Tag Archives: president-obama

Affirmative Action Upheld, Executive Action on Immigration Struck Down

by MyrtleDortch Posted on June 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Texas today, but deadlocked on DAPA, President Obama’s executive action on immigration:

The Supreme Court handed President Obama a significant legal defeat on Thursday, refusing to revive his stalled plan to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and give them the right to work legally in this country. The court’s liberals and conservatives deadlocked, which leaves in place a lower court’s decision that the president exceeded his powers in issuing the directive.

What does this mean? A district court in Texas issued a nationwide injunction against DAPA, which was upheld by the appeals court and now by the Supreme Court. Or, to be more accurate, it wasn’t overturned by the Supreme Court. So it stays in place. But can an appeals court rule for the whole country? What happens if a similar case goes forward in, say, California, and the 9th Circuit rules differently?

We shall have to wait and see. Ruling against a president on immigration is unusual to say the least, so this case suggests either (a) Obama really was out on a limb with DAPA or (b) nobody really cares about precedent or the law anymore. Liberals rule for Obama and conservatives rule against him, and that’s that. I’m not entirely sure which I believe.

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Affirmative Action Upheld, Executive Action on Immigration Struck Down

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Republicans in Congress just passed a law giving EPA more power

by LouisaMichalski Posted on June 9, 2016

The Chemical Bothers

Republicans in Congress just passed a law giving EPA more power

By on Jun 9, 2016Share

Congress did something this week that’s practically unheard of. It handed the Environmental Protection Agency broad new powers.

The Senate on Tuesday passed a sweeping bill that revamps how federal regulators handle chemical safety, after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) lifted a last-minute hold on a vote. Because the House already passed the same reconciled version, the bill is headed to President Obama’s desk, where he is expected sign it into law.

Which means a Republican-controlled Congress managed to do something that no Congress since 1976 had been able to do: Overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act, a flawed, unenforceable law that gave the EPA just 90 days to study whether a new chemical was dangerous. It didn’t even allow the EPA to regulate asbestos-containing products, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in 1989.

The new bill means the EPA can finally evaluate cancer-linked substances like BPA and styrene used in plastics and formaldehyde found in fabrics and cars. It establishes uniform standards for evaluating about 20 chemicals at a time, and means more funding can be directed toward studying high-priority problem chemicals, especially those used near drinking water.

In extreme cases, the law might lead to a ban on certain chemicals. In others, it might mean more warning labels or limited use.

For a little perspective on just how great a task the EPA now has ahead, there are some 64,000 unregulated chemicals on the market.

No law, much less one coming from a conservative Congress, is perfect. And the industry won at least one key fight: States won’t be able to restrict or ban chemicals if they’re under review by the EPA. That’s why the Environmental Working Group opposed the bill, and why New York’s attorney general said he was disappointed in it. But most health and green groups accepted the compromise bill as an overall win.

This was a rare instance in which the manufacturers and chemical industries were on the same side as environmental and public health advocates: Everyone knew the current system was broken and needed to be fixed, and still it took many years to reach a compromise. Even the Senate’s resident science denier James Inhofe (R-Okla.) endorsed the bill.

But don’t expect to see this kind of cooperation on other public health issues, from lead-poisoned water to any of the threats posed by climate change. For that, we’ll need a very different Congress — and we can’t afford to wait another 40 years to get it.

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Republicans in Congress just passed a law giving EPA more power

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Republicans in Congress try to paperwork the EPA to death

by RoyalOShaughness Posted on April 15, 2016

Republicans in Congress try to paperwork the EPA to death

By on 15 Apr 2016commentsShare

In news that should surprise absolutely no one, an investigation shows the Republican-controlled Congress has it out for the Environmental Protection Agency. Its method: Annoying it to death.

Bloomberg BNA analyzed documents requests sent to the EPA and found that in just 2015, Congress sent the agency 884 letters requiring a response, 60 document requests, and one subpoena. In response, the EPA’s staff had to provide Congress with over 276,000 pages of documents.

All this paperwork impedes the EPA’s ability to do its job, according to Jeffrey Lubbers, a professor of administrative law at American University. Lubbers told Bloomberg BNA that the “EPA is probably one of the few agencies that gets this many. Because agencies have to take these requests very seriously, they have to spend a lot of time on them.”

The irony here is that after Congress flooded the EPA with requests, it criticized the agency for acting slowly. This isn’t entirely surprising from a Senate led by Mitch McConnell, who is currently urging states to refuse to work with the EPA on complying with President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. McConnell is hardly alone in his disregard for the EPA. “If [the EPA] actually acted in a responsible way, they wouldn’t get all these letters,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Bloomberg BNA. “These letters are all generated by their irresponsible actions.”

As to what these “irresponsible actions” are, Barrasso didn’t say. Maybe he’ll request more documents to get to the bottom of it.

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Republicans in Congress try to paperwork the EPA to death

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Trump manages to surprise us with strange “climate” obsession

by MayDeeter575 Posted on March 28, 2016

Trump manages to surprise us with strange “climate” obsession

By on 28 Mar 2016commentsShare

Leave it to Donald Trump to stumble onto a talking point that can still surprise us. Trump has told two newspapers in the last week that nuclear weapons are the only type of climate change that concerns him.

“I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons,” he told The Washington Post Editorial Board when asked about his concern for human-made warming. Trump then told The New York Times in an interview about his foreign policy, completely unprompted, “When people talk global warming, I say the global warming that we have to be careful of is the nuclear global warming.”

Trump’s nuclear-as-climate-change concern hasn’t yet reached the same level of infamy of lines like, “I’m not a scientist,” but he’s been tweeting on it since at least 2014:

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Apparently, it’s a reference to the Cold War-era debate over the threat of a nuclear winter if the United States and Soviet Union were to go to war, but now he means it in the context of North Korea and Iran. Conservatives might not normally compare nuclear weapons directly to climate change, though they do like to complain that President Obama overstates the risks of climate change compared to terrorism and foreign threats (see Mike Huckabee’s favorite quip, “I assure you that a beheading is much worse than a sunburn”).

In the same Post interview, Trump insisted he isn’t a “big believer in man-made climate change.” But he hasn’t mentioned his other two favorite theories in a while about how climate change is a hoax: Cold weather in New York debunks global warming, and the whole thing is a con “created by and for the Chinese.”

Trump could be following national Republican trends where politicians change the subject instead of jumping into science denial. Maybe that counts as something like progress? Or Trump is just giving us another flavor of climate denial.

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Trump manages to surprise us with strange “climate” obsession

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Donald Trump Says Mitt Romney "Would Have Dropped To His Knees" For Him

by MagaretNazario3 Posted on March 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump addressed a frenzied crowd in Portland, Maine, on Thursday afternoon during a campaign press conference.

The GOP front-runner hit all his usual marks—calls for building a border wall and deporting undocumented immigrants, reading polls from pieces of paper he pulls from his inside jacket pocket—but devoted a fair chunk of his time to lashing back against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who publicly criticized Trump and questioned whether he was fit to be president.

“Mitt is a failed candidate. He failed. He failed horribly,” Trump said. “That was a race—I have to say, folks—that should have been won. That was a race that absolutely should have been won. He disappeared, and I wasn’t happy about it, to be honest, because I am not a fan of Barack Obama.”

Romney had begged for his support, Trump claimed, during Romney’s bid to unseat President Obama in 2012: “You can see how loyal he was, he was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, ‘Drop to your knees!’ and he would have dropped to his knees.”

Trump also claimed he intimidated Romney, who “choked” and “chickened out” of running for president in 2016.

Romney responded to Trump’s comments in a tweet posted on 2:13 p.m. Eastern.

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Donald Trump Says Mitt Romney "Would Have Dropped To His Knees" For Him

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Senator Sanders, Why Do You Hate President Obama?

by PhyllisFontenot Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Most of last night’s debate was pretty familiar territory. But toward the end, Hillary Clinton unleashed a brand new attack:

Today Senator Sanders said that President Obama failed the presidential leadership test….In the past he has called him weak. He has called him a disappointment. He wrote a forward for a book that basically argued voters should have buyers’ remorse when it comes to President Obama’s leadership and legacy.

….The kind of criticism that we’ve heard from Senator Sanders about our president I expect from Republicans….What I am concerned about is not disagreement on issues, saying that this is what I would rather do, I don’t agree with the president on that. Calling the president weak, calling him a disappointment, calling several times that he should have a primary opponent when he ran for re-election in 2012, you know, I think that goes further than saying we have our disagreements.

….I understand we can disagree on the path forward. But those kinds of personal assessments and charges are ones that I find particularly troubling.

The problem Sanders has here is that this is a pretty righteous attack. Back in 2011 he really did say, “I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president…who cannot believe how weak he has been, for whatever reason, in negotiating with Republicans and there’s deep disappointment.” And he really did push the idea of a primary challenger to Obama. And he really did write a blurb for Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama let Progressives Down. So there’s not much he can do about this attack except sound offended and insist that everyone has a right to criticize the president.

But will it work? It was actually the only hit last night that struck me as genuinely effective. Obama still has a lot of fans who are probably surprised to hear that Sanders has been so tough on their guy. If Hillary Clinton keeps up this line, it might be pretty damaging.

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Senator Sanders, Why Do You Hate President Obama?

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Obama says “no” to TransCanada’s latest Keystone gambit

by AntoineJeffrey Posted on November 5, 2015

Obama says “no” to TransCanada’s latest Keystone gambit

By on 5 Nov 2015 4:28 amcommentsShare

On Monday, TransCanada tried a desperate move to salvage its plan to build the Keystone XL pipeline: It asked the State Department to delay its review of the project, in the hopes that the delay would put the decision in the hands of the next president, and in the hopes that the next president would be a Republican.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration said no dice. From The Washington Post:

The State Department formally rejected a request by TransCanada Corp. for a “pause” in the pipeline’s approval process, a move that would have effectively deferred a decision until after next year’s U.S. presidential elections.

State Department officials said the administration’s review of the project —now in its seventh year — would continue, barring a decision by TransCanada to withdraw its application altogether.

Climate activists and anti-Keystone protestors cheered the decision, of course, and called for Obama to just reject the whole damn pipeline already. “Now that he’s called TransCanada for delay of game, it’s time for President Obama to blow the whistle and end this pipeline once and for all,” said Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org.

Activists are pushing the president to reject Keystone XL before the big U.N. climate talks that will begin on Nov. 30 in Paris, to show the world that he’s serious about reining in carbon pollution. There’s a good chance he’ll do it. Stay tuned.

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Obama says “no” to TransCanada’s latest Keystone gambit

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President Obama’s Choice

by Posted on October 29, 2015

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President Obama’s Choice

Posted 29 October 2015 in

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President Obama and the EPA have a choice to make on the Renewable Fuel Standard, and they need to decide whose advice to take.

On one side, the President’s own Cabinet secretaries, scientists and advisors have publicly called for protecting a strong RFS. They see that the RFS has strengthened America’s rural economy while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).

But on other side, the oil industry is up to its old tricks — funding bogus research studies that spread blatant lies about ethanol. These so-called “inconvenient facts” and newfound concerns about the environment are a laugh when they come from Big Oil.

When it comes to advice on the RFS, President Obama can look no further than his own cabinet. RFS supporters include the likes of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Both McCarthy and Vilsack see the RFS as a great American success story and a vital part of the solution to climate change.

At a recent energy conference, Secretary Vilsack made it clear that his department has a commitment to supporting the RFS. “This is the right thing to do for the country and certainly the right thing to do for rural America.”

McCarthy was even more direct in drawing the connection from the RFS to the environment. “President Obama is fully committed to addressing the challenge of climate change. And he knows as well as you do that RFS is a tool we need to bring to the table.”

 

 

The President’s closest advisors know that the RFS is a tool we need. And scientists know it, too. The use of corn ethanol is already responsible for a 34% reduction in GHG emissions according to the Argonne National Laboratory.

So, Mr. President, who are you going to believe when it comes to climate: Gina McCarthy, Tom Vilsack and your own scientists, or ExxonMobil?

 

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President Obama’s Choice

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Alabama Just Made It Even Harder for Black People to Vote

by Burton6385 Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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In Alabama, you need a driver’s license or other form of photo ID to vote. But getting that ID just got a lot harder, especially in the state’s majority-black counties.

Due to budget cuts, Alabama is closing 31 satellite DMVs across the state. The biggest impact will be in rural, largely black counties that voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Alabama Media Group columnist John Archibald put it this way:

Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That’s Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them. All but Dallas and Montgomery will be closed.

Closed. In a state in which driver licenses or special photo IDs are a requirement for voting…

Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one.

Archibald predicted the move would invite a Justice Department investigation, as did his fellow columnist, Kyle Whitmire:

But put these two things together—Voter ID and 29 counties without a place where you can get one—and Voter ID becomes what the Democrats always said it was.

A civil rights lawsuit isn’t a probability. It’s a certainty.

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Alabama Just Made It Even Harder for Black People to Vote

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Cyber Attacks Never Looked As Pretty As This

by IsisTrenerry Posted on September 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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This week Chinese president Xi Jinping will be visiting Washington. During a state dinner, President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart are expected to discuss climate change, international business, and, cybersecurity. That last item has recently been a sensitive issue between the two countries, after the US has repeatedly accused China of hacking US corporations and government infrastructure.

Those disputes have turned the state dinner into an opportunity for candidates to try and score some points. During last Wednesday’s GOP presidential candidates’ debate, Gov. Scott Walker doubled down on his call for Obama to cancel the dinner over the alleged hacking, among other issues. Gov. Jeb Bush said the dinner should go on, but came close to calling on the US launch a cyber war against China.

“We should use offensive tactics as it relates to cyber security, send a deterrent signal to China,” Bush said during the debate. “There should be super sanctions in what President Obama has proposed. There’s many other tools that we have without canceling a dinner. That’s not going to change anything, but we can be much stronger as it relates to that.”

The spotlight will be on China, but the country is hardly alone in cyber aggression. Cyber security is an international issue and attacks are happening all the time, all around the world. This map below from Kapersky Lab, a cyber security firm, illustrates that point. It shows different types of attacks coded with different colors, as well as the source of the attack and the target. Click on the map to get more information:

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Cyber Attacks Never Looked As Pretty As This

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