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Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
President Obama To Join Gov. Christie At The Jersey Shore On Tuesday
CBS 2 has learned that President Barack Obama will visit the Jersey Shore on Tuesday with Gov. Chris Christie. It will be his first time on the shore since he visited right after Hurricane Sandy hit on Oct. 29.
A White House advisory said Obama would view the ongoing recovery efforts from Sandy and talk about “expanding economic opportunity for families hit by the storm.”
In the days after Sandy roared ashore, President Obama surveyed the damage with Christie. The subsequent images of the Democratic president and Republican governor and their apparent mutual respect for each other turned the political world on its ear.
“I cannot thank the president enough,” Christie said back on Oct. 31.
Then on April 29, Christie continued to praise President Obama for being “a man of his word” when it came to his swift response to the storm.
“I don’t have any regrets because anyone who’s had the job that I have knows that your first job is to get the job done for the people who elected you and not to worry about politics, whether it’s presidential politics or any other type of politics,” Christie told WCBS 880′s Steve Scott.
“Secondly, I’d give the President high marks. Everything that we asked of him to do he’s done, his administration has done. And while there were some blips in terms of the national flood insurance program that angered people, rightfully, the administration has worked on fixing that. So while I have broad areas of disagreement with the President on other issues, I cannot say anything other than the truth which is the President’s been a man of his word on this and his administration has followed through,” said Christie.
As a result of the governor’s buddy-buddy meeting with the president, Christie made the “do not invite list” for the Conservative Political Action Conference, a major event for GOP big wigs.
Many Jersey Shore business have reopened and boardwalks and beaches were expected to be open in time for Memorial Day weekend.
A White House advisory said Obama would view the ongoing recovery efforts from Sandy and talk about “expanding economic opportunity for families hit by the storm.”
In the days after Sandy roared ashore, President Obama surveyed the damage with Christie. The subsequent images of the Democratic president and Republican governor and their apparent mutual respect for each other turned the political world on its ear.
“I cannot thank the president enough,” Christie said back on Oct. 31.
Then on April 29, Christie continued to praise President Obama for being “a man of his word” when it came to his swift response to the storm.
“I don’t have any regrets because anyone who’s had the job that I have knows that your first job is to get the job done for the people who elected you and not to worry about politics, whether it’s presidential politics or any other type of politics,” Christie told WCBS 880′s Steve Scott.
“Secondly, I’d give the President high marks. Everything that we asked of him to do he’s done, his administration has done. And while there were some blips in terms of the national flood insurance program that angered people, rightfully, the administration has worked on fixing that. So while I have broad areas of disagreement with the President on other issues, I cannot say anything other than the truth which is the President’s been a man of his word on this and his administration has followed through,” said Christie.
As a result of the governor’s buddy-buddy meeting with the president, Christie made the “do not invite list” for the Conservative Political Action Conference, a major event for GOP big wigs.
Many Jersey Shore business have reopened and boardwalks and beaches were expected to be open in time for Memorial Day weekend.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
No early warning for U.S. on Israeli strikes in Syria
Without confirming that Israel was behind the attacks, the intelligence official said that the United States was essentially told of the air raids "after the fact" and was notified as the bombs went off.
Israeli jets bombed Syria on Sunday for the second time in 48 hours. Israel does not confirm such missions explicitly - a policy it says is intended to avoid provoking reprisals. But an Israeli official acknowledged that the strikes were carried out by its forces.
"It would not be unusual for them to take aggressive steps when there was some chance that some sophisticated weapons system would fall into the hands of people like Hezbollah," the U.S. intelligence official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
While the air raids raised fears that America's main ally in the Middle East could be sucked into the Syrian conflict, Israel typically does not feel it has to ask for a green light from Washington for such attacks.
Officials have indicated in the past that Israel sees a need only to inform the United States once such a mission is under way.
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday that Israel has the right to guard against the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, an ally of both Syria and Iran.
Rather than an attempt to tip the scales against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Israel's action is seen more as part of its own conflict with Iran, which it fears is sending missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria. Those missiles might hit Tel Aviv if Israel makes good on threats to attack Tehran's nuclear program.
Another Western intelligence source told Reuters the latest attack, like the previous one, was directed against stores of Fateh-110 missiles in transit from Iran to Hezbollah.
People were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake and sent pillars of flames high into the night sky. Syrian state television said bombing at a military research facility at Jamraya and two other sites caused "many civilian casualties and widespread damage," but it gave no details. The Jamraya compound was also a target for Israel on January 30.
The U.S. intelligence official said additional strikes in the future could not be ruled out.
"Any sophisticated weaponry that finds its way there (Syria)that looks to be destined to fall in the hands of bad actors, I think there is a likelihood that those could be targets as well," the second official said.
ADDED PRESSURE
Obama has repeatedly shied away from deep U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict, which erupted in 2011 and has killed an estimated 70,000 people and created more than 1.2 million refugees.
Hours after the Israeli attacks, several U.S. lawmakers voiced concern over the mounting uncertainty in the Middle East.
Influential Republican lawmaker John McCain said Israel's air strikes on Syria could add pressure on the Obama administration to intervene, but the U.S. government faces tough questions on how it can help without adding to the conflict.
"We need to have a game-changing action, and that is no American boots on the ground, establish a safe zone and to protect it and to supply weapons to the right people in Syria who are fighting, obviously, for the things we believe," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday."
"Every day that goes by, Hezbollah increases their influence and the radical jihadists flow into Syria and the situation becomes more and more tenuous," he said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last week that Washington was rethinking its opposition to arming the Syrian rebels. He cautioned that giving weapons to the forces fighting Assad was only one option, which carried the risk of arms finding their way into the hands of anti-American extremists among the insurgents.
The United States has said it has "varying degrees of confidence" that chemical weapons have been used in Syria on a limited scale, but is seeking more evidence to determine who used them, how they were used and when.
Israeli jets bombed Syria on Sunday for the second time in 48 hours. Israel does not confirm such missions explicitly - a policy it says is intended to avoid provoking reprisals. But an Israeli official acknowledged that the strikes were carried out by its forces.
"It would not be unusual for them to take aggressive steps when there was some chance that some sophisticated weapons system would fall into the hands of people like Hezbollah," the U.S. intelligence official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
While the air raids raised fears that America's main ally in the Middle East could be sucked into the Syrian conflict, Israel typically does not feel it has to ask for a green light from Washington for such attacks.
Officials have indicated in the past that Israel sees a need only to inform the United States once such a mission is under way.
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday that Israel has the right to guard against the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, an ally of both Syria and Iran.
Rather than an attempt to tip the scales against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Israel's action is seen more as part of its own conflict with Iran, which it fears is sending missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria. Those missiles might hit Tel Aviv if Israel makes good on threats to attack Tehran's nuclear program.
Another Western intelligence source told Reuters the latest attack, like the previous one, was directed against stores of Fateh-110 missiles in transit from Iran to Hezbollah.
People were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake and sent pillars of flames high into the night sky. Syrian state television said bombing at a military research facility at Jamraya and two other sites caused "many civilian casualties and widespread damage," but it gave no details. The Jamraya compound was also a target for Israel on January 30.
The U.S. intelligence official said additional strikes in the future could not be ruled out.
"Any sophisticated weaponry that finds its way there (Syria)that looks to be destined to fall in the hands of bad actors, I think there is a likelihood that those could be targets as well," the second official said.
ADDED PRESSURE
Obama has repeatedly shied away from deep U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict, which erupted in 2011 and has killed an estimated 70,000 people and created more than 1.2 million refugees.
Hours after the Israeli attacks, several U.S. lawmakers voiced concern over the mounting uncertainty in the Middle East.
Influential Republican lawmaker John McCain said Israel's air strikes on Syria could add pressure on the Obama administration to intervene, but the U.S. government faces tough questions on how it can help without adding to the conflict.
"We need to have a game-changing action, and that is no American boots on the ground, establish a safe zone and to protect it and to supply weapons to the right people in Syria who are fighting, obviously, for the things we believe," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday."
"Every day that goes by, Hezbollah increases their influence and the radical jihadists flow into Syria and the situation becomes more and more tenuous," he said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last week that Washington was rethinking its opposition to arming the Syrian rebels. He cautioned that giving weapons to the forces fighting Assad was only one option, which carried the risk of arms finding their way into the hands of anti-American extremists among the insurgents.
The United States has said it has "varying degrees of confidence" that chemical weapons have been used in Syria on a limited scale, but is seeking more evidence to determine who used them, how they were used and when.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Obama and Bush, distinct men with policy overlaps
Despite vast differences with President George W. Bush on ideology, style and temperament, President Barack Obama has stuck with Bush policies or aspirations on a number of fronts, from counterterrorism to immigration, from war strategy to the global fight against AIDS.
Even on tax policy, where Bush advocated lower tax rates for all and Obama pushed for higher rates on the rich, Bush's tax cuts for the middle class not only have survived under Obama, they have become permanent.
Obama inherited from his predecessor two military conflicts, a war on terror and a financial crisis. He also inherited, and in time embraced, the means with which to confront them.
On Thursday, Obama will attend the dedication of Bush's presidential library in Texas, a tableau that will draw attention to two distinct men—a Republican and a Democrat from different ends of the political spectrum, political foils with polarized constituencies.
Indeed, Obama ran for president in 2008 as the anti-Bush, critical of the war against Iraq and of the economic policies of the preceding eight years.
But in his more than four years of governing, Obama has also adopted or let stand a series of Bush initiatives, illustrating how the policies of one administration can take hold and how the realities of governing often limit solutions.
Bush's signature education plan, No Child Left Behind, remains the law of the land, though the Obama administration has granted states waivers to give them flexibility in meeting performance targets. A Bush Medicare prescription drug plan, criticized for its cost, is now popular with beneficiaries, and Obama has sought to improve it by providing relief for seniors with high bills. Obama continued the unpopular bank bailouts and expanded the auto industry rescue that Bush initiated in 2008.
Bush authorized a military surge in Iraq in an effort to tame the conflict there. Obama completed the withdrawal of troops from Iraq but also authorized a military surge in Afghanistan before beginning a drawdown of troops that is expected to be completed at the end of 2014.
"The responsibilities of office drive presidents toward pragmatism," said Joshua Bolten, a former Bush chief of staff. Where those policies are effective, he added, "the successor has good reason to adopt them."
Obama, like Bush during his presidency, is seeking an overhaul of immigration laws that give 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally a chance to get on a path toward citizenship. Bush came up short in 2007, but Bolten believes that six years later the nation and its politicians are in a different place.
"President Bush was just ahead of his time and his party in recognizing both the importance of reaching some sort of bipartisan accommodation and on what the elements of that might reasonably be," he said.
Bruce Buchanan, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes on the presidency, says it's not uncommon for presidents to hand off their agendas to another. Even measures or issues that were unpopular under one president can appear different with the passage of time and under the direction of a new occupant in the White House.
"While the names of the problems are the same, the stage of development is usually very different and the public stance of the president dealing with them is often very different," he said. "You have to be sensitive to those things lest you create the false impression that they are mirror images of one another, which I don't think would be accurate."
On no front are the similarities more striking than on counterterrorism. Obama did vow to end the harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that had been employed during the Bush administration, and he issued an executive order upon becoming president declaring that the United States would not engage in torture.
But other practices continued and, in some case, expanded under Obama.
"The basic similarity is these are the only two presidents that have governed in a post-9/11 era, where the principal threat to the United States comes from terrorism," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser. "President Obama believes that we're at war with al-Qaida and its affiliated groups, has continued to take direct action against al-Qaida networks overseas and has continued to pursue very aggressive intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security measures that have been developed since 9/11."
Jack Goldsmith, who was an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during Bush's first term, says Obama's use of warrantless surveillance, military detentions without trial and increased drone strikes has received less pushback than it would under a Republican president.
Goldsmith, now a law professor at Harvard Law School, argued in a blog post after Obama's election that the public "generally trust the former constitutional law professor and civil liberties champion more than a Republican president to carry out these policies."
He added that "many on the left (in Congress and the NGO community, and perhaps the press) who might otherwise be uncomfortable with these policies will give President Obama a freer hand than they would a Republican president."
Still, Rhodes sees significant differences in Obama's national security approach.
Bush, Rhodes said, had defined the broad conflict as a war on terrorism and included Iraq as part of that war.
"We redefined the war as something more narrow, which was a war against al-Qaida and its affiliates, not against other states, not against nonaffiliated terrorist groups," Rhodes said.
Republican Sen. John McCain has a unique perch to assess both presidents. He ran against both—in 2000 against Bush for the Republican nomination and in 2008 against Obama. He allied himself with both men on immigration and called on them to increase troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan. An early opponent of waterboarding, he has applauded Obama's continued use of other counterterrorism measures.
"I think they both had an appreciation for the threat that we face," he said of the two presidents.
But he faults Obama for not leaving a residual force in Iraq and for creating uncertainty about what the U.S. presence will be in Afghanistan after 2014.
And he distinguishes between the presidents. Under Bush, he said the United States became a nation "that was ready to pursue our enemies."
"Obviously, President Obama viewed this as a time to withdraw and not to make military commitments overseas."
Rhodes makes a similar point, though differently.
"The trajectory under the previous administration was an increased military presence overseas," he said. "President Obama would like his legacy to be the reduction of military presence overseas and having, ideally, zero troops in harm's way."
Even on tax policy, where Bush advocated lower tax rates for all and Obama pushed for higher rates on the rich, Bush's tax cuts for the middle class not only have survived under Obama, they have become permanent.
Obama inherited from his predecessor two military conflicts, a war on terror and a financial crisis. He also inherited, and in time embraced, the means with which to confront them.
On Thursday, Obama will attend the dedication of Bush's presidential library in Texas, a tableau that will draw attention to two distinct men—a Republican and a Democrat from different ends of the political spectrum, political foils with polarized constituencies.
Indeed, Obama ran for president in 2008 as the anti-Bush, critical of the war against Iraq and of the economic policies of the preceding eight years.
But in his more than four years of governing, Obama has also adopted or let stand a series of Bush initiatives, illustrating how the policies of one administration can take hold and how the realities of governing often limit solutions.
Bush's signature education plan, No Child Left Behind, remains the law of the land, though the Obama administration has granted states waivers to give them flexibility in meeting performance targets. A Bush Medicare prescription drug plan, criticized for its cost, is now popular with beneficiaries, and Obama has sought to improve it by providing relief for seniors with high bills. Obama continued the unpopular bank bailouts and expanded the auto industry rescue that Bush initiated in 2008.
Bush authorized a military surge in Iraq in an effort to tame the conflict there. Obama completed the withdrawal of troops from Iraq but also authorized a military surge in Afghanistan before beginning a drawdown of troops that is expected to be completed at the end of 2014.
"The responsibilities of office drive presidents toward pragmatism," said Joshua Bolten, a former Bush chief of staff. Where those policies are effective, he added, "the successor has good reason to adopt them."
Obama, like Bush during his presidency, is seeking an overhaul of immigration laws that give 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally a chance to get on a path toward citizenship. Bush came up short in 2007, but Bolten believes that six years later the nation and its politicians are in a different place.
"President Bush was just ahead of his time and his party in recognizing both the importance of reaching some sort of bipartisan accommodation and on what the elements of that might reasonably be," he said.
Bruce Buchanan, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes on the presidency, says it's not uncommon for presidents to hand off their agendas to another. Even measures or issues that were unpopular under one president can appear different with the passage of time and under the direction of a new occupant in the White House.
"While the names of the problems are the same, the stage of development is usually very different and the public stance of the president dealing with them is often very different," he said. "You have to be sensitive to those things lest you create the false impression that they are mirror images of one another, which I don't think would be accurate."
On no front are the similarities more striking than on counterterrorism. Obama did vow to end the harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that had been employed during the Bush administration, and he issued an executive order upon becoming president declaring that the United States would not engage in torture.
But other practices continued and, in some case, expanded under Obama.
"The basic similarity is these are the only two presidents that have governed in a post-9/11 era, where the principal threat to the United States comes from terrorism," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser. "President Obama believes that we're at war with al-Qaida and its affiliated groups, has continued to take direct action against al-Qaida networks overseas and has continued to pursue very aggressive intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security measures that have been developed since 9/11."
Jack Goldsmith, who was an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during Bush's first term, says Obama's use of warrantless surveillance, military detentions without trial and increased drone strikes has received less pushback than it would under a Republican president.
Goldsmith, now a law professor at Harvard Law School, argued in a blog post after Obama's election that the public "generally trust the former constitutional law professor and civil liberties champion more than a Republican president to carry out these policies."
He added that "many on the left (in Congress and the NGO community, and perhaps the press) who might otherwise be uncomfortable with these policies will give President Obama a freer hand than they would a Republican president."
Still, Rhodes sees significant differences in Obama's national security approach.
Bush, Rhodes said, had defined the broad conflict as a war on terrorism and included Iraq as part of that war.
"We redefined the war as something more narrow, which was a war against al-Qaida and its affiliates, not against other states, not against nonaffiliated terrorist groups," Rhodes said.
Republican Sen. John McCain has a unique perch to assess both presidents. He ran against both—in 2000 against Bush for the Republican nomination and in 2008 against Obama. He allied himself with both men on immigration and called on them to increase troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan. An early opponent of waterboarding, he has applauded Obama's continued use of other counterterrorism measures.
"I think they both had an appreciation for the threat that we face," he said of the two presidents.
But he faults Obama for not leaving a residual force in Iraq and for creating uncertainty about what the U.S. presence will be in Afghanistan after 2014.
And he distinguishes between the presidents. Under Bush, he said the United States became a nation "that was ready to pursue our enemies."
"Obviously, President Obama viewed this as a time to withdraw and not to make military commitments overseas."
Rhodes makes a similar point, though differently.
"The trajectory under the previous administration was an increased military presence overseas," he said. "President Obama would like his legacy to be the reduction of military presence overseas and having, ideally, zero troops in harm's way."
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Obama outlines private-public project to study the brain
Making good on a promise first hinted at during his State of the Union speech in February, President Obama on Tuesday unveiled the broad outlines of a scientific initiative aimed at mapping the human brain. The project's ambitious goals include understanding how the brain forms memories and controls human behavior; how it becomes damaged by conditions such as Parkinson's disease and autism; and how it can be repaired when afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder and other illnesses.
The BRAIN initiative — short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies — is modeled after the Human Genome Project, in which the federal government partnered with philanthropies and scientific entrepreneurs to identify and characterize the nearly 25,000 genes that make up human DNA.
"A human brain contains almost 100 billion neurons making trillions of connections," Obama said Tuesday as he outlined the initiative in the East Room of the White House. In the absence of a detailed map of the brain's complex circuitry and operating instructions that could help troubleshoot when the brain's wiring goes awry, scientists often grope in the dark for therapies that can treat Alzheimer's or autism or to reverse the effects of a stroke, Obama said. "So there is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked."
The funding available beyond this year for the BRAIN initiative remains unclear. Calling the "three pounds of matter that sits between our ears" a mystery to be unraveled, Obama said his proposed budget of $110 million for fiscal year 2014 would "help get this project off the ground." Private sector partners the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Kavli Foundation have committed $158 million to the project.
Over five years of the Human Genome Project, the federal government invested $3.8 billion in the effort. But federal spending in the initiative's first year was modest: $27.9 million.
In a bid to fend off opposition from budget-cutters on Capitol Hill and cast the initiative as an investment in the U.S. economy, the White House said that every federal dollar expended on the Human Genome Project went on to generate $141 in economic output.
"Ideas are what power our economy," Obama said. "When we invest in the best ideas before anybody else does, our businesses and our workers can make the best products and deliver the best services before anybody else."
If Obama's proposed budget for the project is approved by Congress this year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the small office within the Pentagon known as DARPA, will disburse about $50 million in grants under the BRAIN initiative next year. The National Institutes of Health will contribute $40 million, and the National Science Foundation $20 million.
Funding in future years will be negotiated yearly.
"Out of this is going to come a foundation of understanding the brain that we have dreamed of all through human history," said Dr. Francis Collins, who was in charge of the government's role in the Human Genome Project and is now director of the National Institutes of Health.
DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said her agency would focus on the brain trauma research it has pioneered in recent years. That work was spurred by the brain injuries and PTSD that have afflicted thousands of U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The resulting insights and treatments will also benefit civilians whose brains have been injured by strokes, illness, car crashes and falls, she said.
"We're starting to learn more about how memory is encoded in the brain and starting to see how we might restore memory loss after injury," Prabhakar said. "There are broader applications," as researchers extend that research to address disorders of memory, such as Alzheimer's disease, and DARPA would probably invest in such projects, she said.
DARPA, whose early research helped spawn the Internet, will also look to fund brain research that would make prosthetic devices more responsive to human thought, as well as other cognitive research that might inspire new information-processing and computing techniques, Prabhakar said. Both subjects are of keen interest to the military.
The White House will also assign the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues the task of exploring the ethical, legal and societal problems certain to arise as brain science advances.
That panel has already weighed in on the social and ethical implications of drugs and technologies that promise to enhance the cognitive performance of healthy people. As future work unlocks the workings of the brain when a patient appears to be in a vegetative state, those experts will probably wrestle with new definitions of life and death. And as the field of neuroprosthetics makes human thought increasingly discernible to computers, age-old fears about the use of mind-reading technologies are likely to spark investigation.
Despite uncertainty about future funding, the initiative drew jubilant praise from scientists engaged in brain research.
"Where you put a major investment in understanding the most complicated thing we know — the human brain — there could be benefits to every aspect of society," said Dr. John C. Mazziotta, a leading neuroscientist who is executive vice dean of UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. Scientists could make new discoveries about aging, education, creativity, psychiatric disorders and social problems such as homelessness, he said.
But such lofty goals will not come cheap, cautioned Larry Swanson, president of the Society for Neuroscience. The initiative will fall short of expectations if federal funds dedicated to the project are the object of yearly political haggling.
Obama on Tuesday offered a nod to such concerns.
"Of course, none of this will be easy," he said. "If it was, we would already know everything there was about how the brain works, and presumably my life would be simpler here. It could explain all kinds of things that go on in Washington."
The BRAIN initiative — short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies — is modeled after the Human Genome Project, in which the federal government partnered with philanthropies and scientific entrepreneurs to identify and characterize the nearly 25,000 genes that make up human DNA.
"A human brain contains almost 100 billion neurons making trillions of connections," Obama said Tuesday as he outlined the initiative in the East Room of the White House. In the absence of a detailed map of the brain's complex circuitry and operating instructions that could help troubleshoot when the brain's wiring goes awry, scientists often grope in the dark for therapies that can treat Alzheimer's or autism or to reverse the effects of a stroke, Obama said. "So there is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked."
The funding available beyond this year for the BRAIN initiative remains unclear. Calling the "three pounds of matter that sits between our ears" a mystery to be unraveled, Obama said his proposed budget of $110 million for fiscal year 2014 would "help get this project off the ground." Private sector partners the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Kavli Foundation have committed $158 million to the project.
Over five years of the Human Genome Project, the federal government invested $3.8 billion in the effort. But federal spending in the initiative's first year was modest: $27.9 million.
In a bid to fend off opposition from budget-cutters on Capitol Hill and cast the initiative as an investment in the U.S. economy, the White House said that every federal dollar expended on the Human Genome Project went on to generate $141 in economic output.
"Ideas are what power our economy," Obama said. "When we invest in the best ideas before anybody else does, our businesses and our workers can make the best products and deliver the best services before anybody else."
If Obama's proposed budget for the project is approved by Congress this year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the small office within the Pentagon known as DARPA, will disburse about $50 million in grants under the BRAIN initiative next year. The National Institutes of Health will contribute $40 million, and the National Science Foundation $20 million.
Funding in future years will be negotiated yearly.
"Out of this is going to come a foundation of understanding the brain that we have dreamed of all through human history," said Dr. Francis Collins, who was in charge of the government's role in the Human Genome Project and is now director of the National Institutes of Health.
DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said her agency would focus on the brain trauma research it has pioneered in recent years. That work was spurred by the brain injuries and PTSD that have afflicted thousands of U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The resulting insights and treatments will also benefit civilians whose brains have been injured by strokes, illness, car crashes and falls, she said.
"We're starting to learn more about how memory is encoded in the brain and starting to see how we might restore memory loss after injury," Prabhakar said. "There are broader applications," as researchers extend that research to address disorders of memory, such as Alzheimer's disease, and DARPA would probably invest in such projects, she said.
DARPA, whose early research helped spawn the Internet, will also look to fund brain research that would make prosthetic devices more responsive to human thought, as well as other cognitive research that might inspire new information-processing and computing techniques, Prabhakar said. Both subjects are of keen interest to the military.
The White House will also assign the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues the task of exploring the ethical, legal and societal problems certain to arise as brain science advances.
That panel has already weighed in on the social and ethical implications of drugs and technologies that promise to enhance the cognitive performance of healthy people. As future work unlocks the workings of the brain when a patient appears to be in a vegetative state, those experts will probably wrestle with new definitions of life and death. And as the field of neuroprosthetics makes human thought increasingly discernible to computers, age-old fears about the use of mind-reading technologies are likely to spark investigation.
Despite uncertainty about future funding, the initiative drew jubilant praise from scientists engaged in brain research.
"Where you put a major investment in understanding the most complicated thing we know — the human brain — there could be benefits to every aspect of society," said Dr. John C. Mazziotta, a leading neuroscientist who is executive vice dean of UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. Scientists could make new discoveries about aging, education, creativity, psychiatric disorders and social problems such as homelessness, he said.
But such lofty goals will not come cheap, cautioned Larry Swanson, president of the Society for Neuroscience. The initiative will fall short of expectations if federal funds dedicated to the project are the object of yearly political haggling.
Obama on Tuesday offered a nod to such concerns.
"Of course, none of this will be easy," he said. "If it was, we would already know everything there was about how the brain works, and presumably my life would be simpler here. It could explain all kinds of things that go on in Washington."
Monday, March 18, 2013
Obama to Nominate Justice Aide for Labor Post
President Obama plans to announce Monday that he will nominate Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, to be the next secretary of labor, a choice that promises to provoke a debate with Republicans about voting rights and discrimination.
Mr. Perez would replace Hilda L. Solis, who stepped down in January after four years running the Labor Department. Word of his possible selection has been circulating in Washington for days, and a White House official informed reporters that the president would make it official on Monday.
The announcement comes just days after a Justice Department inspector general’s report found that the voting rights section has been torn by “deep ideological polarization” with liberal and conservative factions in sharp conflict. The divisions date back to the George W. Bush administration, and most occurred before Mr. Perez was confirmed in October 2009. He portrayed the report as largely clearing the section on his watch.
But the report also raised questions about testimony he gave, and Republicans made clear that they would take issue with his handling of some cases over the last three and a half years. His critics question, for example, whether he acted inappropriately in persuading the City of St. Paul to drop a lawsuit seeking to limit fair housing claims when there is no intentional bias.
Liberals and labor leaders have hailed Mr. Perez, calling him a strong champion for workers and those who have faced discrimination. While at the Justice Department, he has pursued a record number of discrimination or brutality claims against local police and sheriff’s departments, including that of Joe Arpaio, the outspoken sheriff in Maricopa County, Ariz., who was accused of “a pattern of unlawful discrimination” against Latinos.
Mr. Perez also challenged voter identification requirements imposed by South Carolina and Texas, and his division reached the three largest residential fair lending settlements in the history of the Fair Housing Act. Under him, the voting section participated in the most new litigation in the last fiscal year than in any previous year.
Mr. Perez, 51, who would be the only Hispanic in the cabinet if confirmed, is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. His father died when he was 12, but his family pressed the value of education so much that all four of his siblings became doctors. Mr. Perez graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.
He has spent a career fighting discrimination cases as a federal prosecutor, then, under President Bill Clinton, as deputy chief of the civil rights division that he now heads, and finally as head of civil rights enforcement at the Health and Human Services Department. He also served as an elected council member in Montgomery County, Md., and as the state’s secretary of labor, licensing and regulation.
The timing of the inspector general’s report on the voting section seems to ensure that it will come up during Mr. Perez’s confirmation hearings. The report found a toxic environment in which conservatives and liberals fought and maligned one another through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration.
The examples it cited generally preceded Mr. Perez, and he wrote the inspector general that he had made a point of correcting the situation. “Since 2009, the Civil Rights Division and the Voting Section have undertaken a number of steps to improve the professionalism of our workplace and to ensure that we enforce the civil rights laws in an independent, evenhanded fashion,” Mr. Perez wrote.
The inspector general, however, raised questions regarding Mr. Perez’s testimony about a case that preceded his time. Mr. Perez told the Civil Rights Commission in 2010 that no senior department officials were involved in a 2009 decision not to pursue further a case of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers. But the report noted that in fact senior officials did participate in discussions about the case, although the final decision was made by career lawyers as Mr. Perez had testified.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the report showed that Mr. Perez was “woefully unprepared to answer questions” about a matter that he expected to be asked about. “This is troubling as it suggests a failure to also prepare for hearings before Congress, including the Senate Judiciary Committee, when questioned on this same topic,” he said in a statement.
Moreover, Mr. Grassley said the report made clear that Mr. Perez had not done as much as he had said to end harassment of conservatives in the voting rights section. “The reports shows that despite claims that it’s a new era in the Civil Rights Division, they are sadly mistaken, and it’s business as usual,” Mr. Grassley said.
While conservatives have called him a radical, Mr. Perez has not backed off his aggressive approach, even as his name was up for consideration for the Labor Department job. Just last Thursday, he announced an investigation into excessive force complaints against the Cleveland Police Department.
Mr. Perez would replace Hilda L. Solis, who stepped down in January after four years running the Labor Department. Word of his possible selection has been circulating in Washington for days, and a White House official informed reporters that the president would make it official on Monday.
The announcement comes just days after a Justice Department inspector general’s report found that the voting rights section has been torn by “deep ideological polarization” with liberal and conservative factions in sharp conflict. The divisions date back to the George W. Bush administration, and most occurred before Mr. Perez was confirmed in October 2009. He portrayed the report as largely clearing the section on his watch.
But the report also raised questions about testimony he gave, and Republicans made clear that they would take issue with his handling of some cases over the last three and a half years. His critics question, for example, whether he acted inappropriately in persuading the City of St. Paul to drop a lawsuit seeking to limit fair housing claims when there is no intentional bias.
Liberals and labor leaders have hailed Mr. Perez, calling him a strong champion for workers and those who have faced discrimination. While at the Justice Department, he has pursued a record number of discrimination or brutality claims against local police and sheriff’s departments, including that of Joe Arpaio, the outspoken sheriff in Maricopa County, Ariz., who was accused of “a pattern of unlawful discrimination” against Latinos.
Mr. Perez also challenged voter identification requirements imposed by South Carolina and Texas, and his division reached the three largest residential fair lending settlements in the history of the Fair Housing Act. Under him, the voting section participated in the most new litigation in the last fiscal year than in any previous year.
Mr. Perez, 51, who would be the only Hispanic in the cabinet if confirmed, is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. His father died when he was 12, but his family pressed the value of education so much that all four of his siblings became doctors. Mr. Perez graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.
He has spent a career fighting discrimination cases as a federal prosecutor, then, under President Bill Clinton, as deputy chief of the civil rights division that he now heads, and finally as head of civil rights enforcement at the Health and Human Services Department. He also served as an elected council member in Montgomery County, Md., and as the state’s secretary of labor, licensing and regulation.
The timing of the inspector general’s report on the voting section seems to ensure that it will come up during Mr. Perez’s confirmation hearings. The report found a toxic environment in which conservatives and liberals fought and maligned one another through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration.
The examples it cited generally preceded Mr. Perez, and he wrote the inspector general that he had made a point of correcting the situation. “Since 2009, the Civil Rights Division and the Voting Section have undertaken a number of steps to improve the professionalism of our workplace and to ensure that we enforce the civil rights laws in an independent, evenhanded fashion,” Mr. Perez wrote.
The inspector general, however, raised questions regarding Mr. Perez’s testimony about a case that preceded his time. Mr. Perez told the Civil Rights Commission in 2010 that no senior department officials were involved in a 2009 decision not to pursue further a case of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers. But the report noted that in fact senior officials did participate in discussions about the case, although the final decision was made by career lawyers as Mr. Perez had testified.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the report showed that Mr. Perez was “woefully unprepared to answer questions” about a matter that he expected to be asked about. “This is troubling as it suggests a failure to also prepare for hearings before Congress, including the Senate Judiciary Committee, when questioned on this same topic,” he said in a statement.
Moreover, Mr. Grassley said the report made clear that Mr. Perez had not done as much as he had said to end harassment of conservatives in the voting rights section. “The reports shows that despite claims that it’s a new era in the Civil Rights Division, they are sadly mistaken, and it’s business as usual,” Mr. Grassley said.
While conservatives have called him a radical, Mr. Perez has not backed off his aggressive approach, even as his name was up for consideration for the Labor Department job. Just last Thursday, he announced an investigation into excessive force complaints against the Cleveland Police Department.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Obama to pitch new spending in State of the Union, says it won't add to deficit
President Obama is planning to pitch new spending proposals in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, saying in prepared remarks that he wants to invest in “broad-based growth” and fuel a “rising, thriving middle class."
Even before the address, Obama’s plan to call for “investments” was panned by House Speaker John Boehner. "If government spending were the tonic for all our ills, this would have been solved a long time ago,” Boehner told reporters.
But Obama stressed that his proposals would not add to the deficit.
“Tonight, I’ll lay out additional proposals that are fully paid for and fully consistent with the budget framework both parties agreed to just 18 months ago,” Obama said in prepared remarks. “Let me repeat -- nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime. It’s not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth.”
At the beginning of his second term, Obama is pushing anew to make economic growth a priority. In his remarks, he says it is this generation’s task “to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth -- a rising, thriving middle class.”
Regardless of whether Obama’s proposals add to the deficit, he is sure to face a mixed reception in putting the emphasis on new government programs when many -- particularly House Republicans -- are more interested in paring back the spending out of Washington. Some argue this could even help the economy by sending a signal that the federal government is at last tackling the budget deficit.
The president is expected to speak at 9 p.m. ET.
While Obama's aides say Tuesday night is all about the economy, he is expected to hit several other themes during the hour-long speech. First lady Michelle Obama’s guest list, announced Tuesday afternoon, provided a glimpse into what those agenda items might be -- gun control, immigration, education, science and technology funding, and more.
In each guest's biography is reflected a theme, almost certain to make its way into the president's speech.
Among those in Michelle Obama's guest box are Alan Aleman, a so-called "DREAM student" -- someone who arrived in the U.S. as a young illegal immigrant, but has been given a reprieve to pursue an education by the administration. Aleman's presence will be symbolic as the president pushes for immigration reform which, if he gets his way, will include some permanent provision dealing illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.
Also in the guest box is Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, mother of Hadiya Pendleton who was killed in Chicago in late January. The first lady attended Hadiya's memorial service over the weekend. Cowley-Pendleton, together with other victims of gun violence in the crowd Tuesday night, represents the president's push for new gun control measures.
Several other guests speak to Obama's stance on the budget. Highlighting the president's push for science funding, the flight director for the Mars Curiosity Rover will be in the crowd. And highlighting the president's push for tax cuts on the middle class (and hikes on top earners), the guest box will include Lisa Richards, a single mom who voiced concern to the White House about taxes rising on the middle class.
The president will have several other weighty issues to address Tuesday night, not the least of which is North Korea's latest nuclear test. The president also plans to announce 34,000 U.S. troops will be brought home from Afghanistan within a year.
That will bring the force size to roughly half what it is now, in the run-up to the withdrawal deadline of the end of 2014.
The centerpiece of the address, though, is still expected to be the economy. The president is expected to revive his calls Tuesday for government "investments" in infrastructure and education -- meaning spending. While the recurring push, for Republicans, brings back bad memories of the stimulus law they opposed, White House economic adviser Gene Sperling told Fox News on Tuesday that closing the deficit "doesn't mean you pull back on everything."
"I don't think that laying the foundation for future growth (with research and highway spending) is anything to discount in any way," Sperling said. "What you need to do is be smart."
Boehner, though, dismissed the push. "If government spending were the tonic for all our ills, this would have been solved a long time ago," he said Tuesday. Boehner said the president added "$5 trillion in new debt over the last four years. How much further is he going to run us into the sewer?"
Boehner also claimed the president doesn't have the "guts" to tackle the budget deficit.
Obama and Congress are scrambling to find a way to avoid automatic spending cuts poised to hit March 1 unless a deal is reached to replace them.
Obama, to the chagrin of Republicans, wants to replace those cuts with a blend of tax hikes and separate cuts. Republicans, citing the tax-hike concessions they gave during the fiscal crisis talks, are averse to more tax increases -- even if this time, those increases do not come in the form of rate hikes.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Obama Fiscal 2014 Budget Said to Be Delayed Until March
President Barack Obama probably will delay sending his fiscal 2014 budget to Congress until sometime in March, according to a defense official with knowledge of the budget process.
The spending blueprint was supposed to be delivered to lawmakers yesterday, prompting Republicans and the administration to trade criticism.
“For the fourth time in five years this White House has proven it does not take trillion-dollar deficits seriously enough to submit a budget on time,” House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement.
White House press secretary Jay Carney, while declining to say when the budget would be ready, accused House Republicans of putting forward “highly partisan” spending plans that have “no support among the American public.”
The defense official asked for anonymity because the administration hasn’t officially announced when the budget would be ready.
The administration has been signaling that the annual spending blueprint wouldn’t meet the deadline because of the protracted debate in Washington over taxes, spending and the deficit, especially the dispute at year’s end that focused on over tax rates. Congress ultimately approved a measure averting income-tax increases for most Americans while allowing rates to rise on taxable income of individuals up to $400,000 and of married couples of up to $450,000.
‘Forced to Delay’
Acting White House budget director Jeffrey Zients wrote in a letter last month to Representative Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, that because the tax deal wasn’t reached until Jan. 1, the administration was “forced to delay some of its FY2014 budget preparations, which in turn will delay the budget’s submission to Congress.”
Obama is also negotiating with Congress a way to avoid the $1.2 trillion in automatic federal spending cuts scheduled to take effect March 1.
Congress created the automatic cuts in August 2011 as part of an agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. In the legislation passed Jan. 1, Congress delayed the spending cuts for two months.
Stock Market
Stocks have rallied since the start of the year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index (SPX) hitting five-year highs on Feb. 1. The S&P dropped 1.2 percent to 1,495.71 at 4 p.m. yesterday in New York, and the Dow retreated 129.71 points to 13,880.08 after climbing above 14,000 last week for the first time since 2007. Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields lost six basis points to 1.96 percent.
Even if the budget is late by a month or more, it’s unlikely to change the political debate over fiscal issues. Obama has said he’s planning to again seek funding for many of the proposals contained in last year’s $3.8 trillion budget, which was never fully adopted by Congress.
“It’ll look a lot like the old one,” Michael Linden, director of tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress, said yesterday at a conference in Washington focused on fiscal issues. Any spending cuts or revenue increases, he said, will be “basically the same” as last year’s budget blueprint.
Carried Interest
Obama reinforced that during an interview with CBS News broadcast on Feb. 3. He said he wants to seek additional revenue by trimming tax breaks for top earners and the treatment of profits in buyout deals, known as carried interest. Those profits are often taxed as capital gains, which receive preferential rates under the tax code compared with levies on wages; Obama has advocated treating the profits as ordinary income for tax purposes.
“There is no doubt we need additional revenue, coupled with smart spending reductions, in order to bring down our deficit,” the president said.
Taxing private equity managers’ carried interest as ordinary income would raise about $16.8 billion, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
Obama has proposed limits on the value of deductions, capped at 28 percent for households earning more than $250,000, and has proposed ending tax breaks for oil and natural gas companies, which would collect $41 billion over 10 years, according to last year’s budget estimate.
The government is currently operating under a stopgap budget that expires March 27. If spending authority isn’t extended, government agencies face a shutdown.
Panelists at the conference on budget issues said any proposals on taxes in Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget would take at least a year or more to get through Congress.
Stan Collender, a former congressional budget analyst, said that while “they may be talking about it” this year, he tells his financial clients at Qorvis Communications LLC that nothing serious will happen on tax changes until the end of 2014 or into 2015.
“The president’s budget is just a proposal,” he said. “It has no meaning other than a political statement at the time it’s made.”
The spending blueprint was supposed to be delivered to lawmakers yesterday, prompting Republicans and the administration to trade criticism.
“For the fourth time in five years this White House has proven it does not take trillion-dollar deficits seriously enough to submit a budget on time,” House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement.
White House press secretary Jay Carney, while declining to say when the budget would be ready, accused House Republicans of putting forward “highly partisan” spending plans that have “no support among the American public.”
The defense official asked for anonymity because the administration hasn’t officially announced when the budget would be ready.
The administration has been signaling that the annual spending blueprint wouldn’t meet the deadline because of the protracted debate in Washington over taxes, spending and the deficit, especially the dispute at year’s end that focused on over tax rates. Congress ultimately approved a measure averting income-tax increases for most Americans while allowing rates to rise on taxable income of individuals up to $400,000 and of married couples of up to $450,000.
‘Forced to Delay’
Acting White House budget director Jeffrey Zients wrote in a letter last month to Representative Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, that because the tax deal wasn’t reached until Jan. 1, the administration was “forced to delay some of its FY2014 budget preparations, which in turn will delay the budget’s submission to Congress.”
Obama is also negotiating with Congress a way to avoid the $1.2 trillion in automatic federal spending cuts scheduled to take effect March 1.
Congress created the automatic cuts in August 2011 as part of an agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. In the legislation passed Jan. 1, Congress delayed the spending cuts for two months.
Stock Market
Stocks have rallied since the start of the year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index (SPX) hitting five-year highs on Feb. 1. The S&P dropped 1.2 percent to 1,495.71 at 4 p.m. yesterday in New York, and the Dow retreated 129.71 points to 13,880.08 after climbing above 14,000 last week for the first time since 2007. Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields lost six basis points to 1.96 percent.
Even if the budget is late by a month or more, it’s unlikely to change the political debate over fiscal issues. Obama has said he’s planning to again seek funding for many of the proposals contained in last year’s $3.8 trillion budget, which was never fully adopted by Congress.
“It’ll look a lot like the old one,” Michael Linden, director of tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress, said yesterday at a conference in Washington focused on fiscal issues. Any spending cuts or revenue increases, he said, will be “basically the same” as last year’s budget blueprint.
Carried Interest
Obama reinforced that during an interview with CBS News broadcast on Feb. 3. He said he wants to seek additional revenue by trimming tax breaks for top earners and the treatment of profits in buyout deals, known as carried interest. Those profits are often taxed as capital gains, which receive preferential rates under the tax code compared with levies on wages; Obama has advocated treating the profits as ordinary income for tax purposes.
“There is no doubt we need additional revenue, coupled with smart spending reductions, in order to bring down our deficit,” the president said.
Taxing private equity managers’ carried interest as ordinary income would raise about $16.8 billion, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
Obama has proposed limits on the value of deductions, capped at 28 percent for households earning more than $250,000, and has proposed ending tax breaks for oil and natural gas companies, which would collect $41 billion over 10 years, according to last year’s budget estimate.
The government is currently operating under a stopgap budget that expires March 27. If spending authority isn’t extended, government agencies face a shutdown.
Panelists at the conference on budget issues said any proposals on taxes in Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget would take at least a year or more to get through Congress.
Stan Collender, a former congressional budget analyst, said that while “they may be talking about it” this year, he tells his financial clients at Qorvis Communications LLC that nothing serious will happen on tax changes until the end of 2014 or into 2015.
“The president’s budget is just a proposal,” he said. “It has no meaning other than a political statement at the time it’s made.”
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Obama says he has fired guns
President Obama says the rights of hunters have to be respected in the gun-control debate, and he himself has done some skeet shooting.
Some gun rights supporters may be surprised, but President Obama says he has fired guns.
"In fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," Obama told The New Republic.
The White House did not provide a photo.
Obama told the magazine the rights of hunters and other gun owners have to be respected as he and his allies pursue a legislative package that includes new gun-control measures.
"I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations," Obama said. "And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake."
The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups have vowed to block Obama proposals that include a revamped assault weapons ban, universal background checks and restrictions on the size of ammunition magazines. The administration developed the plan after the deaths of 20 children during a shooting Dec. 14 at an elementary school in Connecticut.
Responding to Obama's comments, NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox said in a statement, "The Second Amendment is not about shooting skeet, and it's not a tradition. It is a fundamental right upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court."
As the congressional debate moves forward, Obama told The New Republic that gun-control backers need to understand the different ways in which urban areas and rural areas view guns.
"If you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that," Obama said.
Some gun rights supporters may be surprised, but President Obama says he has fired guns.
"In fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," Obama told The New Republic.
The White House did not provide a photo.
Obama told the magazine the rights of hunters and other gun owners have to be respected as he and his allies pursue a legislative package that includes new gun-control measures.
"I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations," Obama said. "And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake."
The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups have vowed to block Obama proposals that include a revamped assault weapons ban, universal background checks and restrictions on the size of ammunition magazines. The administration developed the plan after the deaths of 20 children during a shooting Dec. 14 at an elementary school in Connecticut.
Responding to Obama's comments, NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox said in a statement, "The Second Amendment is not about shooting skeet, and it's not a tradition. It is a fundamental right upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court."
As the congressional debate moves forward, Obama told The New Republic that gun-control backers need to understand the different ways in which urban areas and rural areas view guns.
"If you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that," Obama said.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Obama: Senate deal 'the right thing to do for our country' on deficit
President Obama hailed the Senate’s ‘fiscal cliff’ legislation Tuesday as a model of bipartisan compromise ¬– and urged the House to pass the bill “without delay.”
In a statement after the Senate’s early morning vote, Obama said the bill would help “grow the economy and shrink our deficits in a balanced way.”
The deal “protects 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small business owners from a middle class tax hike,” Obama said.
The legislation, negotiated by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), was approved in an 89-8 vote just after 2 a.m.
The deal would extend the Bush-era income tax rates on individuals to $400,000 and family income up to $450,000. It permanently sets the estate tax rate at 40 percent, up from 35 percent, and exempts inheritances below $5 million.
It would also postpone the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester for two months.
“While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” Obama said.
The president had campaigned for reelection on a pledge to raise income tax rates for all households earning above $250,000. But the bill’s $450,000 threshold marked a significant step in efforts to get "the wealthy to pay a little more," Obama said.
“Last year, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut spending by more than $1 trillion. [The fiscal cliff bill] does even more by asking millionaires and billionaires to begin to pay their fair share for the first time in twenty years,” Obama said. “As promised, that increase will be immediate, and it will be permanent.”
Obama had angered Republicans on Monday with a campaign-style event at the White House in which he drew cheers for his criticism of Congress’s failure to pass a broader ‘grand bargain’ on the deficit.
“There’s more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I’m willing to do it,” Obama said in his statement Tuesday morning. “But [this bill] ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest.”
In a statement after the Senate’s early morning vote, Obama said the bill would help “grow the economy and shrink our deficits in a balanced way.”
The deal “protects 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small business owners from a middle class tax hike,” Obama said.
The legislation, negotiated by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), was approved in an 89-8 vote just after 2 a.m.
The deal would extend the Bush-era income tax rates on individuals to $400,000 and family income up to $450,000. It permanently sets the estate tax rate at 40 percent, up from 35 percent, and exempts inheritances below $5 million.
It would also postpone the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester for two months.
“While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” Obama said.
The president had campaigned for reelection on a pledge to raise income tax rates for all households earning above $250,000. But the bill’s $450,000 threshold marked a significant step in efforts to get "the wealthy to pay a little more," Obama said.
“Last year, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut spending by more than $1 trillion. [The fiscal cliff bill] does even more by asking millionaires and billionaires to begin to pay their fair share for the first time in twenty years,” Obama said. “As promised, that increase will be immediate, and it will be permanent.”
Obama had angered Republicans on Monday with a campaign-style event at the White House in which he drew cheers for his criticism of Congress’s failure to pass a broader ‘grand bargain’ on the deficit.
“There’s more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I’m willing to do it,” Obama said in his statement Tuesday morning. “But [this bill] ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest.”
Monday, December 24, 2012
John Barrasso On Fiscal Cliff: Obama Wants To Go Over The Edge
A Republican lawmaker working on budgetary issues told "Fox News
Sunday" that he believes President Barack Obama wants to go over the
so-called fiscal cliff at the end of the year, and may not be
negotiating in good faith.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the chairman of the Republican policy
committee, told Fox's Chris Wallace that he expects the U.S. will go
over the cliff.
"I believe the president is eager to go over the cliff for political
purposes," Barrasso said. "I think he sees a political victory at the
bottom of the cliff: He gets all this additional tax revenue for new
programs, he gets to cut the military, which Democrats have been calling
for for years, and he gets to blame Republicans for it."
For the past week,
Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner worked to pass what he
called Plan B, a tax deal that had no chance of receiving presidential
approval, in an attempt to twist Obama's arm ahead of the end of the
year, when the Bush tax cuts expire.
That plan failed when Boehner could not wrangle enough votes from the more conservative elements of his caucus, leaving Obama to plead with
House Republicans late on Friday to sign off on at least a limited
package of tax cuts for the middle class, before everyone sees their
taxes rise.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee and who appeared on the show as the Democratic counterpoint,
responded that responsibility for making a deal lies with more than just
the president, and that Congress needs to show more willingness to meet
Obama halfway.
"We only have nine days left here," Conrad said. "When are we going to get serious about actual solutions?"
Despite the amplified rhetoric about a fiscal "cliff" that could
possibly doom the American economy, few in Washington seem to be
treating the imminent tax hikes as a true doomsday. Many politicians are
on holiday this weekend, and the Sunday shows -- normally a major
battleground for political disputes of this sort -- were populated
largely with bit players in the debate.
And as The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reported Saturday, there are no signs that federal agencies
are preparing any major changes ahead of the deadline, suggesting they
do not anticipate any direct fallout from the sequestration that goes
into effect at the end of the year.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Fiscal Cliff: Obama Declines Boehner's Proposal of Raising Rate for Earners Making $1M
Signaling new movement in "fiscal
cliff" talks, House Speaker John Boehner has proposed raising the top
rate for earners making more than $1 million, a person familiar with the
negotiations said. President Barack Obama, who wants higher top rates
for households earning more than $250,000, has not accepted the offer,
this person said.
The proposal, however, indicated progress in talks that had appeared
stalled. The person would only discuss the plan on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
As part of a broader budget deal, Boehner is still seeking more
spending cuts than Obama has proposed, particularly in mandatory health
care spending. Boehner has asked for a long-term increase in eligibility
age for Medicare and for lower costs-of-living adjustments for Social
Security.
Boehner's tax proposal was first reported by Politico.
A Boehner aide would not comment on the report.
At issue are expiring tax rates that would automatically increase on
Jan. 1 for virtually every income tax payer if Congress and the
president don't act. Steep budget cuts are also scheduled to kick in,
unless Congress and Obama agree to forestall them with other deficit
reduction measures.
Obama has insisted on extending current rates for the 98 percent of
taxpayers in household that earn less than $250,000. He would let the
top two marginal rates increase from 33 percent to 35 percent and from
36 percent to 39.6 percent for those taxpayers making over that
threshold.
Until now, Boehner had maintained his opposition to raising any
rates. Instead, he had proposed to raise up to $800 billion in tax
revenue over 10 years by limiting tax loopholes and deductions as part
of a broad tax overhaul.
But the speaker and House Republicans have come under increasing
pressure form a number of Senate Republicans who say they should yield
to Obama's demand on tax rates and then press him for additional cuts
early next year in exchange for an increase in the nation's borrowing
limit.
Obama has proposed about $600 billion in spending reductions over 10
years, including about $350 billion in Medicare and other health care
savings. But he has also proposed about $200 billion in additional
spending, including aid to the unemployed and to struggling homeowners
and for public works projects.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Cliff jumping with Obama
Why are Republicans playing the Democrats' game that the "fiscal cliff" is all about taxation?
House Speaker John Boehner already made the preemptive concession of
agreeing to raise revenues. But the insistence on doing so by
eliminating deductions without raising marginal rates is now the subject
of fierce Republican infighting.
Where is the other part of
President Barack Obama's vaunted "balanced approach"? Where are the
spending cuts, both discretionary and entitlement: Medicare, Medicaid
and now Obamacare (the health care trio) and Social Security?
Social Security is the easiest to solve. So you get a sense of the
Democrats' inclination to reform entitlements when Dick Durbin, the
Senate Democrats' No. 2, says Social Security is off the table because
it "does not add a penny to our deficit."
This is absurd. In 2012, Social Security adds $165 billion to the
deficit. Democrats pretend that Social Security is covered through 2033
by its trust fund. Except that the trust fund is a fiction, a mere
"bookkeeping" device, as the Office of Management and Budget itself has
written. The trust fund's IOUs "do not consist of real economic assets
that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits." Future benefits
"will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public,
or reducing benefits or other expenditures."
And draining the Treasury, as 10,000 baby boomers retire every day.
Yet that's off the table. And on Wednesday, the president threw down the
gauntlet by demanding tax hikes now — with spending cuts to come next
year. Meaning, until after Republicans have fallen on their swords,
given up the tax issue and forfeited their political leverage.
Ronald Reagan once fell for a "tax now, cut later" deal that he later
deeply regretted. Dems got the tax; he never got the cuts. Obama's
audacious new gambit is not a serious proposal to solve our fiscal
problems. It's a raw partisan maneuver meant to neuter the Republicans
by getting them to cave on their signature issue as the hold-the-line
party on taxes.
The objective is to ignite exactly the kind of internecine warfare on
taxes now going on among Republicans. And to bury Grover Norquist.
I am not now, nor have ever been, a Norquistian. I don't believe the
current level of taxation is divinely ordained. Nor do I believe in
pledges of any kind. But Norquist is the only guy in town to
consistently resist the tax-and-spend Democrats' stampede for ever
higher taxes to fund ever more reckless spending.
The hunt for Norquist's scalp is a key part of the larger partisan
project to make the Republicans do a George H.W. Bush and renege on
their heretofore firm stand on taxes. Bush never recovered.
Why are the Republicans playing along? Because it is assumed that
Obama has the upper hand. Unless Republicans acquiesce and get the best
deal they can right now, tax rates will rise across the board on Jan. 1,
and the GOP will be left without any bargaining chips.
But what about Obama? If we all cliff dive, he gets to preside over
yet another recession. It will wreck his second term. Sure Republicans
will get blamed. But Obama is never running again. He cares about his
legacy. You think he wants a second term with a double-dip recession, 9
percent unemployment and a totally gridlocked Congress? Republicans have
to stop playing as if they have no cards.
Obama is claiming an electoral mandate to raise taxes on the top 2
percent. Perhaps, but remember those incessant campaign ads promising a
return to the economic nirvana of the Clinton years? Well, George W.
Bush cut rates across the board, not just for the top 2 percent. Going
back to the Clinton rates means middle-class tax hikes that yield four
times the revenue that you get from just the rich.
So give Obama the full Clinton. Let him live with that. And with what
also lies on the other side of the cliff: 28 million Americans newly
subject to the ruinous alternative minimum tax.
Republicans must stop acting like supplicants. If Obama so loves
those Clinton rates, Republicans should say: Then go over the cliff and
have them all.
And add: But if you want a Grand Bargain, then deal. If we give way
on taxes, we want, in return, serious discretionary cuts, clearly
spelled-out entitlement cuts and real tax reform.
Otherwise, strap on your parachute, Mr. President. We'll ride down together.
Monday, November 19, 2012
President Obama arrives in Bangkok
President Barack Obama on Sunday launched a three-day tour through
Southeast Asia in Bangkok, where his motorcade departed the airport and
made the trek along wide open highways into the center of the city, then
past the Government House which was decked out in bunting and a large
sign reading “Welcome to the Honorable Barack Obama.”
We arrived outside the Wat Pho Royal Monastery, a colorful and ornate Buddhist temple in the Phra Nakhon district.
Reporters were led to the open archway of a room with a golden Buddha
and dark marble floors. This was the Eastern Viharn Phra. A faux tree
towered behind the statue and the ceiling was painted red with gold
medallions.
A few minutes later head monk Chaokun Suthee Thammanuwat, wearing a
bright orange robe over one shoulder, led Obama, dressed in dark gray
suit, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a royal blue
pantsuit and gold necklace, into the room.
Reporters couldn’t hear what they were saying as they circled the
Buddha; the monk appeared to be explaining things for a few minutes
before they left.
We were then taken to another large hallway dominated by a huge
reclining gold Buddha, which stretched the length of the building.This
was the Viharn of the Reclining Buddha, and we were instructed to remove
our shoes before entering. Again the monk led Obama and Clinton for a
stroll past the giant figure, which dwarfed them all.
Our third stop was in the courtyard where the trio strolled past a
number of colorful spire-like columns. This was the Phra Maha Chedi
Group. The place was empty of tourists for the president’s private tour.
This reporter overheard Clinton say: “What a peaceful place,” and
Obama responded: “If you have 80,000 people here it’s not so peaceful.
This is kind of a treat.” Obama was making a joke about the budget,
saying to the monk, “Yes we’re working on this budget, we’re going to
need a lot of prayer for that.” And they laughed.
The motorcade left about 10 minutes later, headed for the hospital to visit the king.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Obama turns to Reddit for last-minute votes
With just a few hours left in the election, President Obama turned back to Reddit in a last-minute plea for votes.
Obama
made headlines in August when he used Reddit, an up-and-coming social
news site, to interact with young, tech savvy voters in a
question-and-answer session. On Tuesday, he went back to Reddit to remind readers to vote.
"I'm
checking in because polls will start closing in this election in just a
few hours, and I need you to vote," Obama said on Reddit, the
self-proclaimed "front page of the Internet."
"If you’ve voted already,
don't stop there -- spread the word to your friends, roommates and
neighbors. Think of it as upvoting," Obama said, referencing Reddit's
"upvote" feature that lets users vote on what they consider the most
important news.
Last time Obama used Reddit,
more than 200,000 users checked in on the webpage for the
question-and-answer session at the same time -- blowing past Reddit's
previous record.
The thread created today by Obama received nearly
400 comments in less than 25 minutes. Many users commented with support
while a few vouched for Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney.
Meanwhile
in other parts of the Web, Romney used Twitter to keep directing voters
to a page on his campaign site with information on the election and
where to vote.
"With your help, we will turn our country around and get America back on the path to prosperity," Romney tweeted around 3 p.m. "Please vote today."
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Obama’s foreign donors
In September, the Obama campaign got 1.8 million donations from small
contributors who did not break the $200 threshold requiring that their
information be reported to the Federal Election Commission. They gave
the campaign 98 percent of the $181 million it raised that month, a
figure vastly higher than its take in any previous month.
Is the
Obama campaign financing itself through foreign money funneled in
through a website owned by a private businessman, living in China, that
uses the name Obama.com?
In 1997, we learned — too late — that the Clinton campaign had relied
heavily on thinly disguised Chinese government money for much of its
early blitz of issue ads in the 1996 election. The early intimations of
funding fraud in the campaign (Al Gore’s exploits with the Buddhist
monks) shaved off half of Clinton’s margin, cutting his lead from 14 to 7
points in the weeks before the election. But the full dimensions of the
scandal were not apparent until then-Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) held
hearings the following year revealing the depth of the campaign’s
reliance on foreign money.
Now, in the last month of the 2012
race, Newsweek magazine has raised serious questions about Obama’s
fundraising and its possible reliance on foreign donors and outright
fraud to generate its funding.
Newsweek raises questions, in
particular, about Robert W. Roche, the co-founder and chairman of the
board of Acorn International Inc., a media and branding direct-sales
company based in Shanghai. He also owns the Obama.com website, which
appears on the Internet throughout the world. Roche’s site links to
Barackobama.com, the official campaign site, where it invites people to
donate to the campaign. Obama.com gets 2,000 visits a day, two-thirds of
which are from foreigners. Is it a giant money-laundering operation to
feed foreign money into the Obama campaign?
Despite the disclaimer
on the campaign site stating that foreign nationals cannot donate to
Obama, the suspicion remains that Roche’s vigilance in assuring that
Obama.com is on the Internet throughout the world has led to a
significant influx of foreign cash into the coffers of the president’s
reelection effort.
It will be too late to wait until 2013 to find
out. The House Oversight Committee should immediately investigate, using
its subpoena power, to see if there is, indeed, a flow of foreign
money, via Obama.com, into the president’s campaign.
Roche, by the way, has visited the White House 11 times during Obama’s tenure, according to the visitor log.
These
questions arise because the Obama campaign, unlike Romney’s or, for
that matter, Hillary Clinton’s in 2008, refuses to ask donors for their
CVV number (the number on your credit card that one is often asked for
after giving one’s name and expiration date). The CVV is designed to
assure that the donor is actually physically holding the card.
The
Obama campaign is no stranger to fraudulent donations funneled in
through phony names. In 2008, The Washington Post reported that Mary
Biskup was reported to have donated more than $170,000 to the Obama
campaign in small donations. But Biskup says she never gave any money to
the campaign. Some other donor must have given the money in her name.
Given
these past problems and the Obama campaign’s sudden influx of small
donors, Newsweek wonders why the campaign does not require CVV numbers
to minimize the chances of fraud.
The magazine noted that the
campaign’s past scandals “make it all the more surprising that the Obama
campaign does not use … the card verification value [system].” The
magazine added that “the Romney campaign, by contrast, does use the CVV —
as has almost every other candidate who has run for president in recent
years.”
Let’s find out the facts before the election. If a
president who promised ethical transparency is using small donations —
too small to trigger the federal reporting requirement — to funnel in
foreign donations, we need to know. Before Election Day.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Presidential campaign is nice, and then again not
In a split-screen race for
the presidency, Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama were
on their best campaign behavior in public Tuesday, all the while
slashing away at each other in paid television ads.
In separate
appearances in New York, they swapped criticism on foreign policy. But
they did it politely, without mentioning each other by name.
Romney
found fault with Obama's approach to education, but did so after paying
a public compliment to Arne Duncan, who has the administration's
Cabinet portfolio for the subject.
There was an outbreak of
self-deprecating humor from Romney, as well, as he received a glowing
introduction from former President Bill Clinton before speaking to the
annual Clinton Global Initiative.
"If there's one thing we've
learned this election season, it's that a few words from Bill Clinton
can do any man a lot of good," joked the Republican candidate for the
White House, referring to the former' president's strong speech on
Obama's behalf at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month.
"All I got to do now is wait a few days for that bounce to happen," Romney quipped.
Joking
or not, it was as close as the Republican challenger has come to
publicly acknowledging recent polls showing Obama moving ahead in
several battleground states and gaining ground in national surveys.
Cut to the television ads, and the political reality both campaigns are trying to create for voters
in battleground states.
Of
the five commercials the Obama campaign says it is airing most
frequently, one accuses Romney and running mate Paul Ryan of backing a
plan for Medicare that would raise out-of-pocket costs for seniors.
Another says the Republican challenger favors tax cuts for millionaires
that could be paid for by reducing existing tax breaks for education
expenses.
A third says Obama, not Romney, has pushed back
against China's unfair trade policies. A fourth asserts that part of
Romney's personal fortune is invested in China and says he's never stood
up to the country. "All he's done is send them our jobs," it says.
The Romney campaign listed six ads currently airing, four of which criticize Obama.
"Dear
Daughter. Welcome to America," says the announcer in a commercial that
shows a young baby. "Your share of Obama's debt is over $50,000."
Two
spots feature coal miners accusing the administration of pursuing
policies that go after their industry. "Obama said he was going to
bankrupt any new power plants that opened up ... He's keeping his
promise," says a miner shown in one. "I've got two young grandsons. I'm
scared for their futures, let alone mine."
A fourth accuses Obama of failing to "stand up to China" and asserts, "His policies cost us 2 million jobs."
In
the world not made up of television commercials, one report released
during the day showed consumer confidence climbing to the highest level
since February. A second report said home prices increased in July as
sales rose and foreclosures fell.
Taken together, that
amounted to encouraging news for the president, given that the
slow-growing economy and 8.1 percent national unemployment are the
public's top issues in the race for the White House.
Whatever
the economic news itself, voters increasingly say the country is
heading in the right direction. In an Associated Press-GfK poll taken at
mid-month, 48 percent of registered voters said they expect the economy
to improve in the next 12 months, compared to only 41 percent who said
so in a survey in August.
Additionally, 41 percent of
registered voters said in this month's poll that the nation is heading
in the right direction, up from 34 percent saying the same in August.
Obama's handling of the economy, still tepid, is better than it
has been. The latest AP-GfK poll finds 48 percent of registered voters
approve of the president's handling of the economy, while 49 percent
disapprove. In June, 56 percent disapproved and 43 percent approved.
Romney spoke first during the day, speaking to Clinton's organization.
He
said the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya two weeks ago
was caused by a terrorist attack, something Obama has refrained from
saying.
"Many Americans are troubled by the developments in
the Middle East," Romney said. "Syria has witnessed the killings of tens
of thousands of people. The president of Egypt is a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood. ... And Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons
capability.
"We feel that we are at the mercy of events, rather than shaping events," he added.
Although
Romney did not overtly criticize Obama's foreign policy in the speech,
as he had on Monday, his words took on a sharper edge when he suggested
to CNN during an interview that the White House had misled the American
people by not characterizing the violence in Libya as a terrorist
attack.
"The White House's failure to acknowledge that the
assassination of our ambassador was a terrorist attack, a terrorist
event, suggests that they are trying to paper over the seriousness of
what's happening in the Middle East," Romney said.
In his New
York speech, Romney said that if he is elected, he will create
"prosperity pacts" in the Middle East, private-public partnerships
designed to remove barriers to free markets around the region. He said
developing countries would receive U.S. assistance "focused on
developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law and property
rights."
Obama, in a speech later in the morning to the U.N.
General Assembly, said the recent assaults on U.S. citizens in Libya
"were attacks on America" and called on world leaders to join in
confronting the root causes of the rage across the Muslim world.
But
in a slap at Romney, Obama said "let us remember that this is a season
of progress" in the Arab World, where autocratic leaders have been
deposed in several countries.
In another jab, he said, "Among
Israelis and Palestinians, the future must not belong to those who turn
their backs on peace."
Obama didn't mention it, but Romney
says on a videotape that recently came to light that "the Palestinians
have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace. The pathway to peace
is almost unthinkable to accomplish."
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Clinton delivers for Obama – and himself
There’s nothing like an
almost-depression to put the sins of philandering Bill Clinton in
perspective. Your choice: an Oval Office sexcapade vs. full employment, a
house that’s not underwater and some hope of retiring by 75.
Clearly, America’s chosen. Most of us have forgiven the
seducer-in-chief, whose favorability ratings — along with Hillary’s —
reached 66 percent in July. That compares to 41 percent for the
struggling president whom Clinton called “cool on the outside” last
night.
But there was nothing cool and calm last night about Bill Clinton,
basking before the swooning faithful. He remained the powerful,
passionate, coy, charming, talk-a-dog-off-a-meat-wagon Southern boy who
used to jog to McDonald’s and lick secret sauce from pudgy fingers, all
the cameras tolling. And last night he showed he still can convince us
he feels our pain — and knows how to ease it.
“Are we better off then when he took office?” he asked, stealing the
line used over and over at last week’s GOP convention. Yes, he answered
himself. Then he went right down the list: jobs added since Obama saved
the economy from a free fall into depression. A saved auto industry that
Romney wanted to go bankrupt. He praised the cost savings from
so-called Obamacare — something I’ve never heard from Obama himself.
Clinton praised Obama’s willingness to compromise and reach across the
aisle.
“Heck, he even appointed Hillary.”
Like Obama, Clinton said, “I have never learned to hate (Republicans)
the way the far right who controls their party seems to hate our
president.”
And then he answered the other question hanging over Obama’s
re-election. He said the economy Obama inherited was in such drastic
shape that “no one...no one” could have fixed all the damage done in
just four years. Said Clinton, “I believe it with all my heart.”
Speculation’s been rampant this week about what was in it for Clinton
to show up last night. It looked to me like he enjoyed himself
immensely during his biggest, best, latest moment in the sun. The New York Times [NYT]
reported yesterday that Clinton talks frequently about living on
borrowed time. At 66, he’s outlived most men in his family. Of his
foundation, he said, “We trying to build it to make sure it’ll still run
if I drop dead tomorrow.”
It does occur to you, watching him: He’s not so robust anymore: But
it occurs to you, too, how often we’re blind to a politician’s enormous
talent until years after he exits the stage. Bill Clinton wowed ’em in
Charlotte last night. He wowed anybody watching. And if Barack Obama
pulls off a second term, Bill Clinton can expect — and will get — lots
of credit.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Obama pledges to work with Congress on violence
In one of his most expansive responses yet to gun crime, President Barack Obama
on Wednesday embraced some degree of control on the sale of weapons but
said he would also seek a national consensus on combating violence. He
said responsibility for curtailing bloodshed also rests with parents,
neighbors and teachers to ensure that young people "do not have that
void inside them."
Speaking
just six days after the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., that
left 12 dead, Obama pledged to work with lawmakers of both parties to
stop violence, not only the sudden massacres that have bedeviled the
nation, but the steady drip of urban crime that has cost many
young lives.
"We
should leave no stone unturned and recognize that we have no greater
mission that keeping our young people safe," Obama said in a speech to
the National Urban League.
Obama
called for stepped-up background checks for people who want to purchase
guns and restrictions to keep mentally unbalanced individuals from
buying weapons. He says those steps "shouldn't be controversial, they
should be common sense."
But
he also added: "We must also understand that when a child opens fire on
other children, there's a hole in his heart that no government
can fill."
Obama's
speech represented a bookend to a four-day trip that began in Colorado
on Sunday when he visited with survivors of the theater massacre.
For
Obama, the address to the National Urban League was a necessary
overture to a voting bloc that overwhelmingly backs him but that has
sustained much of the brunt of the economic downturn.
In
his speech Obama promoted his economic and health care policies,
tailoring what has become a standard campaign speech to his
African-American audience. He drew attention to initiatives that have
helped Americans in general, and African-Americans in particular.
But, as he did during his 2008 campaign, he also pressed personal responsibility.
He
said young Americans are competing against kids in Beijing and
Bangalore. "You know, they're not hanging out ... they're not playing
video games, they're not watching 'Real Housewives,'" he said. "I'm just
saying. It's a two-way street. You've got to earn success."
Ahead
of Obama's remarks, the Urban League played a video showing photos of
famous African-Americans that culminated with images of the president
and his family the night of the 2008 election. The crowd of several
thousand responded with thunderous applause that was sustained as Obama
walked on stage and peppered with chants of "four more years."
Obama
spoke on the same day that the Senate gave him a political victory by
passing an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for households with less than
$250,000 in earnings. The president has made retaining current tax rates
for middle-class taxpayers a central piece of his economic policy while
rejecting Republican efforts to extend the current tax rates for all.
Under Obama's plan, taxes for wealthier Americans would rise.
The Senate
measure, however, was expected to go no further because of the
Republican-dominated House.
While
enthusiasm among some Obama supporters has faded since 2008, support
for America's first black president remains high among
African-Americans. In a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, 82 percent of
black adults said they would vote for Obama. His approval rating among
blacks was 87 percent.
Obama skipped an appearance at the NAACP
earlier this month, raising questions about whether his campaign was
taking black voters for granted. The White House blamed a scheduling
conflict and sent Vice President Joe Biden to address the nation's oldest civil rights organization.
Republican challenger Mitt Romney also addressed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
raising eyebrows when he told the crowd: "If you want a president who
will make things better in the African-American community, you are
looking at him."
Obama
announced that he would sign an executive order on Thursday that
creates a new office to bolster the education of African-American
students. The White House says the office will coordinate the work of
communities and federal agencies to ensure that these youngsters are
better prepared for high school, college and career.
Obama
also was raised campaign money at two separate stops in New Orleans: an
intimate 20-person event at the cost of $25,000 per person, and a
larger event at the House of Blues for 400 people, with tickets starting at $250.
Obama
raised at least $6 million at events this week in California, Oregon
and Washington. The president started the trip Sunday with a stop in
Colorado to meet with survivors and families of the victims of last
week's movie theater massacre.
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