made clear in 2011, most Americans receiving food stamps are either children or elderly, and most are living far below the poverty line, even though they have at least one job. In other words, those people House Republicans want to starve are the working poor.

Meanwhile, when was the last time the U.S. House passed any worthwhile bills, with a majority of all House members, from all political backgrounds - that would also pass the Senate? Frankly, we can't remember the last time the Republican-led House of Representatives did anything that could seriously be called "work."

When it comes to the farm bill, we do agree with those lazy, selfish, extremist Republicans on one thing - someone should go hungry. We just don't think it should be the working poor.

Nothing To Fear But Ourselves

For almost a week now, we've covered many aspects of the NSA leaks controversy, from the unsurprising "revelation" our government is spying on us, through the sloppy and less-than-professional way the story surrounding the NSA leaks was broken in the Guardian and Washington Post.

Unsurprisingly, two of the three members of the media that the leaker Edward Snowden trusted to break his story now appear to be squabbling about who was REALLY responsible for 'discovering' Snowden. Sadly, that kind of selfish and unprofessional behavior merely validates our previous opinion of at least one of the three.

For much of the nation, however, this childish squabbling, and indeed the entire debate over security and liberty is one they seemingly could care less about.

From cameras on nearly every corner, to every phone and most laptops having a camera, for a nation once proud of a President who declared "The only thing we have to fear… is fear itself," we've now become a nation that seems driven by fear, with electronic eyes seemingly everywhere.

As a Pew Poll released on Monday makes clear, most Americans today continue to be generally OK with giving over some of their freedom and privacy to their government, in exchange for a level of security that Americans now routinely demand.

It's not just the government that we're all handing our data over to, though. It's corporate America, who - unlike the military or even the government - often has no rules about how they use or misuse our information.

From online companies like Facebook and Google, to old fashioned brick-and-mortar retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, just about every corporation wants to track nearly everything about what Americans do. And Americans often - far too often - gladly give up our personal information, in exchange for a shiny online trinket, or access to some special song or video.

Yet, when the government tries to get that same information, suddenly, some Americans scream that there are eyes on them everywhere. That reaction is both hypocritical and stupid, since the government will often just buy, trade, or take the info it wants from those corporations, anyway.

The key to settling down the hype is the one President Obama pointed out last Friday, the same issue we mentioned Monday morning, and the same issue Greg Sargent of the Washington Post nailed Monday afternoon: That there can be a balance between giving our information over and living in a perpetual surveillance state.

On giving our information to government, as Sargent notes, that balance can be achieved by refining laws that narrow the scope of information government can obtain, and by bringing greater transparency to existing programs.

On  giving our information to corporations, Rainey Reitman, Activism Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in a recent interview with blogger Alan Henry there are also ways consumers can rein in their data - including opting out of certain types of advertising.

As you can see, Americans have little reason to fear how our information is being shared unless - as things are now - we're too lazy to be responsible about how we handle that information.

Fairy Tales & Frustrations

As we expected last week, when the latest controversy about the NSA's spying programs hit the media, much more of the story was likely to come out over the weekend. Indeed, more of the story has now come out - though certainly not in the way those deifying writer Glenn Greenwald wished it would.

We warned on Friday that Greenwald - an excellent writer on many issues - is not a journalist, and that his lack of formal training and professionalism would likely cause him and this story trouble. Sure as the sunrise, questions surrounding procedures and verifications that Greenwald, the Guardian, and the Washington Post SHOULD have made on this story before publishing - but quite obviously did not - have now been raised by writers and journalists alike.

What could have been a fast-growing seed planted by Greenwald, that could have led to a long-overdue national discussion of privacy and security has instead turned into childish bickering by politicians and the media over a story with elements of a fairy tale. As for frustrated Americans, they're simply fed up with spying from the government, incompetence from the media, and lying from both - and now they're in no mood for an in depth discussion of either privacy or secrecy.

A handful of editors at the Washington Post didn't help this mess over the weekend. Just as the Post is starting to ask readers to pay for their online product, their editorial conduct on this story raised some questions. A key "fact" in their reporting of the NSA & FBI's PRISM program - that the government was "tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies" - was altered by the Post over the weekend, with barely any fanfare at all. Yet without that key fact, many of the most exciting details fall apart, since the program's ideas are not new, as we stated on Friday. That Americans believe their government is spying on them is something many Americans either already knew about or have long assumed.

Things fell apart further after the leaker, Edward Snowden, outed himself over the weekend. It's become blazingly obvious to anyone that passed Journalism 101 that Snowden has far too little formal training and education to have been allowed the kinds of clearance he claims to - and apparently did - have. A major credibility gap in any source's background like that, on a story this important should have rang major warning bells at both the Guardian & the Post. Instead, both rushed to publish before they had their facts straight. This lapse in judgement leads us to believe Greenwald's fact checking at times may have been treated to barely more supervision and journalistic scrutiny than he's previously had at other major media organizations.

None of this addresses the key discussion which we are certain Greenwald wanted to open up - and on that note, we do not fault him. If Glenn Greenwald's intention was to open up the national discussion between security and privacy, we laud him for at least having the guts to address head-on a topic the overwhelming majority of our media colleagues have successfully avoided since 2001.

That topic is one that President Obama himself addressed directly in unscripted remarks Friday, when he said, "It’s important to recognize that you can’t have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society."

What's obvious now is that Mr. Greenwald, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and Mr. Snowden have all made choices they're going to have to deal with, as more of the facts of this case unfold. Whatever their motives may have been, those of us who do care about the discussion of the balance between security and liberty will now have to work significantly harder to get Americans truly engaged in that valuable debate, thanks to the bungled delivery of this story so far.

We understand the best intentions of Greenwald, Snowden, the Guardian, and the Post may have all been good. As the Christian axiom says though, the road to hell is also paved with good intensions. Maybe next time a story of such magnitude hits the desk of a major media organization, instead of simply making this another fairy tale to anger the public, they'll invest in some solid journalism before hitting "publish," and won't trust so much in unverified details from unknown sources that are too good to be entirely true.