What's going on in the world

On working with the Russians

People think of espionage as this sort of very, very, very glamorous — you know, with fast cars and exotic drinks and great food and in faraway locations — but the reality is, it's more like sales. The real gold of any intelligence agency is a spy, is a human asset ... so these intelligence agencies here in the United States and abroad, they go and knock on doors and they cold-call people. And say they take 20 — maybe one is in something that is both worthwhile, is willing, and is able to deliver information.

You know, with the FBI it's so rare that you get a senior person ... which Oleg, my handler, was. ... He was my spy handler. He was the person who the Russians had appointed to run me as a spy. They knew that just having access was a great start, that this is someone who's gonna come back. We know that it's not gonna be one shot and he's gone. We have a chance to reel him in, so they knew that there was a unique opportunity here, and it was just me convincing them that I was able to deliver the Russians to kind of grow the relationship.

On convincing the Russians he was the "real deal"

It wasn't so much about politics or "I hate the United States" and stuff. It was "Hey, I'm this young kid who's into material things and I wanna make money and you know what? I'm smarter than the rest of the people out there, and i can fool them. I can't get caught." So the Russians' end game was to develop a long term asset, which was me, you know, someone who was gonna operate in five, 10, 15 years. They knew that I was applying to the military and, you know, they assumed that I was gonna have access to more and more information.

On why he wanted to be a spy

After September 11th, I really, you know, I felt a need to do something more than working in technology and I was sort of devastated when I applied to this program as an intelligence offer in the Navy, did not get in — so the first motivation was the Navy. And then when I started doing it the challenge of kind of going head to head with Oleg, it became a challenge of trying to outsmart, outmaneuver Oleg and the Russians and that became sort of a major incentive on its own — it was a real rush to take these guys on.

Read an excerpt of How to Catch a Russian Spy

On how he's regarded in Russia

Look, if anyone wants to send me there I can promise it'll be cheap 'cause you just have to pay airfare one way ... room and board is included. ... I mean it's unfortunate, but I don't think Putin's gonna be — you know, Anna Chapman got over there and he gave her a medal. I don't think that's gonna be the same with me.

double agent

intelligence

FBI

For several years, Democrats have gleefully watched as Republicans threatened to eat their own at the ballot box. Trying to enforce a rigid orthodoxy, groups such as the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Club for Growth and others have funded primary challengers if Republicans didn't fall in line on certain votes on taxes, spending cuts and other conservative issues.

Now, it's Democrats' turn to try and manage intra-party turmoil — also rooted in a similar economic populist strain to the fight on the right — over President Obama's trade legislation. The fight could spill over into the next election, with labor groups threatening primaries against members — even those who sit in swing districts — who sided with the president.

Last Friday, the fast-track authority the president wanted to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership failed in the House after Democrats blocked a key part of the bill that would provide job-training assistance to those who could lose jobs if the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a massive Pan-Asian trade deal, is finalized.

Part of that fast-track authority — with the job-training assistance stripped out — passed the House Thursday narrowly, 218-208. But it still has to get through the Senate before the president can sign it. The challenge for President Obama now is how to get enough Democrats on board in the Senate without the job assistance in the bill or if there will be a supplementary bill that puts it back in.

Labor groups — a well-funded and powerful Democratic stronghold — waged a massive campaign against the bill and claimed victory after it went down last week. Several Democrats found themselves targeted by unions and progressive groups, warning consequences if they backed the trade bill.

"Democrats who allowed the passage of Fast Track Authority for the job-killing TPP, should know that we will not lift a finger or raise a penny to protect you when you're attacked in 2016," said Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America after the House vote Thursday. "We will encourage our progressive allies to join us in leaving you to rot, and we will actively search for opportunities to primary you with a real Democrat. ... Make no mistake, we will make certain that your vote to fast track the destruction of American jobs will be remembered and will haunt you for years to come."

Some have already put their money where their mouth is, too — even if that means inadvertently helping a Republican win next November. The AFL-CIO launched a six-figure ad buy in the expensive New York City media market slamming freshman Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice for switching her position to back the deal. The freshman congresswoman won her Long Island seat just 52 to 47 percent in 2014.

A Rice spokesman shot back telling Vox, "I wouldn't want to be a labor leader and have to explain to my hardworking nurses or truck drivers or tradesmen why we're wasting hundreds of thousands of their families' dollars attacking a progressive Democrat who's with them on nearly every issue but this bill. And I certainly wouldn't want to have to explain to those workers that if their money is successful, they'll get a staunch anti-union representative as their reward."

The labor group also aired a TV ad against California Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, charging he will "do anything to keep his job, including shipping your job overseas."

In total, just 27 Democrats voted yes on both the Trade Promotion Authority, TPA, and Trade Adjustment Assistance, TAA, measures last week. Most of those members come from centrist districts and are facing tough reelection fights. That includes Bera, who is among the most vulnerable members of Congress after only narrowly winning reelection last November. He has claimed the groups are trying to "bully" him into changing his position and that he's voting for what is best for his district.

But labor groups don't seem fazed by the prospect a Republican who would be at odds with them even more could win the seat.

"Ami Bera won off the support of working families' boots in the district, knocking on doors for him," AFL-CIO spokesperson Amaya Smith told Politico. "But no one's saying, 'Let's not call him out, because we're scared of a Republican taking him out.'"

Another California Democratic lawmaker is already seeing rumblings of a primary challenge. Labor groups are urging Assemblyman Henry Perea to challenge Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, according to Roll Call. Costa also only narrowly won reelection last year.

In California, especially, unions and progressives backing another Democrat could have an impact. The state has a "top-two" party primary system, with the top-two finishers advancing regardless of party. An anti-trade candidate could push past the incumbent in a primary and be favored over the GOP nominee, or a split among Democrats could help two Republicans make it to the general.

Some are starting to see shades of the advent of the Tea Party in the aggressive tactics. New York Times columnist David Brooks certainly thinks so, writing in a column this week raising the idea that "the Republican Tea Partiers are suspicious of all global diplomatic arrangements. The Democrats' version of the Tea Partiers are suspicious of all global economic arrangements."

Other groups say that the biggest threat is that their members won't be helping with grassroots efforts. But if it comes to using the same tactics they decry in conservatives, some Democrats are embracing that moniker.

"To the extent that the Tea Party puts pressure on the Republican Party, then yes, we're also putting pressure on Congress to behave a certain type of way," MoveOn.org Action campaign director Justin Krebs told NPR.

MoveOn.org has already put another top lawmaker on notice over trade. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, faced backlash for his support for the bill, with the group saying there is support for a primary challenger, though no alternative has yet emerged.

Earlier this year, the group Fight for the Future began following Wyden around to town-hall meetings in Oregon with a 30-foot blimp, urging him to oppose the trade deal.

The divide isn't just manifesting itself in Congress, though. With progressives like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders — who's surging in the Democratic presidential primary race — leading the charge, it's an issue that's spilling out into the presidential race, too.

Leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has expressed skepticism about the current deal, but has yet to take a concrete position either for or against the proposal. Previously, as secretary of state, she was in favor of it.

Progressives are promising this will be a defining issue for them next election cycle and beyond — one they will use as a stringent litmus test for candidates.

"We know that our members are deeply committed to this issue," Krebs said. "I think you will see that leading into the 2016 discussion even more."

trans pacific partnership

Ron Wyden

trade

Democrats

Congress

Hillary Clinton

Tea Party

David Brooks

Barack Obama

Noisy trolleys roll bales of tobacco on and off the auction floors in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital. Here they call it "green gold." Some of the country's estimated 100,000 small-scale tobacco farmers look on, hoping for profitable sales.

Auctioneers, quoting prices at high speed, pace up and down rows of extra-large jute-covered bundles, with yellow tobacco leaves spilling out.

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Closely behind the auctioneers follow the tobacco buyers. They indicate interest with a wink, a nod, two fingers up, eyes closed and all manner of gestures.
Celani Sithole is an auctioneer and floor manager at TSF — Tobacco Sales Floor — in Harare.

"Our standard sale speed is supposed to be five seconds per bale," she says.

Sithole says they're pushing through 7,000 to 8,000 bales a day. Farmers get their money the day their tobacco is sold.

"As soon as the bales are sold, before arbitration, the farmer has the right to cancel the bale or accept the price," says Sithole.

What we're witnessing on the auction floor is a far cry from just a few years ago. Output of most crops, including tobacco, dropped dramatically when President Robert Mugabe's followers violently drove white farmers, the backbone of the economy, from their industrial-sized farms, starting in 2000.

The government handed the annexed land to black farmers, many of whom had little or no experience. The result was disastrous.

Once the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe began importing food.

Tobacco production also suffered. Export earnings fell from $600 million in 2000 to $175 million in 2009.

The CEO of the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, Andrew Matibiri, says production has rebounded.

"It's back to normal almost," he says. "In terms of world production, we're nowhere near the top — but we're probably at number two or number three, after Brazil and the United States."

Matibiri says farming was especially hard-hit, in part because Zimbabwe's new black farmers couldn't get credit or bank loans. So the tobacco sector and private companies stepped in with a new scheme. They contract with tobacco growers to produce the crop, providing fertilizers and chemicals.

Taizivei Chitaunhike is one of those farmers. The mother of four received her five-hectare farm from the government in 2003. She smiles shyly as she describes how her fortunes changed when she became a contract farmer two years ago.

"If you grow with contractors, you will manage to do all the things that you like on your farm," she says. "The amount of capital that they give me helps me. For sure, I'm now much better for farming production. Tobacco is much better, because I manage to do all my budgets on my farm, we manage to pay school fees, get food and other things."

Chitaunhike says she has been up to the auction floors three times this selling season, with almost 25 bales of tobacco, and is getting good prices.

Sitting close by, under a young jacaranda tree, and listening attentively to Chitaunhike, is another tobacco farmer, Milca Matimbe. She's 53 and got her 27-hectare farm ten years ago. Matimbe has been growing tobacco for five years but does not have a contract with a company. She sells independently and is disappointed with sales this season.

"The prices are not so good for us," she says. "Last year it was better than this year, because the prices are not going up, they're going down. Ah but we have got good tobacco. We don't know if we can go back to the fields this coming season, because we've got no money."

Zimbabwe consumes only a fraction of its premium tobacco output. Tobacco marketing board CEO Matibiri says the flue-cured tobacco is top quality, much prized and expensive. Forty percent of exports go to China, followed by the European Union and South Africa.

"We produce a premium product, which is in demand the world over," he says. "It is said to have very good blending properties. In other words, it mixes very well with lower quality tobaccos produced in other parts of the world, producing nice, very pleasant cigarettes to smoke, if you're a smoker – yeah."

Back on the auction floor, brisk tobacco selling continues. It appears the banks are listening. The Bankers Association of Zimbabwe looks set to lend a billion dollars to agriculture this year — the lion's share going to tobacco farming.

tobacco

Zimbabwe

Congress' official scorekeeper says repealing Obamacare would increase the federal budget deficit and the number of uninsured Americans by 24 million.

The report from the Congressional Budget Office comes as Washington awaits a ruling by the Supreme Court that could end insurance subsidies for some six million people in 30 states.

The report says repealing the Affordable Care Act's spending cuts and tax increases would add $137 billion to the deficit over the next ten years, and the number of people with health insurance would drop from 90 percent of the population to 82 percent.

The CBO says economic growth would be boosted a bit because more people would join the labor force, as the Affordable Care Act's subsidies make it easier for people to work less or stop working and not lose health coverage.

Reaction to the report, as with most things about the health care law, fell along party lines. The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Republican Mike Enzi of Wyoming, chose to focus on how repeal would effect economic growth:

"'CBO has determined what many in Congress have known all along,' said Chairman Enzi. 'This law acts as an anchor on our economy by dragging down employment and reducing labor force participation. As a result, the deficit reduction that the Democrats promised when it was enacted is substantially unclear.'"

Democrats put their focus on the negative impacts of repeal. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi said:

"The cost to the deficit would be surpassed only by the human toll of repeal. Republicans would add over 20 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured, and strip vital health protections from hundreds of millions of American families – shattering the newfound health security that has made a difference in the lives of so many families. Republicans should look at the numbers and finally end their fixation with repealing this historic law."

The new CBO report incorporates the principles of dynamic scoring, which takes into account a wider array of economic factors, and which Republicans say provides a more realistic picture of the economic impact of repeal. The CBO says under the old rules, the deficit would increase even more, by $353 billion over ten years.

Politico says the CBO report could have political implications:

"The estimate will make it harder for Republicans to use so-called reconciliation to repeal the law because congressional budgeting rules bar lawmakers from using the parliamentary maneuver to move legislation that adds to government red ink.

The CBO report said over the long term, repeal would add even more to the deficit:

"Repealing the ACA would cause federal budget deficits to increase by growing amounts after 2025, whether or not the budgetary effects of macroeconomic feedback are included. That would occur because the net savings attributable to a repeal of the law's insurance coverage provisions would grow more slowly than would the estimated costs of repealing the ACA's other provisions—in particular, those provisions that reduce updates to Medicare's payments. The estimated effects on deficits of repealing the ACA are so large in the decade after 2025 as to make it unlikely that a repeal would reduce deficits during that period, even after considering the great uncertainties involved."

federal budget

CBO

Affordable Care Act

deficits