Posted on March 26, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien
Resolution? Resolving civil-liberties issues? How could such atepid response to the NSA scandal not fulfill the old adage: When politicians want to deflect/detract/pretend to solve a problem, they create a non-solution. One durable method is to appoint a commission and have it issue a report. (See the Warren Report about JFK’s assassination, or the Kerner Commission about the rioting in Watts.) This is American Politics 101.
But here’s something that is not American Politics 101 but rather comes from the economics department: The idea that small businesses in Europe are marketing anti-Americanism. What an idea! Capitalize on the American empire. Capitalize on or monetize the hypocrisy of the U.S., all the while undermining our economic dominance. An example is Norway’s Runbox email service, which does not use U.S. servers.
Technology companies that shun the U.S. are having a heyday, to the tune of 36 to 180 billion dollars in lost revenue by American companies. That’s right, $180 billion, though it’s hard to document opportunity losses, when American firms are not being invited to submit bids.
Clearly, Obama tapped the wrong phones. Arguably the worst ones to tap were Angela’s and Dilma’s (that is Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was “Born in the USSR” — or its satellite, East Germany — and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff ).
The Obama administration out-Stasied the Stasi. It’s time for Obama to Netflix The Lives of Others.
Ruth Frick O'Brien 