Author Archives: oks23po

WATCH: Hurry to the Conclave! It’s Time to Pick a Pope Fiore Cartoon

by oks23po Posted on February 21, 2013

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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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WATCH: Hurry to the Conclave! It’s Time to Pick a Pope Fiore Cartoon

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Hot Air From Obama on Climate Change?

by oks23po Posted on February 15, 2013

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This story first appeared in Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Some good news for congressional Republicans: The president’s threat to take unilateral action on climate isn’t looking all that threatening. White House officials are talking about small steps the administration could take, but aren’t currently pushing forward on the big executive action that advocates have wanted to see: EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from existing power plants.

During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, the president issued a challenge to Congress to act on climate change. He pointed at previous efforts to pass market-based, cap-and-trade legislation as an example. “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations” from the threat of climate change, he warned, “I will.”

Prior to the speech, there was some speculation that Obama might announce support for carbon regulations on existing power plants. Last week, the EPA reported that such facilities are the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., which means new rules for the plants would be a powerful step in fighting climate change. The EPA has had the power to impose such regulations for a while, but has so far only proposed measures limiting emissions from brand-new power plants. A threat to regulate old plants, many of which have been belching out carbon and particulate pollution for decades, could be potent.

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Hot Air From Obama on Climate Change?

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Practically Everyone Retires Early These Days

by oks23po Posted on February 11, 2013

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As long as we’re on a retirement kick around here, Social Security’s latest statistical supplement is out and you just know you can’t resist diving in to its 528 pages of mind-numbing tables. Just kidding. I’ll bet you can resist. (But if you really can’t resist, the whole thing is here.)

Anyway, here’s an interesting chart (from Table 5.B8) showing the rise in early retirement. Bottom line: Almost no one waits until age 66 (the current full retirement age) these days. A full 71 percent of men and 76 percent of women now get reduced Social Security benefits because they retired early. In 1965, only 21 percent of men and 49 percent of women retired early.

Among men, the average monthly benefit for those who retired early is $1,283. The average monthly benefit for those who waited is $1,625. Among women, the averages are $1,019 and $1,283.

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Practically Everyone Retires Early These Days

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Conservative Judges’ Ruling Would Have Invalidated Hundreds of GOP Recess Appointments, Not Just Obama’s

by oks23po Posted on February 6, 2013

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Conservative commentators have portrayed a federal appeals court’s January ruling that President Barack Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional as nothing more than a stern rebuke to an out of control president. (The Washington Post‘s conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin used the word “power grab” three times in a single post, Heritage called the ruling “a blow to Obama’s imperial presidency”). But the DC Circuit Court of Appeals’ rulingâ&#128;&#148;a unanimous decision by three Republican-appointed judgesâ&#128;&#148;is far broader than Obama’s critics have allowed, and would have invalidated the appointments of some of their favorite presidents, too.

The circuit court’s decision concerned recess appointmentsâ&#128;&#148;temporary appointments, provided for by the Constitution, that presidents can make while the Senate, which normally has to approve many presidential appointments, is on vacation (recess, in DC jargon). For decades, presidents have used these recess appointments to bypass Senate obstruction of their nominees. Obama used recess appointments to put new members on the NLRB; George W. Bush used one to install John Bolton as his ambassador to the United Nations. But in recent years, Democrats and Republicans have tried to block recess appointments by using a procedural gimmickâ&#128;&#148;two or three-minute meetings that were gaveled in and promptly gaveled back outâ&#128;&#148;to keep the Senate “in session” while most Senators were actually on break.

Obama made recess appointments anyway. The court said Obama’s NLRB appointments were unconstitutional because the Senate was still technically in sessionâ&#128;&#148;an embrace of the procedural gimmick.

That’s not all the court said, though. As I reported the day the decision was handed down, the ruling also suggests that almost all recess appointments made over the last hundred years were unconstitutional. The judges said that all recess appointments made during breaks in a session of Congressâ&#128;&#148;the break Congress takes around Easter and Passover, for exampleâ&#128;&#148;are unconstitutional. According to the court, only recess appointments that occur during breaks between sessions (which generally happen once a year, around New Year’s day) are constitutionalâ&#128;&#148;and only then if they are made to fill a position that became vacant during that same break. If the ruling holds, future presidents will find their ability to fill key posts over Senate objections drastically reduced.

As Talking Points Memo‘s Brian Beutler reported Tuesday, a recent Congressional Research Service report found that more than half of the recess appointments made during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush would have been unconstitutional under the DC Circuit’s ruling. CRS found 329 recess appointments that would have been automatically forbidden because they were made during breaks in a Senate session. It also found 323 recess appointments that occurred during a break between Senate sessions, but CRS researchers were unable to determine how many of those were filled because of a vacancy that occurred during the break itself. Since vacancies are only rarely timed to coincide with Senate recesses, it seems likely that many of those recess appointments would have been unconstitutional, too.

Bottom line: Hundreds of recess appointments just in the past 30 years would have been unconstitutional under the court’s ruling. Moreover, in part because of GOP obstruction, no president in the last 30 years has used the recess appointment power less often than President Obama (from the CRS report):

If the appeals court’s ruling is correct, and most recess appointments are unconstitutional, then previous presidents violated the Constitution far more frequently than the man currently sitting in the White House.

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Conservative Judges’ Ruling Would Have Invalidated Hundreds of GOP Recess Appointments, Not Just Obama’s

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GOP to Filibuster Obama’s Consumer Watchdog Pick

by oks23po Posted on February 1, 2013

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A little more than a week after Senate Democrats decided not to weaken the filibuster, Republicans are vowing to filibuster President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless its powers are reduced, Reuters reports.

The CFPB was created as part of the 2010 financial regulation bill specifically to prevent financial institutions from engaging in the kind of exploitative practices that helped lead the country to the brink of economic collapse in 2008. Since January 2012, when Obama appointed former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head the bureau, it has done exactly thatâ&#128;&#148;reigning in unscrupulous mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and debt servicers. But the CFPB has only been able to do those things because Obama, using what’s called a recess appointment, installed Cordray in his post while most of Congress was on vacationâ&#128;&#148;an attempt to bypass Senate Republicans’ efforts to block the nomination. Before Cordray was picked and blocked, Republicans had vowed to filibuster Elizabeth Warren, who came up with the idea for the bureau and helped found it, too. That didn’t go as well as they had hoped: Warren recently returned to the chamber as the new Democratic Senator from Massachusetts.

Last week, however, a DC Circuit Court panel made up of conservative Republican-appointed judges ruled that Obama’s appointment of Cordray was unconstitutional. Although the Constitution allows the president to make temporary appointments while Congress is in recess, the court ruled that a GOP procedural gimmick of holding brief sessions for the express purpose of blocking Obama from making a recess appointment meant that Congress was technically not in recess. Not only that, but the court also so narrowed the criteria for making a recess appointment that most of the recess appointments made by Republican or Democratic presidents over the past hundred years could be considered illegal and unconstitutional.

Senate Republicans want three big changes before they’ll stop blocking Cordray. First, they want the CPFB to be by Congress rather than the Federal Reserve. Subjecting the bureau to the congressional appropriations process would compromise its political independence. Second, Republicans want the range of financial institutions the bureau has authority to regulate narrowed. This would leave unsupervised some of the problematic institutions the bureau was created to regulate. Finally, the GOP is demanding that other bank regulatorsâ&#128;&#148;the same ones who failed to prevent the 2008 financial meltdownâ&#128;&#148;be allowed to chaperone the CFPB by “verifying” that its rules “would not harm the safety and soundness of banks.” This would let regulators who turned a blind eye to exploitative practices in the past because they were profitable tell the CFPB what to doâ&#128;&#148;and the more different regulators have to approve of a rule, the more convoluted and less effective it is likely to be.

Blocking Cordray could leave the CPFB without most of its powers to regulate the very financial institutions whose practices helped lead the country into near-economic collapse in 2008. That’s just how Republicans want it. Having failed to prevent the financial regulation law from being passed, they are now seeking to nullify it through procedural extortion.

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GOP to Filibuster Obama’s Consumer Watchdog Pick

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The 49ers’ Embarrassing Gay-Unfriendly Fumble

by oks23po Posted on February 1, 2013

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Remember all the excitement when the San Francisco 49ers became the first NFL team to make an “It Gets Better” video in support of bullied LGBT teens? Now the Niners are the first NFL team to have its “It Gets Better” video pulled from Dan Savage’s site.

What brought this on: In the same week that 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver said at Super Bowl media day that he “don’t do the gays, man,” and that gay players wouldn’t be welcomed in the locker room following news reports that effectively outed former Niners offensive lineman Kwame Harris, two more San Francisco players, Ahmad Brooks and Isaac Sopoaga, then denied any involvement with making the “It Gets Better” videoâ&#128;&#148;even after a reporter showed them the clip on an iPhone.

The 49ers issued a statement Wednesday separating the organization from Culliver’s comments. He apologizedâ&#128;&#148;but not before offending even more people by riffing on menstrual cycles in a since-deleted tweet. Some teammates and coaches have voiced their concerns; Seattle Seahawks punter Jon Ryan thinks the NFL should suspend Culliver.

Anyway, if you’re still on the fence about Super Bowl XLVII, here’s a helpful reminder: Brendon Ayanbadejo plays for the Ravens.

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The 49ers’ Embarrassing Gay-Unfriendly Fumble

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If named secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel will leave Chevron’s board

by oks23po Posted on January 30, 2013

If named secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel will leave Chevron’s board

By Philip Bump

secdef

Chevron board member Chuck Hagel.

A spot of good news: If Chuck Hagel is confirmed as defense secretary, he will resign his seat on the board of Chevron. While it seems likely that the oil company would prefer he remain, helping guide its strategy as he simultaneously made determinations about the deployment and structure of the largest military in the history of the world, others disagreed.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Chuck Hagel will shed hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Chevron Corp. CVX -0.46% and private equity firm McCarthy Group LLC if the Senate confirms him to be the next defense secretary, according to his financial disclosure. …

Mr. Hagel’s assets were valued between $2.9 million and $6.1 million in total. … In addition to his stock holdings, Mr. Hagel earned $116,000 in director fees from Chevron and between $5,001 and $15,000 in dividends.

In addition to divesting Chevron and McCarthy holdings, Mr. Hagel said he would resign his positions with both firms and 25 other entities.

Why? “One conservative outside group, the American Future Fund, said that the Chevron holdings could have posed a potential conflict of interest because of the company’s fuel contracts with the Pentagon.” Oh, right. The massive conflict of interest. Thanks for pointing that out, conservative outside group.

Once Hagel resigns from Chevron’s board, he will forget all about the company’s priorities and its ongoing arguments for expanding the use of its products in the military. He will not fall back on the many discussions he had as a compensated member of the board and as a shareholder in the company when determining how the military should operate.

Leaving Chevron in the same unhappy position in which Halliburton found itself after its CEO Dick Cheney resigned to become vice president.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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If named secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel will leave Chevron’s board

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New Arizona Bill Wants Hospitals Policing Immigration

by oks23po Posted on January 28, 2013

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The state that brought you SB 1070, perhaps the harshest immigration law in the nation, is at it again with a bill that could bring illegal immigrant-hunting into new territory: hospitals.

Proposed last week by Republican state Rep. Steve Smith, HB 2293 would require hospital workers to verify the immigration status of uninsured people seeking care. They’d have to make note of any undocumented patient, and then call the police.

Speaking outside the Arizona capitol on Thursday, Rep. Smith called it simply “a data-collection bill” to figure out how much Arizona is spending on illegal immigrant care, promising that no one would be denied treatment or deported once their status is disclosed.

Neither of these guarantees is mentioned anywhere in the bill, but co-sponsor Rep. Carl Seel told Arizona’s KPHO that hospitals wouldn’t deny treatment, since “we’re a benevolent nation.”

If enacted, the bill could scare immigrants away from getting medical attention. Nationwide, the undocumented are already far less likely to seek health care. Advocates say the low rate is partially explained by a fear that they’ll be reported to authorities. This law would do little to lighten such distrust: It doesn’t explain what police should or can do with the data flowing in from hospitals. When he was asked whether law enforcement would show up to hospitals when notified, Smith’s response was: “We have no clue.”

Ostensibly, doctors wouldn’t have to juggle providing care and phoning the cops; the bill makes it clear that other hospital employees should handle the bill’s requirements. Still, the state’s hospitals are pushing back. Pete Wertheim, a spokesman for the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, says that with more than 3 million patients each year, the rules would be impossible to implement with current budgets and staffing. He also points out that if the law deterred immigrants with communicable diseases—think tuberculosis—from seeking treatment, it could endanger everyone in the state.

The bill is still in early stages, and hasn’t yet made it to committee. And if precedent is any indicator, it’s not likely to pass: Rep. Smith has introduced similar bills before, with little success. Laws he proposed last year that would have implemented immigration checks at schools and hospitals both failed in the Senate.

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New Arizona Bill Wants Hospitals Policing Immigration

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Exxon makes up with Iraq just in time for the discovery of a billion barrels of oil

by oks23po Posted on January 22, 2013

Exxon makes up with Iraq just in time for the discovery of a billion barrels of oil

By Philip Bump

expertinfantry

An American soldier stands near a 2006 oil field fire near Kirkuk.

Tensions between the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq and that country’s government are high — in large part thanks to oil. ExxonMobil’s recent agreement to explore drilling within Kurdish territory sparked a ferocious response from Iraq. One military officer suggested that exploration would be “a declaration of war.”

It’s no secret what prompts such fury. There’s an enormous amount of money in the Iraqi oil fields; some of those disinclined to be generous to our former president suggest that opening Iraq’s oilfields to American companies was a motive for Bush’s initial invasion of the country. Both Kurdish and Iraqi leaders would like to maintain control over those inky streams of money, reinforcing ExxonMobil’s tricky position.

Last week, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson sat down with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in an effort to repair relationships between the two. It’s an important consideration. When Chevron announced an extraction deal in Kurdistan, Iraq banned the company from exploration elsewhere. From the Associated Press:

Iraq announced the meeting between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Exxon Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson in a brief statement following the talks in Baghdad. It offered few specifics, saying that the men discussed the company’s activities and working conditions in Iraq.

Tillerson said Exxon was eager to continue and expand its work in Iraq and “will take important decisions in this regard,” according to the statement. …

A spokesman for the Kurdish regional government, Safeen Dizayee, downplayed the significance of Monday’s meeting.

“What is important is the results of this meeting, not the meeting itself,” he said. “We have not seen any change in Exxon Mobil’s policies regarding its work in Kurdistan.”

Another recent announcement provides additional incentive for ExxonMobil to mend fences. From Agence France-Presse:

Iraq said on Sunday it has discovered deposits of crude equivalent to one billion barrels of oil after the first exploration work by state-owned firms in almost 30 years.

The deposits were found after exploration in Maysan province, in southern Iraq near the border with Iran, and could potentially make a significant addition to Baghdad’s already substantial reserves.

There’s no indication that ExxonMobil knew about the new discovery prior to Tillerson’s meeting. But it reinforces the value to the company in staying on the Iraqi government’s good side. ExxonMobil’s politics are the same in the Middle East as they are here: work with and support anyone that makes it easier to suck oil out of the ground. Civil wars are bad for business.

Update Patrick Osgood, correspondent for Iraq Oil Report, clarifies (and takes issue with) the report above.

We’re working to verify Osgood’s assertion that the billion-barrel find has been misreported.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Obama Announces 23 Executive Actions to Limit Gun Violence: Here’s the List

by oks23po Posted on January 16, 2013

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President Barack Obama unveiled his proposal for responding to gun violence Wednesday, issuing a list of 23 executive actions he intends to take to try to reduce gun violence in the United States. Many of these steps, such as appointing a director of the ATF and improving background checks, resemble those gun control advocates mentioned to me and my colleague Tim Murphy earlier this week. The 23 executive actions can happen right away, but other parts of Obama’s plan, such as a new assault weapons ban, will require congressional approval.


EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the NRA’s Inner Circle


Meet the NRA’s Board of Directors


Does the NRA Really Have 4 Million Members?


The NRA Myth of Arming the Good Guys


How the NRA Pushed the Right to Pack Heat Anywhere


How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide

Read our special report on the rise of mass shootings in America.

Here’s a list of the executive actions Obama has said he has taken or will take:

1. Issue a presidential memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

4. Direct the attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

5. Propose rule making to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

9. Issue a presidential memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

11. Nominate an ATF director.

12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

14. Issue a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

15. Direct the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

More MoJo coverage on guns:


More Guns, More Mass Shootingsâ&#128;&#148;Coincidence?


The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions


A Guide to Mass Shootings in America


How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide


Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy


How the NRA Pushed the Right to Pack Heat Anywhere

18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship, and institutions of higher education.

20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental-health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

22. Commit to finalizing mental-health parity regulations.

23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

Most of these recommendations, such as getting the CDC involved in research on gun violence, will rankle the gun lobby. (The National Rifle Association has long opposed such research.) Obama has, however, included ideas from gun control critics in his plan. Shortly after the Sandy Hook shootings, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre gave a rambling speech in which he blamed violent movies and video games for gun violence and called for more armed guards in schools. The White House proposal not only includes more armed protection of public schools, but also directs the CDC specifically to “explore the impact of violent media images and video games” on gun violence.

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Obama Announces 23 Executive Actions to Limit Gun Violence: Here’s the List

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