Archives for July 2014

By Jack Howard

In 132 days, you may realize your identity was stolen.

Eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds take that long on average to realize they’ve been targeted. By contrast, their parents figure it out within 50 days, according to a Javelin Strategy and Research report.

Consumer advocate Adam Levin says it’s no surprise under 30-somethings account for the most identity theft complaints too. Almost 60,000 cases of stolen personal information were reported to the Federal Trade Commission from that demographic last year.

After all, young peoples’ personal info is all over the place – from social media to even online quizzes.

For instance, BuzzFeed responses could unlock a bank account’s security question. Levin says it’s not safe to reveal even your favorite color or cat’s name.

“It’s almost like components of a nuclear weapon,” he said. “In and of themselves, many of the components are completely harmless. But when assembled, all together, they’re lethal.”

Levin says online activity is one reason why identity theft has become inevitable.

“I believe breaches are rapidly becoming the third certainty in life behind death and taxes,” said Levin.

On average, identity theft costs individuals almost $5,000 to restore their credit rating and peace of mind. Businesses lost an estimated $5.6 million as a result of fraud. And, approximately 13 million Americans were impacted last year.

Free credit score reports give a heads-up your identity has been stolen. Then the real work starts, says identity theft lawyer Hugo Blankingship.

“So you still have to go through the process. You have to write the dispute letters. You have to send them out. You have to wait for the response to come back. And then you need to send them another dispute letter with even more information and documentation. And wait for that response to come back. And once all of that has happened, then you can hire a lawyer. And the lawyer will get your problem solved,” he said.

In short, getting back the identity you lost online requires snail mail, says Blankingship. And some patience.

The first step is reporting the theft to the police. Their report becomes evidence for credit agencies.

Levin says these credit agencies and some bank and employer programs can help. He says identity theft is becoming harder to clean-up by yourself.

“So many forms of identity theft have become so much more sophisticated than ever before, that it’s really beyond the ken of most people to understand what’s happening to know what you need to do to get yourself out of the mess,” he said.

Identity theft can happen when you’re at the hospital too. Last year, 43 percent of all reported incidents happened there, according to an Identity Theft Resource Center report.

Don’t give out your Social Security number until you know you can trust a new hospital. Same goes for a job interview. Levin says an employer shouldn’t require your social until you’re hired.

This may sound overcautious. Worrying about taking online quizzes and giving out your Social Security number all the time isn’t a fun way to live your life.

A start-up called Distil Networks is working to protect your data. Director of Engineering John Bullard says bots can steal personal data from websites by pretending to be you.

“It can do anything you can do logging into a website. It can log into your bank account and download all of your transaction history for the last two to three years so they can really simulate who you are based on your buying history,” he said.

Distil works with businesses to make data safer. They differentiate bad bots like the recent Heartbleed Virus from good bots like Google.

Bots are programs that repeat different tasks using code, or instructions. Last year, Distil found 2.2 billion bad bots.

“By cutting out the bot vector, and all of these easy-to-use automated tools, we make websites much safer,” Bullard said.

Bullard says Distil is in a good position as the internet becomes more open to protect those users.

In the end, consumer advocate Adam Levin says you still have to be careful how you share any personal info. He says identity thieves’ day job is to disrupt yours.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are impressed by Iowa GOP Senate nominee Joni Ernst for her National Guard service and her ability to explain the differences between the two parties.  They also groan as Attorney General Eric Holder once again suggests race is behind the intensity of the criticism he and President Obama receive.  And they laugh as White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest continues to suggest the Obama administration is the most transparent in history.

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A former Clinton administration official believes President Obama is doing a pretty good job responding to the immediate Middle East crisis but is decidedly unimpressed with the administration’s overall Middle East policy and its attempt to establish a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians.

He also says Israel needs to stay aggressive in its current military campaign until some long-term goals are met.

Larry Haas was spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Clinton administration.  He is now a columnist who writes frequently about the Middle East and the need for U.S. foreign policy to be a staunch ally of the Israelis.  Haas is also the author of “Sound the Trumpet:  The United States and Human Right Promotion.”

Haas says it’s only a matter of time before the Obama administration and other world leaders declare the Israeli military action has gone on long enough and demand a cease-fire.  He says Israel should ignore those calls until lasting damage to Hamas has been achieved.

“I hope that Israel is prepared to deliver not just a weakening, not just a blow to Hamas, but a mortal blow to send a signal, not just to Hamas but to other terrorist organizations in the region, that Israel is not going to tolerate this sort of thing,” said Haas.

“It has to send a signal to its own people in southern Israel that it’s going to protect them.  That is the fundamental thing a government needs to do for its own people, provide them safety and security.  So I hope that Israel does not let up until it really delivers a blow that Hamas either will never recover from or will not recover from for a very long time,” he said.

Haas is also not impressed by an Obama editorial in the the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in which the president sserted that the recent murder of three Israeli teenagers was not cause for retaliation but for a new commitment to a two-state solution in the region.

“There’s a little too much moral equivalency in the writing of that piece,” he said, quickly adding that outside of that article, he believes the administration is responding to this crisis the right way.

“From Washington, the president and his team have actually been quite good.  They have made it abundantly clear that the problem is on the Palestinian side, specifically with Hamas, that Israel is defending itself as any other nation would, that no nation should have to live under a constant barrage of rocket fire,” said Haas, noting that the current military action would be happening even if the teenagers had never been murdered.  He says weeks and months of incessant rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel required a response.

While giving the administration credit for its reaction to current events, Haas says Obama’s overall Middle East policy leaves much to be desired.

“In a larger sense this administration has not been good.  They have leaned much too much on Israel and they’ve made Israel the actual impediment to peace, talking about final borders and the settlement issue,” said Haas.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) was the first prominent voice to call for an end to U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinians once Hamas was welcomed back as a governing partner in the Palestinian Authority.  He’ll get no argument from Haas.

“I absolutely agree with those who say we should have an absolute cut-off now with Hamas as one of the government partners,” said Haas.

“It is absolutely intolerable that the United States would be sending aid to a government that is, at least in part, run by an organization dedicated to the destruction of one of our key allies.  I don’t see how we provide aid under those circumstances,” he said.

While Haas says giving taxpayer dollars to a government that includes Hamas constitutes a fool’s errand, he says the track record of Fatah really isn’t much better.

“It is not as clear of a distinction between Hamas and Fatah as we would like to believe it is,” he said.  “Fatah is considered the more moderate of the two outfits here, and I suppose that’s true, but they have not really held themselves up very well in the recent conflict.  They have not really broken with Hamas.  They have glorified the fight on the Palestinian side.”

The re-emergence of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority also means any meaningful peace negotiations cannot happen anytime in the near future.

“I don’t see how any serious person can believe that we can have fruitful negotiations with another government which contains an entity that is dedicated to the destruction of the other partner across the table.  I just don’t see how logic would allow for such a thing,” said Haas.

Earlier this week, Obama’s coordinator for the Middle East, Philip Gordon, told a conference in Israel that it is incumbent upon Israel to forge progress towards peace and the creation of a Palestinian state.

“How will Israel remain democratic and Jewish if it attempts to govern the millions of Palestinian Arabs who live in the West Bank? How will it have peace if it’s unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security and dignity? How will we prevent other states from supporting Palestinian efforts in international bodies, if Israel is not seen as committed to peace? asked Gordon.”

Haas is having none of that.  He says President Clinton proved in the final year of his presidency that the Palestinians have no interest in any settlement that respects the existence of Israel.

“Israel offered the Palestinians 97 percent of what they said they wanted at the end of the Clinton administration in 2000.  They walked away because they’re not prepared to make peace.  Those who burden Israel with the task of making peace singularly are completely off base.  So I disagree with the Phil Gordon statement and some of the other comments that we’ve seen of that ilk from Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama,” said Haas.

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Hillary Clinton’s book tour is not turning out quite as she hoped. Rather than selling books at lightning speed and whetting the appetite of the American people for a 2016 White House bid, most coverage has been about lackluster sales, evasive answers on Benghazi and, especially, her insistence that she and her husband were ‘dead broke’ upon leaving the White House in 2001.

To help clear up their money woes, Bill Clinton joins The Capitol Steps to discuss the real story and why they want you to buy the book. Our guest is Capitol Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud CNN’s Jake Tapper for asking tough questions of a Palestinian spokeswoman and calling her on her lies.  They also shake their heads at President Obama’s latest smug dismissal of claims he’s abusing his power.  And they have fun with the rumors that a Germany vs. Argentina World Cup final is turning Pope Francis and Pope Benedict into rivals.

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While critics of the employer contraception mandate celebrate last week’s victory at the Supreme Court, another looming legal decision in Washington has the potential to gut the most significant components of the entire Affordable Care Act by declaring the majority of health care subsidies illegal.

“This is a really serious one that goes to the heart of the law because it’s all about subsidies.  If these subsidies aren’t legal, then all of Obamacare is really called into question,” said Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a leading health policy research group.

Attorneys and activists on both sides of this debate are awaiting the ruling of a three-judge panel on the D.C. Court of Appeals in the case of Halbig v. Burwell.  The plaintiffs contend the health care law plainly states subsidies are only to be granted to those who enroll through state exchanges.  However, as the result of a 2012 Supreme Court decision, 36 states opted out of that responsibility and the federal government filled the gap through its infamous exchange at healthcare.gov.

Turner says the law is clear about how subsidies are to be distributed and this potential court disaster is largely the result of the haphazard way the law was passed in the first place.

“This law was very sloppily written and never intended to go into effect as it was done.  Because of a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, we wound up basically with a draft as the law.  Well, the law says that the subsidies for health insurance can only be distributed through state exchanges,” said Turner.

“That means that the folks in the 36 states that did not establish an exchange are not getting legal subsidies.  It blows a hole through the middle of Obamacare.  That means if the exchanges are not available, there’s no way to enforce the individual mandate or the employer mandate,” she said.

Losing subsidies would mean substantially higher premiums for millions of people, but how exactly could it trigger the implosion of the key mandates?  Turner says it’s all in the numbers, noting that billions in subsidies and the family budgets of four to five million Americans are potentially at stake in this decision.

“On the employer mandate first, the law says that employers are only subject to the fines and penalties if any of their employees were to get a subsidy for health insurance through the exchange.  If there’s no exchange through which they can get a subsidy, then employers are off the hook for the employer mandate,” said Turner.

“Individuals are not required to purchase health insurance if the cost to them for the premiums would be over a certain percentage of their income.  I believe it’s about 8.5 percent.  What this would mean is that people would then be faced with the full cost of their [premiums], not their subsidized cost.  Eighty-seven percent of people getting health insurance through the exchanges are getting subsidies.  They would then have to pay the full cost.  For the great majority of them, that would be over the 8.5 percent of their income.  Therefore, the individual mandate would not apply to them,” she said.

The decision is expected any day from the three-judge panel.  Turner was in the courtroom in March when oral arguments were heard.  She says the judges seemed to think the law is clear on how the subsidies are to be provided.

“It really sounded to me like the judges were saying, ‘You know, this is what the law says.It’s not up to us to change the law.  If it needs to be changed, you need to go back to Congress to do it.  If it says that Congress only thought the subsidies were only going to go to exchanges established by states, you can’t distribute them through an exchange established by the federal government,'” said Turner.

Turner is cautiously optimistic in a 2-1 decision in favor of the plaintiffs.  Even if that happens, she says there would still be a long road to final resolution of this case, possibly starting with the full D.C. Court of Appeals.

“This is the court that the president has been stacking with liberal appointees.  I think there would not be a win in a full en banc hearing, but there are two other challenges to this, one in Oklahoma and one in Indiana that have not been decided either.  If either one of those were to say that the subsidies are not legal, then you have a split.  The Supreme Court would have to hear it, possibly next term,” she said.

According to Turner, any rebuke from the D.C. Court of Appeals would sting the administration, especially in the wake of a string of defeats at the end of the latest Supreme Court session.

“It really challenges the administration’s modus operandi in deciding they’re going to take the law into their own hands and rewrite the law when it suits them.  If a court slaps them and says you’re not allowed to do that, as the Supreme Court has done thirteen times, then I think that it really is going to trim their sails and make it more difficult for them to make these extra-legal changes going forward.  It’s going to be harder and harder for them to make this law work because the law is so fundamentally dysfunctional,” said Turner.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see justice served in the case of now imprisoned ex-New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.  They also hail a new story by Mollie Hemingway that delineates the ignorant and arrogant liberal media.  And they groan over the new movie suggesting Dan Rather was the wronged hero in the controversy over the false documents and George W. Bush’s military service.

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Texas Rep. Michael Burgess says border officials told him most children detained after illegally crossing the southern border will never be sent home and he says federal officials need to be diligent to ensure deadly diseases are not allowed to run rampant after being brought across the border.

Burgess is a career physician.  Last week he visited an alien intake location in Wesleco, Texas, and a detainment center at Lackland Air Force Base.  While there he learned the government has very different plans than the Obama administration’s stated policy of vowing to send people back to their home countries.

“What I was told on the border last week was that as high as 70-75 percent of these individuals will be remaining in the United States.  I don’t know quite what the disconnect is between what the president’s statements are and the statements I was hearing from people in customs and border control, FEMA and the federal agencies that are charged with taking care of these folks,” said Burgess.

Burgess says the U.S. is capable of caring for the tens of thousands of border crossers on a very temporary basis.  He says if this were the extent of the illegal migration wave it would be daunting enough, but he points out we’re only at the tip of the iceberg.

“The problem is what happens the next day, and the next day and the next day.  From what I could see of the pipeline, there is no letting up.  These numbers are not going to recede.  It is going to take some time for those that have already started to transit.  Even if you were able to stop people at the southern Mexican border right now from coming across, there are a lot of people in the pipeline,” said Burgess.

“There are a lot of people being held in stash houses in Mexico on the other side of the Rio Grande.  There is going to continue to be this pressure on our services, on our resources and on the border.  That is the bigger problem here.”

Another immediate concern is the possibility of diseases breaking out in the U.S.  Reports of tuberculosis, swine flu and scabies have been common over the past few weeks.  Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey, also a longtime doctor, fears some of these diseases could spread too fast to be contained.   Burgess says threat certainly exists, but he says there’s no indication that will actually happen.

“Potentially it is a very big issue.  What I have encouraged people at the agency level is to please take this seriously.  Don’t  be dismissive.  Don’t try to minimize.  At the same time, you want to be truthful with people and if the actual incidences of these illnesses is low, then by all means be truthful about it,” said Burgess.

“But don’t tell people there’s no possibility of tuberculosis coming across the border because you know that’s not true.  When you’ve got 56,000 people streaming across the border in six months’ time, guess what?  There are some things that are going to come along for the ride,” he said.

Burgess has held numerous meetings on the potential health risks posed by the migrants.  In addition to his recent visits to the pair of Texas facilities, he’s conferred with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Refugee Relocation.

“I’ve been very involved in the last month in this process because I want people to be on the level about this.  I don’t want there to be unnecessary alarm, but at the same time people do need to use good sense,” said Burgess, noting that issues like scabies are not life threatening but other diseases detected certainly do.

Burgess says processing of the tens of thousands of the people is s cumbersome process.  He says after being taken into custody, the illegal border crossers go to an initial facility like the one in Wesleco, where as much can be learned about the people as possible.  Then they are flown to a separate facility to have their health evaluated.  Finally, they are sent to a temporary detention center like he saw at Lackland Air Force Base.

However, not everyone stays within the system.  Burgess says he has heard of some intake locations that are simply overwhelmed and the illegals leave and look for assistance in the nearest towns.

Unlike some members of Congress, Burgess was granted access to the two facilities, but he says his activities in both places were very restricted by government officials and no cameras or recording devices are permitted inside.

The congressman says President Obama should “see what I saw” at the detention facilities, including many children being locked inside individual cells.  He also says Obama has an obligation to implore Central American leaders and parents not to send their kids to the U.S.

“He must go publicly, directly to the people in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico and tell the parents in those countries, ‘Do not send your children across the interior of Mexico to come across the Rio Grande into Texas.  Do not send for your children if you are in this country and you have children back home.  Do not send for them through this coyote system that has been developed,'” said Burgess.

Burgess also says Obama needs to get tough on Central American leaders to do much more in securing their own borders and not allowing children and families to be prey for human smugglers.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review react to the Republicans choosing Cleveland for their convention site in 2016.  They also rip the Obama administration for blaming Israel for the protracted freeze in the quest for Middle East peace.  And they laugh at Harry Reid suggesting Clarence Thomas is white and that the Senate can override the Supreme Court’s HHS mandate decision.

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