Judge Denies Administration Request To Put Injunction Of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell On Hold
Judge Denies Administration Request To Put Injunction Of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell On Hold
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips
“[T]he injunction requires Defendants to cease investigating and discharging servicemembers pursuant to the Act. It does not affect Defendants’ ability to revise their policies and regulations nor to develop training and education programs, the only activities specifically mentioned in the Stanley Declaration,” Phillips wrote, referring to a memo from Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, who said the injunction would create a burden for the military. Phillips similarly dismissed a Rolling Stone interview with President Obama, which the government also submitted, calling it “hearsay.”
“The public has an interest in military readiness, unit cohesion, and the preservation of fundamental constitutional rights,” she wrote. “While Defendants’ interests in preventing the status quo and enforcing its laws are important, these interests are outweighed by the compelling public interest of safeguarding fundamental constitutional rights.”
The Pentagon is complying by the orders of the injunction while it’s in effect and announced earlier today that it has issued new guidance instructing recruiters to accept gay and lesbian applicants. The Department of Justice is now expected to seek a stay on the injunction before the ninth circuit court of appeals.
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Is The ACA To Blame For Boeing Shifting Health Costs To Employees?
Is The ACA To Blame For Boeing Shifting Health Costs To Employees?
Boeing is now walking back claims that it’s changing its health care plan in response to the Affordable Care Act, telling reporters that it was considering altering its plans before reform became law. Late last week, the company had written a letter to employees blaming “the newly enacted health care reform legislation” — specifically the excise tax on high cost plans that does not go into effect until 2018 — [for] adding cost pressure.” The company told its nonunion employees they will pay a 10 percent coinsurance and higher deductibles next year, attributing the changes to competition, rising costs in health care, and some provisions from the Affordable Care Act.
But yesterday, a Boeing spokeswoman said: “Yes, we are making health care changes. If you would’ve asked me if we would’ve made these changes without the enactment of the law, I would’ve said yes“:
“We’re just out of line with market. We’ve been contemplating what can we do to reduce costs,” Forte said. “It came down to, we’ve got to pass some of these costs down to our employees.”
Forte said Boeing was “keeping an eye” on the new health care law, which in 2018 would impose a significant tax on “Cadillac” health plans in 2018. However she said the federal changes were not the main reasons for Boeing’s move.
Indeed, Boeing has continued to offer a comparatively generous insurance plan since 1999. For instance, the average paycheck contribution for Boeing employees for health care is $13 per month per individual and $39 per month per family, while employees at similar companies pay $60 per individual and $210 per family.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius echoed the sentiment during a news conference this afternoon, saying that “a number of companies and my guess is employers will cite this bill with some specificity for whatever premium increase they are suggesting. But since the first of the consumer protections became effective, less than a month ago and since the trend of lines of health insurance plans cost increases have been building over time, year after year, I think that…until there is some underling data to make that connection, it’s kind of hard to justify the kind of rate increase or a massive cost shift based on a new law. ”
By 2018 some companies offering benefits beyond threshold of the new excise tax will have to start offering less generous benefits if they want to avoid paying the new fee. But reformers believe that before then, companies and employees will be able to switch into cheaper, but still comprehensive insurance plans, thus reducing overall health care spending.
Republican Spending Plan Would Cut Billions From Pell Grants, Eliminate Race To The Top
Republican Spending Plan Would Cut Billions From Pell Grants, Eliminate Race To The Top
A cornerstone of the House Republican pitch on economic policy — first introduced by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and reinforced in the Pledge to America — is immediately returning non-defense discretionary spending to its 2008 level. The GOP claims that this will reduce federal spending by $100 billion overnight, but flatly refuses to name specific programs that would come under the knife. “The line item would be across the board,” asserted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Pledge’s architect.
Taken at face value, as Dana Goldstein pointed out in the Daily Beast, these cuts would mean a significant reduction in federal Pell Grants and the complete elimination of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program:
With partisanship at record levels in the run-up to the midterm elections, Obama’s education-reform agenda — once the calling card for his commitment to bipartisan good governance — is under threat from both the left and right. Congressional Republicans, including those, like [Sen. Lamar] Alexander (R-TN), who once praised Obama’s education policies, are now calling for a return to 2008 levels of federal spending, which would stop the White House from funding additional Pell Grant student loans and cancel plans for another round of Race to the Top, Obama’s signature education-reform grant competition.
Let’s unpack the numbers here a bit. In 2009, Pell Grant funding was $25.3 billion. In 2008, it was about $16 billion. So cutting back to the 2008 level would mean $9 billion less in funding for students, even though demand is likely to go up as the effects of the Great Recession continue to be felt across the country.
Race to the Top, meanwhile, has been spurring education reform across the country. As the New Teacher Project put it, “Race to the Top has already accelerated education reform by decades in some states.” The ranking member on the House Education Committee has already threatened to cut the program’s funding, and actually implementing the GOP’s spending plan would be the official final nail in its coffin.
Of course, it’s extremely unlikely that Republicans would actually go through with reducing every non-defense discretionary program back to the 2008 level. After all, the Drug Enforcement Administration, food safety inspectors, federal highway funding, and the Secret Service are all on the discretionary side of the budget. But that just means, to get to $100 billion, they’d have to make even bigger cuts in other programs, with education funding providing one of the biggest potential pots.
And that, in the end, is why it would be folly to actually employ the sort of blunt budgeting apparatus that the GOP advocates. (A federal spending freeze also falls into this category.) Such a move has nothing to do with setting priorities, increasing funding for successful programs, or eliminating unsuccessful ones. It just provides a good sound bite. Here’s an actual attempt to cull the education budget for ineffective or duplicative programs.
Pentagon Tells Recruiters To Accept Gay And Lesbian Recruits
Pentagon Tells Recruiters To Accept Gay And Lesbian Recruits
In an effort to comply with Judge Virginia Phillips’ injunction against enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Department of Defense is instructing recruiters to accept gay and lesbian applicants. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith tells the AP that “top-level guidance has been issued to recruiting commands informing them that the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule has been suspended for now,” but recruiters “also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium could be reversed at any point.”
The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder has more:
One is that the guidance given to recruiters is based on the status of legal process, and that gay recruits are being told that if the ban on gays in the military is upheld, their status might be revoked in the future. Two: in the Navy, at least, recruits are being processed on “delayed entry” status, which places them on inactive reserve status for up to a year.
Three, each service branch is applying the guidance, which was offered by the Pentagon’s general counsel, differently.
Four, this does not mean that it is safe for gay soldiers to come out. Indeed, if they do, and a stay is enforced or the case is thrown out, they can be held responsible for their declarations during this intermediary period. Still — today is a point of demarcation.
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) is warning gay members against coming out, however, since “a higher court is likely to issue a hold on the injunction by Judge Phillips very soon.” The Department of Defense “is awaiting a ruling from Phillips on the government’s request to stay the injunction pending the government’s appeal of the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The hearing on the stay request, held Monday afternoon, ended with Phillips giving a tentative ruling against granting the stay.”
Responding to today’s announcement, Lt. Dan Choi — who was discharged under the policy in 2010 — tweeted that he will try to enlist at the Times Square recruiting station in New York City, telling the Advocate Magazine, “[a]s we say in the military, this is a target of opportunity. It’s an opportunity for me to serve in whatever capacity that I can. And I’m going to go try to do that.”
Iran: Like The USSR, Only Much, Much Weaker
Iran: Like The USSR, Only Much, Much Weaker
Carnegie’s Karim Sadjadpour has a really smart piece looking at the three most common historical models used to understand the nature of the Iranian challenge to U.S. foreign policy, Red China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union:
The chosen metaphor pretty much dictates the proposed response, and most prescriptions for U.S. policy have come down to one of these variations: attempt to coax the Iranian regime into modernity; forget the diplomatic niceties and “pre-emptively” attack it to prevent or delay its acquisition of nuclear weapons; or contain it in hopes it will change or collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions.
Sadjadpour dismisses the China analogy, suggesting that Iran’s resistance to President Obama’s recent overtures have shown enmity to America is far more central to the character of the Iranian regime than it ever was to China’s, and thus no “grand bargain” is really in the offing. Likewise dismissing comparisons to Nazi German, Sadjadpour writes, “though the Iranian regime is homicidal toward its own population and espouses a hateful ideology, there is little evidence to suggest it is also expansionist and genocidal.”
Sadjadpour concludes — by way of George Kennan’s 1947 essay The Sources of Soviet Conduct — that the Soviet Union is actually the closest comparison to be made:
Like the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic is a corrupt, inefficient, authoritarian regime whose bankrupt ideology resonates far more abroad than it does at home. Also like the men who once ruled Moscow, Iran’s current leaders have a victimization complex and, as they themselves admit, derive their internal legitimacy from thumbing their noses at Uncle Sam.
I think this makes a lot of sense, but, having established a rough model for predicting Iran’s behavior, it’s necessary to go the next step and recognize that Iran is far, far weaker than the Soviet Union was, and doesn’t pose anything like the global threat to U.S. interests that the Soviet Union once did.
While Iran’s power in the region has clearly increased and the U.S.’s diminished as a result of the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. is still dealing from a position of considerable strength against a far weaker power in Iran, in a geopolitical environment that’s less conducive to the sort of power projection to which Iran seems to aspire. Clearly, Iran represents a challenge to a number of U.S. interests, but there are also areas of mutual interest to explore, such as its recent offer to help stabilize Afghanistan. So it’s important that we not allow ourselves to be talked into believing that the apocalypse is upon us.
GOP AG Candidate Quotes Pro-Confederate Radical To Justify Supporting Nullification
GOP AG Candidate Quotes Pro-Confederate Radical To Justify Supporting Nullification
Connecticut GOP Attorney General candidate Martha Dean supports nullification, the unconstitutional theory that states can invalidate federal laws that they don’t like. Moreover, after a blog post by the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) called her out on her “dangerous and unconstitutional views,” CAC reports that Dean doubled-down. According to CAC, Dean herself responded to their blog post by copying and pasting an article by pro-Confederate activist Thomas Woods into a comment on their blog:
Dean’s choice to take policy guidance from Woods is both bizarre and ill-advised. Woods, one of the founders of the neo-Confederate League of the South, once published an article declaring the Confederacy to be “Christendom’s Last Stand.” In it, Woods endorses the view that the Civil War was a battle between “atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other,” and he concludes that “[t]he real watershed from which we can trace many of the destructive trends that continue to ravage our civilization today, was the defeat of the Confederate States of America in 1865.”
Nor is this the first time that Dean aligned herself with the pro-Confederate Woods. In a recent debate, Dean actually read aloud from Woods’ recent book supporting nullification.
Yet, while Woods is clearly a fringe figure nostalgic for one of the most embarrassing episodes in American history, his views are sadly quite influential among today’s GOP. Woods has contributed dozens of articles to the Tenth Amendment Center, a pro-nullification group which pushes political candidates to sign a pledge promising to nullify federal laws — such as Social Security and Medicare — which don’t comply with their radical “tenther” view of the Constitution. U.S. House candidate Marty Lamb (R-MA) and Alabama GOP gubernatorial candidate Robert Bentley have both signed this pledge. Meanwhile, Governors Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA) put Woods’ ideas into practice by signing obviously unconstitutional laws claiming to nullify the Affordable Care Act, and Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer is a eager to do the same.
Moreover, the Republican Party’s refusal to distance itself from a would-be Jefferson Davis such as Woods is par for their course. As Think Progress has documented, there is virtually no view too radical to find a home in today’s GOP.
After Saying He Could ‘Repeal The Whole Thing,’ Manchin Back To Supporting Parts Of Health Reform
After Saying He Could ‘Repeal The Whole Thing,’ Manchin Back To Supporting Parts Of Health Reform
The Washington Independent’s Jesse Zwick watched Gov. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) many flip flops during yesterday’s West Virginia Senate debate and wondered “What liberal views does Manchin still hold, and what, if anything, could he be relied upon to vote for in the Senate?” — something health care advocates and reporters have wondered for quite some time now. Because if Manchin has changed his views on tax cuts and cap and trade, he’s done a 360 and back again on the Affordable Care Act. Consider the following:
Supported parts of ACA during debate: “I’m not prepared to scrap the entire bill, there are parts that need changed,” he said, “but let me tell you, I’m not prepared to tell your child who had a pre-existing condition, that he or she can’t be covered. There’s a lot of good in the bill that basically Democrats and Republicans agree with.” [West Virginia Public Broadcasting, 10/18/2010]
Supported parts of ACA in radio ad: “One out of every four West Virginians under the age of 65 suffers from a pre-existing medical condition such as heart disease, cancer or asthma,” the narrator says in the new radio spot. The ad then switches to a recording of Raese saying, “I don’t believe that insurance companies be mandated to handle pre-existing conditions.” [The Hill, 10/18/2010]
Shot a hole through ACA in TV ad: “I’ll take on Washington and this administration to get the federal government off of our backs and out of our pockets,” Manchin says in the TV spot. “I’ll cut federal spending, and I’ll repeal the bad parts of ObamaCare.” [CNN, 10/11/2010]
Would repeal all of ACA: I still and have always been in support of health reform. If anybody believes that a child should be left off of their parents and also pre-existing conditions and small businesses and all those things should go uninsured, something is wrong in America. Now with that, the president’s plan — ‘Obamacare,’ as it’s been called — is far too reaching. It’s overreaching. It needs to have a lot of it repealed. But you can fix that. If you can’t fix that, repeal the whole thing. [Fox News, 10/11/2010]
Would repeal parts of ACA: “The Governor felt it was important to move the ball forward on healthcare reform and that something had to be done to help more working people obtain health insurance, so he said at the time that he would vote to do that. However, as more details have come out about what was included in the final version of the healthcare reform bill, there are several sections that he would now vote to repeal, including any provisions that allow for the funding of abortions and the provisions that are cumbersome to small businesses. He also believes people’s personal responsibility and healthcare choices should not be taken away by overreaching regulations. So knowing what he knows now, he would have fought for changes to the final version of the bill before voting and he would not have voted for it in its current form.” [Wonk Room, 9/28/2010]
Would have vote for ACA: “I’d be for [the Affordable Care Act]. I think you’ve got to move the ball. Ted is exactly right. You have to move this ball forward right wrong or indifferent. I have never, since I’ve been in the legislative process and since I’ve been governor, I’ve never gotten a perfect bill. I’ve never gotten a bill exactly the way I’ve wanted it….Let’s try, let’s try to make this. Bring us all in. Let’s make it work.” [National Governors Association, 3/17/2010]
Interestingly, Manchin — who is now leading his race in West Virginia — is no longer answering report queries about this exact position on the law.
Multinational Corporations Push To Revive Failed Bush Administration Tax Boondoggle
Multinational Corporations Push To Revive Failed Bush Administration Tax Boondoggle
According to the Financial Times, some multinational corporations have been lobbying the Obama administration to undergo a new round of tax repatriation, a process that allows corporations to bring money they hold overseas back to the U.S. at a very low tax rate. The companies are arguing that such a move will boost investment and job creation here at home:
US multinational companies are clamouring for a tax holiday to repatriate billions of dollars “trapped” overseas but are being rebuffed by Barack Obama’s administration…“We do have overseas cash and we would be very supportive of a repatriation holiday,” said Keith Sherin, chief financial officer of General Electric. “If you think about it, there is a lot of cash trapped overseas. If companies could bring that back at more competitive tax rates, I think it would be good for the US economy.“
When corporations bring foreign earnings back to the U.S., they pay the full statutory corporate tax rate, so of course they would jump at the opportunity to pay a lower rate. And a good way to convince policymakers that this is a winning idea is to promise that the money will be used to invest in job creation.
But left out of the story is the fact that we’ve tried this before: it turned into a windfall for shareholders and corporate executives, while not spurring job creation or investment. In 2004, Congress passed the Homeland Investment Act, allowing companies to bring back offshore profits in 2005 and pay a tax rate of just 5.25 percent, far below the 35 percent corporate tax rate.
As the New York Times Floyd Norris wrote, the bill “was sold to Congress as a way to spur investment in America, building plants, increasing research and development and creating jobs.” However, according to work done by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 92 percent of the nearly $300 billion that companies brought back went to share buybacks and increased dividend payments. Plus, Kristin Forbes, one of the authors of the NBER study, said that restrictions regarding how repatriated money could be spent “seem to have been completely ineffective”:
“Dell was a great example,” she added, referring to Dell Computer. “They lobbied very hard for the tax holiday. They said part of the money would be brought back to build a new plant in Winston-Salem, N.C. They did bring back $4 billion, and spent $100 million on the plant, which they admitted would have been built anyway. About two months after that, they used $2 billion for a share buyback.”
This turned into a tax boondoggle the first time. There’s no reason to give it another chance.
Gregg Comes Out Against Repealing ACA, Says It Could Lead To More Insurance Hikes
Gregg Comes Out Against Repealing ACA, Says It Could Lead To More Insurance Hikes
Outgoing Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) led the fight against the Affordable Care Act in the Senate, but during an appearance on Fox Business last night, Gregg — who has proposed a health bill that’s similar to what Democrats passed in March — disagreed with the Republican strategy of repealing and replacing the law. “Giving the Democrats another shot at health care is like giving an axe murderer another shot with an ax,” Gregg began before endorsing some of the Medicare cuts in the bill and conceding that repealing the law could allow insurers to continue increasing premiums:
CAVUTO: Well, do you worry senator that your party is going to make things worse or maybe provide an opportunity for insurance companies to keep raising premiums because you want to stave the law or delay some of its implementation? And in that gap insurance companies can continue hike, hike, hike, hike!
GREGG: Well, that would be unfortunate if that happened and I’m not going to say that you wouldn’t end up with some gaming of the system that way. But the simple fact is that the plan as structured today isn’t going to work except to push push us into a situation where the government gets expand by 2.5 trillion dollars — 2.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years.
CAVUTO: Would you repeal it or as John Boehner has indicated, starve it?
GREGG: I don’t think starving or repeal is probably the best approach here.
CAVUTO: What would you do?
GREGG: You basically go in and you restructure it. What we did in this proposal, which actually made some sense, was that we restructured the Medicare system in a way that saved half trillion to a trillion dollars for Medicare, out of Medicare. But we took all of that money and we created a brand new entitlement which we under-funded.
Watch it:
As The Hill notes, Gregg has previously supported the GOP’s repeal and replace strategy. “Our view is, you repeal and replace this bill,” Gregg said on CNN in March. “You replace it with better law and better approaches towards healthcare.” He also said on CNBC as recently as last month that using the budget reconciliation process to repeal major parts of healthcare reform were an option, too.
The House GOP has released a ‘Pledge’ that calls for repealing the entire health law, but the party hasn’t always backed this approach. In January, young guns Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Politico’s Mike Allen that Republicans “WILL NOT campaign for full health care repeal, but will demand partial repeal, including mandates for health coverage.” More recently, Republicans have tried to temper expectations for what they will be able to achieve if they do win back the House. (H/T: The Hill’s Michael O’Brien)
Bank Of America Suddenly Finds Ability To Review Cases Quickly, Lifts Foreclosure Freeze
Bank Of America Suddenly Finds Ability To Review Cases Quickly, Lifts Foreclosure Freeze
For months after the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) — the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure prevention program — was launched, Bank of America lagged behind the other servicers in the percentage of eligible borrowers that it was successfully navigating into a permanent mortgage modification. Part of the problem was that BofA was utterly incapable, by its own admission, of keeping track of paperwork and working constructively with borrowers.
When the ongoing foreclosure fraud scandal hit, Bank of America was the first institution to implement a foreclosure freeze, and the only bank to extend its freeze to all fifty states. However, BofA announced yesterday that it has reviewed its foreclosure process and “had not found a single example where a foreclosure proceeding was brought in error.” Therefore, the bank is moving ahead with more than 100,000 foreclosures on Monday in the 23 states that require judicial review to complete a foreclosure.
As the New York Times noted, “consumer advocates and lawyers for homeowners expressed skepticism that Bank of America could complete a review of the paperwork so quickly.” Indeed, let’s put this in perspective. Bank of America has been participating in HAMP for roughly 18 months, during which time it offered 410,000 trial modifications, started 316,000, and turned about 80,000 into permanent modifications. That’s about 760 trial modifications per day and 4,400 permanent modifications per month.
In the last ten days, though, Bank of America managed to plow through 102,000 cases to get them ready to go back to court. That’s more than 10,000 reviews per day. Peter Ticktin, a Florida based lawyer, questioned how BofA could suddenly find the wherewithal to validate so much paperwork so quickly. “This wasn’t just a simple little mistake of forgetting to dot the ‘i,’” he said. “There was a whole system put in place to make false affidavits. How are they going to erect a new system to do 102,000 affidavits unless they are going to use the same old law firms to make a second generation of bad affidavits?”
Now, Bank of America’s modification numbers were likely skewed downward because, as Andrew Jakabovics and I first reported, it was attempting to siphon borrowers off into its own private modification program, in violation of its contract with Treasury. But still, the bank jerked borrowers around for months and couldn’t get them through HAMP, but now that its faced with a mess that could blow a hole in its bottom line, it kicks its operation into high gear. David Dayen added these points:
Two things on this. One, it neglects the clear risk to the rule of law that banks like BofA submitted phony documents to a court. Whether they take them back now or not has no bearing on this attempt to commit fraud. Two, it localizes the issue to the signing of the affidavits and not the impropriety of the documents themselves – the forgeries, the backdating, the failure to inform borrowers of foreclosure actions, all of the horror stories we’ve heard over the past month.
Somewhere along the line, there were fraudulent documents and a breakdown of due process. But the banks are still acting like this is simply a paperwork problem.
Univision Airing Ads Urging Latinos Not To Vote Despite Heading Civic Participation Campaign
Univision Airing Ads Urging Latinos Not To Vote Despite Heading Civic Participation Campaign
Yesterday, Latinos for Reform — a Republican 527 group — announced that it purchased an $80,000 buy on Univision to air ads urging Nevada Latino voters not to vote. Robert de Posada, a conservative political consultant and political analyst for Univision, has described the ad as an expression of the Latino community’s frustration with the lack of immigration reform. Apparently, telling Latino voters not to vote will somehow empower them. “It’s the only way for Hispanics to stand up and demand some attention,” de Posada claims. “I can’t ask people to support a Republican candidate who has taken a completely irresponsible and bordering on racist position on immigration,” he said about senatorial candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV). (As a side note, the ad doesn’t mention Angle or the fact that Republicans have been obstructing reform for the past year).
Watch the ad in English and in Spanish:
I agree with my colleagues who have blasted de Posada and the logic of his argument. However, my question is: Why is Univision even airing it?
Univision is a critical partner in the non-partisan Latino civic participation campaign, Ya Es Hora. According to the campaign’s website, Ya Es Hora “represents the largest and most comprehensive effort to incorporate Latinos as full participants in the American political process.”
In 2008, Univision Communications even received a Peabody Award for “outstanding public service” and “the role it is playing with multipronged citizenship and get-out-the-vote efforts in hundreds of Spanish-speaking communities throughout the U.S.” Upon receiving the award Cesar Conde, president of Univision Networks, stated “Univision has always been regarded as a champion and defender of Hispanic culture and empowerment since its inception 40 years ago. The involvement in issues like education, health care and civic engagement are core to what we do in our day-to-day business.”
The Univision Communications PAC has meanwhile given $2,500 to Friends of Harry Reid.
Obviously, Univision is a private company, not a public interest organization. It is free to air the ads of whomever it wants. However, it seems odd that the network would accept $80,000 to air a message that isn’t just fundamentally at odds with its own self-professed mantra, but also directly contradicts the goals of a campaign it has already invested significant resources in. Airing ads encouraging its viewers not to exercise the power of their vote in this year’s midterm elections raises serious questions about Univision’s commitment to its own corporate ethics. And if the ads are successful, it’s also probably bad business.
Judge Likely To Deny DOJ’s Request To Stay DADT Injuction, Further Underminig Govt’s Argument
Judge Likely To Deny DOJ’s Request To Stay DADT Injuction, Further Underminig Govt’s Argument
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips
But in court on Monday, Phillips appeared less than impressed with the government’s arguments:
“The request is untimely,” she said, noting that the government had several weeks to present evidence about the effects that a worldwide permanent injunction could have on the military. “Neither at trial, when the government declined to put on any evidence, nor during the time it was allowed in a briefing schedule, did the government put on substantive evidence as to the form of the injunction,” she said.
She criticized evidence the government had advanced. “The first exhibit is a Rolling Stone article,” she said. “I hardly need to say more than that.”
She also found fault with the government’s introduction of declaration by Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, who said the injunction would create a burden for the military. She said the declaration was “too conclusory to be of much assistance in the defense to meet the legal burden in obtaining a stay.”
The big problem for DOJ is that the longer the government has to wait for a court to stay Phillips’ injunction, the weaker their argument becomes about the importance of DADT in maintaining military readiness and other national priorities. Defense Robert Gates has warned that ending the ban through the court would have “enormous consequences for our troops,” but the Pentagon has yet to identify any negative impact from its temporary suspension of the ban. The Palm Center has launched an entire website to track any potential consequences and has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for all documentation related to the suspension of DADT.
For more on the uncertainly surrounding Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, read yesterday’s Progress Report.
The WonkLine: October 19, 2010
The WonkLine: October 19, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest public policy news. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
Climate Change
In a Senate debate, Gov. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said climate legislation would ruin “the entire country,” and Republican John Raese called global warming a “myth,” saying “what we have to do is find more coal.”
In Hawaii, the Republican gubernatorial candidate James “Duke” Aiona has “set a bold and ambitious goal for Hawaii to cut its consumption of foreign oil in half within eight years,” while Democrat Neil Abercrombie’s plan “calls for a new agency to oversee the state’s energy initiatives.”
Floods killed seven people and affected thousands in Thailand and Australia.
LGBT Equality
“A federal judge in California on Monday tentatively denied a request by the federal government to stay a permanent global injunction barring enforcement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the military’s ban on open homosexuals.”
“Lawyers for the city of San Francisco are firing back at gay marriage opponents who want an appeals court to overturn the judge who struck down California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex unions.”
“A web video produced by a member of a controversial Sioux City church is arguing that because the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage last year, the next logical step will be legalizing incest.”
Economy
According to depositions released by the Florida Attorney General’s Office, a manager at a Florida foreclosure mill “signed up to 1,000 documents a day without reading them and employees were given gifts to speed up foreclosure paperwork.”
Senate Democrats are trying to pass a one-time payment to Social Security recipients, since seniors will receive no cost-of-living adjustment this year, “but Majority Leader Harry Reid will have to tackle deficit concerns to convert Democratic and Republican opponents.”
What if Obama cut taxes and nobody noticed?
Immigration
Marriott and Hilton Worldwide are among the large companies seeking to boost the number of legal immigrant workers they’re allowed to hire through an increase in worker visas and more employment-based green cards.
About two dozen New Orleans-area community leaders are calling on Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) to apologize for a TV ad they say stereotypes Latino immigrants.
Kris Kobach (R), author of SB-1070 running for Kansas Secretary of State claims thousands of undocumented immigrants are potentially voting in his state and promises to safeguard Kansas elections.
Education
“Congress adjourned for the November elections without reauthorizing the federal law that controls the nation’s school meals program. But school nutrition and anti-hunger advocates say that delay could be a blessing in disguise,” Education Week reports.
Heading into November, “state ballot measures involving education are largely tied to a similar theme: the burden of funding K-12 programs when state finances are shaky.”
National Security
“Islamist militants stormed Chechnya’s parliament Tuesday, killing at least four people in the worst terrorist attack there since August.”
“US Attorney General Eric Holder called Tuesday for the release of detained Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, ahead of a visit to Beijing this week.”
“Iran welcomes any ‘fair and purposeful‘ talks with the West over its nuclear program and plans, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.”
Health Care
“A federal judge said Monday that he would rule before year’s end on whether the health overhaul violates the Constitution, and he seemed sympathetic to the plaintiff’s core argument. ”
“After weeks of avoiding the health care overhaul on the campaign trail, some Democrats are out bragging about the law in the final run-up to the mid-term elections.”
“The Justice Department sued Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan on Monday, asserting that the company, the state’s dominant health insurer, had violated antitrust laws and secured a huge competitive advantage by forcing hospitals to charge higher prices to Blue Cross’s rivals.”
Why Some Democrats Also Want To ‘Fix’ The Affordable Care Act
Why Some Democrats Also Want To ‘Fix’ The Affordable Care Act
Politico’s Sarah Kliff notes that several Democrats have been bitten by the change the health care bill bug and are now promising to modify the bill if elected:
“I want to reform it and fix it and make sure that it works for small businesses and their families,” Alexi Giannoulias, the Democrat seeking President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“If you can fix it — Democrats and Republicans agree on six or seven items — that’s a pretty darn good start,” West Virginia Gov. and Democratic Senate candidate Joe Manchin told Fox News on Monday.
“I’d like to fix health care,” Democratic Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway said in a debate last week with Republican contender Rand Paul. “He wants to repeal it. And I think that’s a stark difference.”
Giannoulias, Manchin and Conway weren’t in Congress when Democrats pushed through the reform bill earlier this year. But even some Democratic incumbents who voted for the bill are now saying that it’s time to go back in and change it.
“Is the bill perfect? Absolutely not,” Rep. Brad Ellsworth said during a debate with other Indiana Senate candidates Monday. “Will it be added to and deleted from? It will.”
North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy told one local newspaper last month that “improvements need to be made” in the bill. Then he followed up by telling another paper that “none of us believe our work is done or that the bill is perfect.”
Manchin is the only Democratic senate candidate to endorse repealing the law in its entirety, but other Democrats are clearly trying to carve out a space in which they can support the popular provisions of the law and talk about eliminating the more (politically) problematic elements. This kind of approach certainly polls well, but it is premature to fix a law that has not even been implemented.
It also doesn’t bode well for some of the more controversial cost containment mechanisms — the excise tax on high-cost plans, the Medicare cost board — that don’t go into effect until 2016 and will require lawmakers to make certain cuts to providers in order to reduce overall health care spending. By arguing that elements of the law that have not yet been implemented must be fixed or repealed, Democrats are not only playing into the GOP’s framework that the law is problematic, but they’re also opening the flood gates for stripping the most essential cost-containment provisions from the law. In other words, the frame may seem like a good election-season talking point over the short term, but if taken seriously it would cause serious policy problems down the road, as Democrats struggle to explain why the law has not lived up to expectations and decreased health spending.
Citi Says It’s ‘Fairly Confident’ It Didn’t Use Robo-Signers, One Week After Breaking With Robo-Signing Law Firm
Citi Says It’s ‘Fairly Confident’ It Didn’t Use Robo-Signers, One Week After Breaking With Robo-Signing Law Firm
Last week, mega-bank Wells Fargo refused to implement a foreclosure moratorium like those put in place by Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and GMAC Mortgage, stating that no such step was necessary because its foreclosure process was sound and not plagued by some of the “robo-signer” issues that other banks have found. This, as it turned out, wasn’t true; a desposition uncovered by the Financial Times showed that Wells had, in fact, relied on a robo-signer to process foreclosures.
Mortgage giant Citigroup has also, thus far, been adamantly opposed to putting a foreclosure moratorium in place. This morning, on a conference call, the bank reiterated its opposition to a foreclosure freeze, saying that it’s “fairly confident” that it didn’t engage in fraudulent foreclosure practices:
Citigroup sought to allay investors’ fears over the US mortgage crisis, saying it had not uncovered any irregularities in its foreclosure process and downplaying the potential cost of buying back home loans from government entities…“We have not found evidence of robo-signing as we have gone through our review,” John Gerspach, Citi’s finance chief, said. “We are fairly confident we have not relied on robo-signers.”
“Fairly confident” doesn’t sound all that confident to me. And it’s even less convincing considering that last week, the Palm Beach Post reported that Citigroup was using a law firm — run by “foreclosure king” David Stern — that processed foreclosures using robo-signers:
Attorney Tom Ice of Royal Palm Beach-based Ice Legal said the problem is that law firm employees were doing the work, not Citi employees. “In truth, CitiMortgage not only engaged in the same practice of using a robo-signer for its cases, they used a robo-signer who is actually an employee of the foreclosure mill attorneys representing them,” said Ice, who deposed Stern operations manager Cheryl Samons last year. Samons signed as “attorney-in-fact” for CitiMortgage in some foreclosure documents.
As the Associated Press reported, a former paralegal in Stern’s office told the Florida attorney general about “a boiler-room atmosphere in which employees were pressured to forge signatures, backdate documents, swap Social Security numbers, inflate billings and pass around notary stamps as if they were salt.” Citi was so spooked by the allegations that, as of last week, it is no longer sending business to Stern’s office.
At this point, it’s really hard to tell how widespread fradulent foreclosures are (though there definitely are some), which is why it makes sense for the banks to freeze actions until the extent of the problem is known. In addition to the issues facing people who were improperly foreclosed upon, as David Dayen put it, “you just feed homebuyers into a wood chipper if you let them buy a foreclosed home in a market with such confusion.” Emptywheel has more on Stern’s antics here.
Governors Races: Losing The Western Climate Initiative
Governors Races: Losing The Western Climate Initiative
This is the last of a four-part Wonk Room series examining the implications for climate and clean energy policy of the 2010 gubernatorial races. Read Part One, on heartland states, Part Two, on Tea Party candidates, Part Three, on Northeast races, or view the full governor-race compilation.
The Western Climate Initiative — a regional cap-and-trade compact between California, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Montana and four Canadian provinces — was established in 2007 and scheduled to go into effect in 2012. There are governors’ races in all the states except Montana and Washington. Republican governors in Arizona and Utah — who are cruising to re-election this fall — have already worked to scuttle their involvement. California’s contribution, the legislation known as AB 32, is under threat both from the Proposition 23 ballot initiative and from Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. The future of the compact rides on the governors’ races this November in California, New Mexico, and Oregon:
ARIZONA: Terry Goddard v. Jan Brewer
CALIFORNIA: Jerry Brown v. Meg Whitman
NEW MEXICO: Diane Denish v. Susana Martinez
OREGON: John Kitzhaber v. Chris Dudley
UTAH: Peter Corroon v. Gary Herbert
ARIZONA: Terry Goddard v. Jan Brewer
538 forecast: 4 percent Democratic pickup
Jan Brewer, who assumed the governorship when Democrat Janet Napolitano was chosen as Secreatary of Health and Human Services, officially recognizes the threat of global warming pollution but has pulled Arizona out of any effort to cap its pollution. In her executive order in February 2010 that announced Arizona would not participate in the Western Climate Initiative’s regional cap-and-trade program, Brewer admitted:
Arizona is a growing state whose greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been projected to rise, based on historical trends, as Arizona will experience population and economic growth in the future. [Executive Order 2010-06, 2/2/10]
The executive order also ordered the state to “review its adoption of the California Clean Cars Program, in light of national vehicle standards coming into place.” However, Brewer still wants the state to participate in the regional compact to “have a seat at the table” on climate issues.
Brewer promotes the state’s 15 percent-by-2025 renewable standard, and supports “adding more nuclear power to Arizona’s energy supply.”
Brewer’s opponent, Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard, is much more concerned about the threat global warming poses to Arizona. Responding to the Supreme Court’s decision compelling the EPA to act on global warming pollution and the 2007 IPPC climate report, Goddard wrote that “it is abundantly clear that if more steps are not taken soon to respond to global climate change, Arizona will be among the places paying the biggest price.” In 2009, Goddard defended “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to grant states the right to regulate global warming pollution from automobiles.”
Gohmert Likens Homosexuality To ‘Adultery’, Suggests Gays People ‘Cannot Control Their Hormones’
Gohmert Likens Homosexuality To ‘Adultery’, Suggests Gays People ‘Cannot Control Their Hormones’
During an appearance on the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch Weekly radio program on Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) likened homosexuality to ‘adultery’ and suggested that gay people wouldn’t be able to control their hormones if allowed to serve openly in the armed forces:
GOHMERT: Some people say, “Where is homosexuality in violation of the Ten Commandments?” Well it’s adultery, it’s sexual relations outside of marriage, a man and a woman ….. specifically for the military, when anyone, whether their homosexual or heterosexual, cannot control their hormones to the point that they are distraction[s] to the good order and discipline of the military, then they need to be removed from the military. [...]
PERKINS: What happens if the courts or even congress — that is currently debating this issue — changes the policy? Will that not ultimately lead, if you have to say homosexual behavior is acceptable — would not then the policies have to be changed or the laws, rather changed about heterosexual immorality?
GOHMERT: Well of course it would.
Listen:
These comments only add to Gohmert’s long list of homophobic remarks. Last year, Gohmert called the DADT repeal “perverse…social experimentation” and said that soldiers are being “held hostage by a sociological attack.” His rant included a bizarre argument that the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill would lead to a legalization of necrophilia, pedophilia, and bestiality and said that taking away “moral teaching in America” would create a situation similar to that of Germany in the “1920′s and 1930′s” when a “little guy with a mustache” took over.
On a substantive note, as CAP’s Larry Korb points out, DoD should implement a broad code of social conduct that covers all personal relationships and behavior that undermine good order and discipline, whether they’re the fault of gay or straight soldiers. (H/T: Good As You)
60 Minutes Reports On Silwan, East Jerusalem
60 Minutes Reports On Silwan, East Jerusalem
Our guest blogger is Joseph Dana, a writer and filmmaker living in Jerusalem.
Silwan is a dangerous neighborhood. Not only because of the simmering political tensions between the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers occupying houses in the city, but also because the neighborhood is one of the centers of the drug trade. But of all the cities and villages in the West Bank, the Palestinians of Silwan have a reputation as being on the forefront of resistance to Israel’s steady takeover of Palestinian land. In fact, they often proclaim that the third intifada will begin in Silwan regardless of what is happening in the rest of the West Bank.
Recently, a thirty five year father of three living in Silwan was shot by a private settler security guard. Days of rioting and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli border police followed. I was in Silwan during these riots and at times it felt as though the third intifada was already underway.
Silwan is located in East Jerusalem’s holy basin, which encompasses the north, east and south of the Old City. Over the past five years, the Israeli government has been encouraging Jewish settlers to settle in the holy basin in order to disconnect East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine, effectively making an equitable two state solution impossible. From Sheikh Jarrah in the north to Silwan in the south, settlers have been taking over and changing the ethnic make up of what would, according to the 2003 Road Map, become the Palestinian capital.
The method of Israeli acquisition of Palestinian land and property in East Jerusalem varies. In Sheikh Jarrah, Israeli courts have sided with settler organizations attempting to prove that certain houses in the neighborhood were owned by Jewish families before 1948 and thus should be returned to Jewish families today. This, of course, raises the questions about homes belonging to Palestinian families in 1948 in places like Jaffa, Lod, and West Jerusalem. But that question has been left unanswered. Due to the historical depth of Silwan, settler organizations lead by a group named ELAD, which is listed as a 501 c3 charity in the United States, have invested millions of dollars to create archaeological parks which attempt to strengthen the Jewish claim to the land through archaeology. Read the rest of this entry »
Former Solicitor General To Obama: Appeal DADT Case, But Argue That Policy Is Unconstitutional
Former Solicitor General To Obama: Appeal DADT Case, But Argue That Policy Is Unconstitutional
During a conference call hosted by the National LGBT Bar Association about the government’s recent decision to appeal a recent federal court decision which barred the military from enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Walter Dellinger — acting United States Solicitor General for the 1996-1997 Term of the Supreme Court — outlined a third middle ground that would allow the government to honor its duty to defend existing laws, but also register the administration’s opposition to the policy.
Dellinger recommended that the government allow the DOJ to appeal the policy, but argue that it believes it to be unconstitutional:
DELLINGER: I think it is certainly possible for the President going beyond merely expressing policy disagreements….but we need to distinguish between two senses of unconstitutional. You can say it’s unconstitutional in a predictive sense, that you predict it will be stricken down, and I don’t think you can say it in this case, because the Supreme Court is up for grabs on that issue. But there is also a sense that you can say the law is unconstitutional because you’ve reached your own judgment about the facts of the world that can render the law unconstitutional.
The theoretical rule is that a law that infringes on liberty …is only constitutional if it advances a governmental purpose. Now, the Solicitor General would assume that Congress can decide the military purpose and here Congress has decided that it advances a military mission…but the President, as Commander in Chief, can make his own judgment that it is not necessary and if he concludes as he has said that it’s harmful to the national defense, then in his belief he doesn’t have to give deference to the political branch, he is a political branch. [...]
Dellinger explained that the President — represented by the Justice Department — can go into court and argue that “it’s our understanding that this policy doesn’t advance the national interest and that’s what the Chiefs have said.” At that point, the government would be only technically defending the statute, and allow other parties to submit amicus briefs arguing in favor the policy.
This kind of strategy has some legal precedent, Dellinger continued. “In two cases cases, one from the Reagan administration and one from the George H. W. Bush administration, the government appealed cases, but gave its own view that the law they were defending is unconstitutional…and in both cases a 5-4 court disagreed with the government’s position and upheld the act of Congress.”
In this case, Obama would ask the Court to rule that the policy is, in fact, unconstitutional. “I think there are enough instances where the government has done that,” he said. “This is a middle ground between unilaterally not complying with the law and going in an actually defending, arguing that it’s constitutional.” He explained that in this way, the government would also avoid making “malicious” or “homophobic” arguments that are often made by certain conservative organization. “Once you get rid of those arguments, you get down to making arguments that are sort of weaker and weaker and you can be accused by critics of the administration from the right of throwing the case not doing the job. It’s almost better to be candid about it and say…. we’re just going to flat out say, there is not a sufficient government justification for this discrimination and burden….[but] we’re going to give the court the last word.”
Given Two Chances, Rossi Fails To Identify One Budget Item He Would Cut To Offset Tax Cuts For The Rich
Given Two Chances, Rossi Fails To Identify One Budget Item He Would Cut To Offset Tax Cuts For The Rich
Deficit fraud Dino Rossi, who is running on the Republican ticket for Senate in Washington, spends a lot of time fearmongering about the deficit while advocating for policies that would make that deficit worse. Rossi would also like to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans — at a cost of $830 billion over ten years — and as he made clear during a debate last night, he has no intention of cutting the budget in order to cover that cost.
During a portion of the debate during which the two candidates were given an opportunity to question each other, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) asked Rossi what he would eliminate from the budget in order to offset the cost of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Rossi refused to answer, instead attacking Murray’s record.
Murray asked a second time, to which Rossi replied, “I answer your questions, it’s just not your answers.” But in both instances, Rossi failed to identify one single item he would cut from the budget. Watch it:
According to the Tacoma-Seattle News Tribune, Rossi “said after the debate that there should be measures to offset the extension of the tax cuts, but said that as with any budget cuts, it’s impossible to detail them, since it involves cutting thousands of budget line items.”
Of course, Rossi is far from alone in being unwilling to identify one item in the budget that could be cut to begin reducing the deficit. Yesterday, Carly Fiorina, California’s Republican senate nominee, was asked seven times what she would cut from the budget to offset extending the Bush tax cuts and failed to name anything.
Finding the money to offset the Bush tax cuts (and Democrats want to extend a lot of them without paying for it as well) would require cutting huge swathes of the budget, including popular and vital social safety net programs. So, in order to avoid offending any portion of the population, it seems that Rossi is subscribing to the Linda McMahon version of campaigning: elect me first, and then I’ll tell you what budget cuts I’m for.
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