April 11, 2013



April 11, 2013

A Pickings issue with in-depth coverage of Margaret Thatcher will come Sunday morning. For now, Anne Applebaum has some memories.

Margaret Thatcher had no small talk. At a private lunch, which I can’t quite date—Denis was there, drinking whiskey out of a large tumbler, so it must have been more than a decade ago—I was seated across from her and at one point became the object of a tirade about the Russian president. “What are we going to do about Mr. Yeltsin,” she demanded, as if either she or I could do anything at all. She’d been out of power for several years at that point and was already forgetting thoughts in the middle of sentences. But whatever else she was losing, the desire to stick to the big issues and the larger subjects was still with her.

And this is what she was best at: the big issues, the politics of symbolism, the crafting of rhetoric. She was less good at nuance. Inside Britain she was the woman who sparked riots and ignored the advice of colleagues. But outside of Britain—in America, in Eastern Europe, even in the Soviet Union—she made herself into an icon, a symbol of anti-communism and the trans-Atlantic alliance at a time when neither was fashionable. She stood by Ronald Reagan in his battle against the Evil Empire. She used the same language as he did—free markets, free people—and entered into a unique and probably unrepeatable public partnership with him. It was useful to them both: If Reagan wanted to pull away from domestic scandals, he could appear with Thatcher on a podium. If Thatcher wanted to enhance her status, she could pay a visit to Reagan at the White House. ,,,

 

March 28th Pickings covered the alarming rise in disability payments from SSDI. Today we have an item from the Wall Street Journal on how the rise in disability payments is stunting the recovery.

The unexpectedly large number of American workers who piled into the Social Security Administration's disability program during the recession and its aftermath threatens to cost the economy tens of billions a year in lost wages and diminished tax revenues.

Signs of the problem surfaced Friday, in a dismal jobs report that showed U.S. labor force participation rates falling last month to the lowest levels since 1979, the wrong direction for an economy that instead needs new legions of working men and women to drive growth and sustain a baby boomer generation headed to retirement.

Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for J.P. Morgan, estimates that since the recession, the worker flight to the Social Security Disability Insurance program accounts for as much as a quarter of the puzzling drop in participation rates, a labor exodus with far-reaching economic consequences.

The unemployment rate in Friday's report fell to a four-year low of 7.6%, which most times signals job growth. This time it reflected workers leaving the workforce, a problem that could persist: Economists say relatively few people are likely to trade their disability checks for paychecks, in part because the program doesn't give much incentive to leave.

Former truck driver James Ottesen, who began receiving monthly payments in 2009, said, "I'm not real happy" about being on disability. "It kind of reminds me of welfare." He said he would "like to get re-educated to do something" because "my body is broke but my mind is not."

But even if the 53-year-old Ohio man learned of a job he could do with herniated discs, he said, the government disability program feels like "a blanket covering you, and to walk out from it…at my age, it's a little intimidating." ...

 

The Daily Beast has more about the present economy.

For a moment, let's forget about who is president and just look across the country.

Today, 21 and a half million Americans are unemployed or underemployed—about twice as many as six years ago, according to NPR. Work-force participation, a fancy term for the number of Americans either working or looking for work, has dropped to “the lowest level since the malaise of the late 1970’s,” an era when far fewer women were working, according to MSNBC. 

Yes, the unemployment rate dropped last month—but only because so many people simply gave up looking for work. The dirty little secret is that after only four weeks of not looking for a job, an unemployed worker stops being counted. So far as the jobless numbers are concerned, that person ceases to exist. But, of course, they do exist and continue to be counted in other, troubling statistics:

More than 16 million Americans have been added to the food stamps rolls since Barack Obama was first elected—a 46 percent increase and greater than the population of Ohio. More than 50 million Americans now live in poverty. That’s one in six Americans, and one in five American children.

The last president who saw poverty at this level was LBJ, and it moved him to launch the war on poverty. ...

 

 

What with all the problems with our economy, Andrew Malcolm comments on the traveling gun show charade. 

President Obama was on again Monday about gun laws, not enforcing the existing ones. But getting some new ones, any new ones so he can claim some kind of political victory after all of the promises and vows he made in the emotional days last December.

But Obama wasn't working on the senators from his own party who will actually determine the fate of these measures. That would be political leadership.

No, Obama was out of town again, up in Hartford for a photo op with Connecticut legislators and some Newtown families. Of course, it wasn't so much about everyone coming together to agree on new safeguards to protect children anymore, as he talked way back in December. No, as usual, this latest campaign rally was all about him. The usual suspects yelled their love. Obama mentioned himself 40 times.

And Obama told the crowd: "The day Newtown happened was the toughest day of my presidency." Poor baby. He had to make a statement in the Briefing Room that day, tearing up on cue and promising "meaningful action." He ordered federal flags to half-staff. Was probably a little tough too that day for the families of the 26 Newtown victims.

But Monday was all about Obama lending his royal presence to Hartford. His statement there means that of all the 1,540 days that he and his mother-in-law have lived in the White House, Dec. 14 was the toughest day. Seriously? ...

 

Jammie Wearing Fools on a fundraising stop next month in New York.

Even the most diehard Obama-bots are suffering Obama fatigue. As yet another big bucks NYC fundraiser is announced for May 13, some donors are getting fed up with the endless campaign.

Now they know how the rest of us feel.

'But Obama’s visit has annoyed political insiders who want to see results for the dollars they’ve already forked over. “We’ve got a mayoral race he’ll be getting in the way of,” said one. “We should be focusing on that and individual congressional candidates. It’s like ‘Lord of the Flies’ . . . [Obama] is cannibalizing donors.”

And others expressed fund-raiser fatigue: “It is stunning that [Obama] is back here fund-raising. We’d like to see some results for the money we’ve already given. And his impact on the traffic congestion in the city is the perfect example of why we need an infrastructure bill that he’s never put any muscle behind.”'

In case they missed it, there was a trillion-dollar stimulus rammed through four years ago. First prize goes to the Obama donor who can tell us where a single dollar of that went.

Power Line thinks Perez should get a filibuster.

Katrina Trinko wonders whether Tom Perez, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, will face the kind of stiff opposition in the Senate that Chuck Hagel encountered. He certainly should. Indeed, he should be filibustered.

Trinko notes that in 2009, 22 Republicans voted against Perez’s confirmation to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Since then, Perez has done plenty to warrant more robust opposition. Consider:

Perez is under congressional investigation regarding his involvement with an alleged quid pro quo deal between the Justice Department and St. Paul, Minn. Pursuant to that deal, the Justice Department would cease prosecuting a case against St. Paul (which could have net around $180 million for the federal government) if the city dropped a case that could have led to a Supreme Court decision to change the definition of “disparate impact” in housing-discrimination cases.

Perez’s Civil Rights Division appears to have allowed political/racial considerations to affect its handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case from Philadelphia.

A federal district judge found that Perez, when under oath, gave incorrect testimony about the involvement of political appointees in the handling of the New Black Panther Party case. ...

 

WSJ's Political Diary has a look at one of Perez's cohorts who has been nominated for the bench.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider Srikanth "Sri" Srinivasan's nomination to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday. Mr. Srinivasan, currently the Principal Deputy Solicitor General, is an accomplished, high-profile nominee and deserves the hearing. He also deserves to be questioned about his role in a quid pro quo with the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, that his Justice colleague Tom Perez—now Obama's labor secretary nominee—hatched in 2011.

As these columns have reported, Mr. Perez has, in effect, extorted millions of dollars in settlements from lenders over the past few years by threatening to sue them for discrimination under a loose interpretation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. St. Paul's case, M agner v. Gallagher , was likely to curb or even prohibit this practice. So Mr. Perez convinced his Justice colleagues and officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to drop two False Claim Act cases against the city, in exchange for St. Paul withdrawing Magner from the nation's highest court. ..

 

Slate

Freedom’s Ambassador

What Margaret Thatcher understood about the West’s values that today’s leaders do not.

by Anne Applebaum

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Margaret Thatcher had no small talk. At a private lunch, which I can’t quite date—Denis was there, drinking whiskey out of a large tumbler, so it must have been more than a decade ago—I was seated across from her and at one point became the object of a tirade about the Russian president. “What are we going to do about Mr. Yeltsin,” she demanded, as if either she or I could do anything at all. She’d been out of power for several years at that point and was already forgetting thoughts in the middle of sentences. But whatever else she was losing, the desire to stick to the big issues and the larger subjects was still with her.

And this is what she was best at: the big issues, the politics of symbolism, the crafting of rhetoric. She was less good at nuance. Inside Britain she was the woman who sparked riots and ignored the advice of colleagues. But outside of Britain—in America, in Eastern Europe, even in the Soviet Union—she made herself into an icon, a symbol of anti-communism and the trans-Atlantic alliance at a time when neither was fashionable. She stood by Ronald Reagan in his battle against the Evil Empire. She used the same language as he did—free markets, free people—and entered into a unique and probably unrepeatable public partnership with him. It was useful to them both: If Reagan wanted to pull away from domestic scandals, he could appear with Thatcher on a podium. If Thatcher wanted to enhance her status, she could pay a visit to Reagan at the White House.

But their partnership was also useful to others, as Thatcher herself understood. When she arrived in Poland in the autumn of 1988, dressed in cossack boots, a full-length fur coat, and a fur hat, she decided to visit a farmers market, one of the few examples of “the free market” then available in Warsaw. She swept through the fruit stalls, swarmed by journalists and startled shoppers while the British ambassador scurried behind her, paying for jars of pickles broken in the fray. Her entourage then proceeded to Gdansk where she met Lech Walesa. By all accounts, the two conducted an awkward and mutually incomprehensible conversation.

Nevertheless she appeared with him in front of cheering crowds at the Gdansk shipyard and declared that "We shall not be found wanting when Poland makes the progress toward freedom and democracy its people clearly seek."And that gesture, that moment, really mattered: It gave the Poles and others the courage to think they really could someday join the rest of Europe. Someone wanted them there. Not accidentally, the most successful ex-communist nations—Poland, the Czech Republic, and Estonia—have all been led at various times by politicians who called themselves “Thatcherites.” Whatever path they took to reform, all of them had a clear sense of direction. Where do we want to go to? The West. How do we want to get there? Fast.

She made plenty of mistakes. She was irritating, tactless, and divisive. But she understood why and how the values of “the West” might appeal to the rest of the world, and she sought to find ways to explain and to intelligently promote them. That’s worth remembering, because she may be one of the last politicians who will. 

 

WSJ

Workers Stuck in Disability Stunt Economic Recovery

by Leslie Scism and Jon Hilsenrath

 

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Former truck driver James Ottesen, of Mason, Ohio, said being on disability "kind of reminds me of welfare.'

The unexpectedly large number of American workers who piled into the Social Security Administration's disability program during the recession and its aftermath threatens to cost the economy tens of billions a year in lost wages and diminished tax revenues.

Signs of the problem surfaced Friday, in a dismal jobs report that showed U.S. labor force participation rates falling last month to the lowest levels since 1979, the wrong direction for an economy that instead needs new legions of working men and women to drive growth and sustain a baby boomer generation headed to retirement.

Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for J.P. Morgan, estimates that since the recession, the worker flight to the Social Security Disability Insurance program accounts for as much as a quarter of the puzzling drop in participation rates, a labor exodus with far-reaching economic consequences.

The unemployment rate in Friday's report fell to a four-year low of 7.6%, which most times signals job growth. This time it reflected workers leaving the workforce, a problem that could persist: Economists say relatively few people are likely to trade their disability checks for paychecks, in part because the program doesn't give much incentive to leave.

Former truck driver James Ottesen, who began receiving monthly payments in 2009, said, "I'm not real happy" about being on disability. "It kind of reminds me of welfare." He said he would "like to get re-educated to do something" because "my body is broke but my mind is not."

 

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But even if the 53-year-old Ohio man learned of a job he could do with herniated discs, he said, the government disability program feels like "a blanket covering you, and to walk out from it…at my age, it's a little intimidating."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has worried that the financial crisis would lead to a permanent loss of workers, setting up what economists call hysteresis, a term borrowed from physics to describe temporary market changes that lead to permanent economic losses.

It is no longer a theoretical problem, said David Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied the disability program. The economy has a case of hysteresis, he said, created by the permanent transfer of workers to disability rolls.

Many newcomers to the disability roster are low-wage earners with limited skills, Mr. Autor said, and they are "pretty unlikely to want to forfeit economic security for a precarious job market."

Payments, tied to a worker's wage history, average $1,130 a month, which totals $13,560 a year. That is about $2,000 a year more than the federal poverty level for a single person and about $2,000 less than full-time wages at the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. After two years, people on disability are eligible for Medicare health insurance—another government benefit that encourages recipients to stay put.

Between December 2007, when the recession started, and June 2009, when it ended, the number of Americans receiving federal disability benefits grew to 7.6 million from 7.1 million. Then the rolls swelled, reaching 8.9 million in March, about 5.4% of the civilian workforce ages 25 to 64, according to J.P. Morgan estimates. That compares with 1.7% of the U.S. workforce in 1970.

Economic growth is driven by the number of workers in an economy and by their productivity. Put simply, fewer workers usually means less growth.

Since the recession, more people have gone on disability, on net, than new workers have joined the labor force. Mr. Feroli estimated the exodus to disability costs 0.6% of national output, equal to about $95 billion a year.

"The greater cost is their long-term dependency on transfers from the federal government," Mr. Autor said, "placing strain on the soon-to-be exhausted Social Security Disability trust fund."

Last year, Social Security paid nearly $137 billion to 8.8 million disabled workers and 2.1 million of their spouses and children; related Medicare costs were about $80 billion. Program trustees estimate that by 2016, Social Security won't be able to pay all of its disability claims.

In past recessions, discouraged workers dropped out of the labor force but returned when the economy picked up steam. About two-thirds of Americans ages 16 and older were either working or looking for work at the start of the current recovery in 2009.

But rather than expanding, the proportion of workers has since fallen to 63.3%, according to the government's March statistics, released Friday.

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With overall participation down, the labor force—a measure of people working and people looking for work—is barely growing. In March it was up just 0.2% from a year earlier and has grown by just 318,000 people since the recession ended in June 2009 to 155 million workers. In the decade before the recession, the labor force grew on average by 1.2% per year.

Some lawmakers and public-policy analysts are calling for an overhaul of the disability program. Senate and House panels held hearings last year addressing shortcomings, including the failure to return more people to work.

The White House released details of its proposed budget Friday that called for closing loopholes that allow people to collect full disability and unemployment benefits over the same period.

The federal program provides a safety net to workers with severe illnesses and injuries. To obtain an award, workers must prove they haven't worked substantially for at least five months, and Social Security must determine that a medical impairment will prohibit work for at least a year.

With an expanded list of disabilities added by Congress in 1984, more than half of people awarded benefits now qualify because of musculoskeletal problems—including back pain—mood disorders and other mental problems, according to Social Security data. Such claims can take a year or more to assess because of their often-subjective nature.

Economists have found that more people apply for disability during periods of high unemployment, partly because they can't find work. Ailments they might endure during good times are instead used as an avenue out of the labor force.

The economic downturn drove about 2.2 million additional applications for disability, relative to what would have occurred in the absence of the slump, according to estimates by Mark Duggan, an economics and public-policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, who has co-written research on the disability program with Mr. Autor.

About one million of those applicants likely remain out of the labor force, either because they got benefits or their applications were pending, Mr. Duggan said. Private disability insurance returns workers in far greater proportion.

In recent years, about a third of applicants have been accepted at the initial stage, which typically takes more than four months. Those rejected can appeal to administrative law judges for decisions that can take nearly two years, according to Messrs. Duggan and Autor.

With the economy improving, the disability roster is now expanding at a slower pace, though many economists expect its share of working-age people to continue growing.

The boom in disability is part of a longer-term trend that places the burden of economic casualties on the federal government. Some states use the program to reduce welfare costs, according to congressional testimony last year by David Stapleton, director of the Center for Studying Disability Policy at nonpartisan consulting firm Mathematica Policy Research.

States save money when federal disability checks replace state-paid benefits. Workers on federal disability also can switch from state-supported health insurance programs—such as Medicaid—to Medicare, he said.

The nation's burgeoning disability roster stems partly from the aging workforce: Baby boomers' bodies are breaking down, and some economists believe that the problem will level off once they reach retirement.

But boomers aren't the only ones seeking help, Of the nearly nine million former workers receiving federal disability payments, more than 2.5 million are in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

"It is difficult to overstate the role that the SSDI program plays in discouraging" employment among these young people, Messrs. Autor and Duggan said in one of their research papers, urging reform.

With its origins in the 1950s, the government disability program has for decades paid little attention to getting people back to work, largely because when it was created, medical treatments rarely improved the prospects of older factory workers in physically demanding jobs, the professors noted.

In 2011, the latest data available, fewer than 0.5% of beneficiaries left disability rolls to work again. Most leave the program by advancing to the Society Security retirement program, or they die.

The Social Security Administration has run an initiative since 1999 called Ticket to Work that offers vocational rehabilitation, career counseling and job-placement help. But the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has repeatedly faulted the agency for failing to substantially boost participation: About 3% of those eligible were enrolled, a 2011 GAO study found.

Social Security Chief Actuary Stephen Goss said in an interview that the agency, by law, was geared toward providing "benefits to those with a longer-term, by-and-large permanent disability."

Social Security is committed to improving Ticket-to-Work, he said. In general, he said, his administrators are doing "a very good job with the staffing and resources that are available," given the surge in applications after the financial crisis.

Some disability experts suggest the government try tailoring special services and training for applicants most likely to return to work. "Right now, we have an income benefit that is not based on what you can do," said David Mann, a Mathematica researcher.

Mr. Mann, age 30, said many disabled people can work with the right help, and he included himself. Paralyzed in a diving accident as a teenager, he graduated from Princeton University and earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He uses a motorized wheelchair to navigate Mathematica's Princeton, N.J., offices.

Social Security administrators have been unable to keep up with periodic medical evaluations of SSDI beneficiaries, according to the program's inspector general. The backlog of required assessments shrank last year to 1.3 million people from 1.5 million, according to government data.

Such medical reviews in 2011 found 23,271 people able to return to work out of more than 345,000. The inspector general estimated that overdue medical reviews between 2005 and 2011 cost taxpayers $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion in benefits that shouldn't have been paid.

Mr. Ottesen used to drive trucks for a Cincinnati produce business until he flunked a job-required physical exam and lost his job. He said he had been driving despite his back pain.

He was initially denied federal disability benefits, and, like many applicants, he hired a lawyer, at government expense, to appeal.

Social Security pays for such legal help, based on the idea that experts help move cases faster, helping hold down the application backlog. Last year, Social Security paid $1.4 billion in fees to disability advocates.

After Mr. Ottesen was approved for a monthly disability payment of about $1,100, he considered looking for another line of work, he said, but "I don't know anything but driving a truck."

 

 

 

Daily Beast

Poverty Plagues Obama’s America, Press Based in Booming Cities Shrugs

A small, thriving minority now dominates the national conversation, even as more and more Americans struggle to get by.

by Stuart Stevens

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Thousands of job seekers wait in line at Kennedy-King College to attend a

job fair hosted by the city of Chicago on November 9, 2012.

For a moment, let's forget about who is president and just look across the country.

Today, 21 and a half million Americans are unemployed or underemployed—about twice as many as six years ago, according to NPR. Work-force participation, a fancy term for the number of Americans either working or looking for work, has dropped to “the lowest level since the malaise of the late 1970’s,” an era when far fewer women were working, according to MSNBC. 

Yes, the unemployment rate dropped last month—but only because so many people simply gave up looking for work. The dirty little secret is that after only four weeks of not looking for a job, an unemployed worker stops being counted. So far as the jobless numbers are concerned, that person ceases to exist. But, of course, they do exist and continue to be counted in other, troubling statistics:

More than 16 million Americans have been added to the food stamps rolls since Barack Obama was first elected—a 46 percent increase and greater than the population of Ohio. More than 50 million Americans now live in poverty. That’s one in six Americans, and one in five American children.

The last president who saw poverty at this level was LBJ, and it moved him to launch the war on poverty.

An economy inflicting this much pain is a national crisis that should dominate discussion as we marshal our collective attention. Instead, we’re talking about guns and gay marriage. In a country where hunger should be a national disgrace, we spend more time talking about a skinny billionaire’s efforts to stop the fat from getting fatter.

John Edwards is a lying lizard, but he was on to something when he talked about two Americas. The larger America, by far, is made up of men and women living paycheck to paycheck or without one, struggling like never before. For too many, the grinding economy has gone on for so long it is becoming the only America they remember.

The other, much smaller America is thriving. The stock market is hitting all-time highs, Silicon Valley keeps coining new twenty-something billionaires, and seven out of the ten wealthiest counties in America are now in the Washington, D.C. area.

Our national conversation now is dominated by the voices of the small, thriving minority. Go back and scan the coverage of the president's inaugural address this January, which barely mentioned jobs. Reporters from the nation’s biggest outlets—who work and live in prosperous New York and D.C.—scarcely acknowledged the omission. Perhaps the economy has been bad enough for long enough that its expiration date for news has expired, one more sign this terrible reality is the New Normal.

Where is our Studs Terkel? Our James Agee? Our John Steinbeck? Who is travelling outside of the city to spend the time reporting on and reminding us of the quiet pain that has become the daily fare of so many Americans?

Bill Clinton famously told the country last year that no president could be doing more for the economy than this president. Putting aside the delicious irony of Bill Clinton making the case, yet again, not to hold the chief executive accountable, there’s clearly more that a president truly focused on the economy could do.

A meat-and-potatoes Democrat like Ed Rendell would make jobs and the economy the true top priority of his administration. He would make it a national emergency and do the basic, unglamorous work that successful governors do as they try and help people get jobs by removing barriers to creating jobs. Look at these pockets of unemployment. What will it take to get new plants open in X or Y communities? A Jobs President would be meeting with governors and demanding a wish list of actions from the federal government and getting those things done. Historic? Probably not. Life changing for millions? Absolutely.

But the often-boring work of jobs and the economy have never been what motivates Obama. He is a Cause Politician, governing in poetry as Mario Cuomo might put it. That's not meant as a blistering indictment—heaven knows many of the top conservative politicians are the same way. But it's a fact. This president wakes up in the morning eager to focus on jobs the same way George W. Bush woke up eager to focus on health care.

Maybe this will all work out, though every day of this so-called recovery is crushing Americans. But just keep this in mind. If the rolls keep going up at this rate they have since Obama took office, 32 million more Americans will receive food stamps by the time he leaves it. That would be roughly half as many people as voted for him last year.

But that can’t happen. Can it?

 

 



Obama continues his traveling gun show charade

by Andrew Malcolm

President Obama was on again Monday about gun laws, not enforcing the existing ones. But getting some new ones, any new ones so he can claim some kind of political victory after all of the promises and vows he made in the emotional days last December.

But Obama wasn't working on the senators from his own party who will actually determine the fate of these measures. That would be political leadership.

No, Obama was out of town again, up in Hartford for a photo op with Connecticut legislators and some Newtown families. Of course, it wasn't so much about everyone coming together to agree on new safeguards to protect children anymore, as he talked way back in December. No, as usual, this latest campaign rally was all about him. The usual suspects yelled their love. Obama mentioned himself 40 times.

And Obama told the crowd: "The day Newtown happened was the toughest day of my presidency." Poor baby. He had to make a statement in the Briefing Room that day, tearing up on cue and promising "meaningful action." He ordered federal flags to half-staff. Was probably a little tough too that day for the families of the 26 Newtown victims.

But Monday was all about Obama lending his royal presence to Hartford. His statement there means that of all the 1,540 days that he and his mother-in-law have lived in the White House, Dec. 14 was the toughest day. Seriously?

Not last 9/11 when an anti-Islam video had nothing to do with the death of four Americans in the unsecured Benghazi consulate, when the president and his secretary of State were AWOL all evening, when no rescue was ordered and when his administration lied about the cause for two weeks?

That first murder of a U.S. ambassador in three decades didn't distract Obama from his top priority, campaign fundraisers in Las Vegas hours later.

The toughest day of Obama's presidency was not even Aug. 6, 2011, when a rocket-propelled grenade took down a Chinook CH-47 helicopter in Afghanistan, killing all 38 troops onboard, mostly U.S. Special Forces, in the deadliest incident of this country's longest war, which has contained two Obama troop surges.

Monday's remarks by the former Real Good Talker were all about people helping him convince Congress on the new gun measures. No, wait. His remarks were really all about others convincing Congress on the new gun measures.

Because, once again, other than speeches following costly 747 rides, Obama's been AWOL on the much-tougher-than-talking political leadership front. Bringing a partisan Washington together on some common agreement, you know, the kind of telepromptered bunkum he peddled in 2007-08.

By the way, have you noticed Obama has dropped the first word from his once firm demand for "universal background checks" for gun purchases?

By doing so, Obama can claim something of a win when some kind of checks pass, if they do. Remember, this crowd is from Chicago. It's all about maneuver and show.

What you didn't hear Obama talk about in Hartford was last week's abysmal jobs report, which the Democrat keeps saying is his top priority.

The report showed only 88,000 Americans finding work last month, less than half what was expected and the worst hiring month in the last nine. "This is a punch to the gut," said Austan Goolsbee, former head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors.

The unemployment rate slipped a notch to 7.6%, only because nearly a half-million Americans gave up and left the labor market. In fact, the labor-force participation rate, the percentage of the population working or looking for jobs, fell to 63.3%, worst in a third-of-a-century.

Good luck lowering the deficit and keeping Social Security solvent with a smaller and smaller proportion of the population earning wages and paying taxes.

Nor did we hear Obama talk about the national debt, above $16.5 trillion, now larger than the national economy, with another divisive fight looming soon over raising the legal limit. Nor did we hear Obama talk up his ObamaCare folly, now crumbling beneath the weight of its lies, unmanageable numbers and vows to repeal it totally.

He didn't have time to review how his sequestration idea is going, how he had to cancel White House tours but this weekend they've found money for two days of public tours of Michelle's gardens. And tonight's White House concert of Memphis blues music for elites is unaffected.

But, wait, there's more: We also did not hear Obama in Hartford talk about the budget, one of those messy number-y outlines of planned spending. Federal law requires the president of the United States to deliver his budget to Congress by early February every year. Five years Obama has met that deadline once.

This year he ignored the law again because laws are for other people, for campaigns and for signing ceremonies. Remember 2008 when Obama vowed to comb through the federal budget line-by-line every year to ferret out waste?

Put that up on the dusty shelf with Guantanamo, transparency and all the others.

Maybe we'll get a budget tomorrow. Maybe this year's Obama White House budget document will fare better than last year's. Remember that one? Obama's budget received not one single vote in Congress from either party in either chamber.

Other than those major flaws, and a few others, Obama's Oval Office tenure is shaping up as the most successful presidency since George W. Bush left office. Only 1,382 days left.

 

 

Jammie Wearing Fools

“It’s like ‘Lord of the Flies’ . . . [Obama] is cannibalizing donors”

by Jammie

Even the most diehard Obama-bots are suffering Obama fatigue. As yet another big bucks NYC fundraiser is announced for May 13, some donors are getting fed up with the endless campaign.

Now they know how the rest of us feel.

'But Obama’s visit has annoyed political insiders who want to see results for the dollars they’ve already forked over. “We’ve got a mayoral race he’ll be getting in the way of,” said one. “We should be focusing on that and individual congressional candidates. It’s like ‘Lord of the Flies’ . . . [Obama] is cannibalizing donors.”

And others expressed fund-raiser fatigue: “It is stunning that [Obama] is back here fund-raising. We’d like to see some results for the money we’ve already given. And his impact on the traffic congestion in the city is the perfect example of why we need an infrastructure bill that he’s never put any muscle behind.”'

In case they missed it, there was a trillion-dollar stimulus rammed through four years ago. First prize goes to the Obama donor who can tell us where a single dollar of that went.

 

 

Power Line

Filibuster Tom Perez

by Paul Mirengoff

Katrina Trinko wonders whether Tom Perez, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, will face the kind of stiff opposition in the Senate that Chuck Hagel encountered. He certainly should. Indeed, he should be filibustered.

Trinko notes that in 2009, 22 Republicans voted against Perez’s confirmation to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Since then, Perez has done plenty to warrant more robust opposition. Consider:

Perez is under congressional investigation regarding his involvement with an alleged quid pro quo deal between the Justice Department and St. Paul, Minn. Pursuant to that deal, the Justice Department would cease prosecuting a case against St. Paul (which could have net around $180 million for the federal government) if the city dropped a case that could have led to a Supreme Court decision to change the definition of “disparate impact” in housing-discrimination cases.

Perez’s Civil Rights Division appears to have allowed political/racial considerations to affect its handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case from Philadelphia.

A federal district judge found that Perez, when under oath, gave incorrect testimony about the involvement of political appointees in the handling of the New Black Panther Party case.

Looking ahead, as Secretary of Labor, Perez would crucially involved in the implementation of comprehensive immigration reform legislation, if it is enacted. Perez’s background in this area demonstrates that he cannot be trusted to implement immigration reform even-handedly, or even to abide by the law. As a member of the Montgomery County Council, he promoted spending taxpayer dollars on day-laborer sites to facilitate off-the-books work by illegal immigrants.

So will Republicans block Perez? According to Trinko, they “will be closely watching to see if Perez, like Hagel, ignites a firestorm among the grassroots.” They “aren’t sure whether conservative bloggers and their readers are even paying attention to Perez yet, but if the buzz builds, they want to be ready to capitalize.”

How pathetic is that? It’s as plain as the nose on one’s face that Perez is a corrupt left-wing ideologue who has been specially selected by Obama to implement immigration reform in as radical a fashion as possible. But Republican legislators are waiting to to see whether conservative bloggers will create some buzz.

And if we do, the response, apparently, will be to “capitalize,” but not to filibuster. According to Trinko, a filibuster is unlikely because, with an eye towards a future GOP president, Republicans are wary of setting a precedent for filibustering nominees.

Do Republicans seriously believe that their conduct now will dissuade Democrats from doing whatever it takes to thwart Republican presidents in the future, to the extent such presidents are serious about a conservative agenda? And would it even be inappropriate for Democrats to filibuster future nominees who, as Perez has done, give false testimony under oath, disregard the law, and make deals against the interest of taxpayers in order to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on their pet legal theories?

Obama has had his way on one aggressively leftist and/or dubiously qualified nominee after another. Filibustering Perez wouldn’t create a precedent for denying the president the cabinet nominees of his choice even in extreme cases. It would stand only for the proposition that there are limits to what the Senate will swallow when a president presents an over-the-top nominee who cannot be trusted properly to implement vital, transformative new legislation.

 

 

WSJ Political Diary

The Sri-St. Paul Connection

by Mary Kissel

The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider Srikanth "Sri" Srinivasan's nomination to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday. Mr. Srinivasan, currently the Principal Deputy Solicitor General, is an accomplished, high-profile nominee and deserves the hearing. He also deserves to be questioned about his role in a quid pro quo with the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, that his Justice colleague Tom Perez—now Obama's labor secretary nominee—hatched in 2011.

As these columns have reported, Mr. Perez has, in effect, extorted millions of dollars in settlements from lenders over the past few years by threatening to sue them for discrimination under a loose interpretation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. St. Paul's case, M agner v. Gallagher , was likely to curb or even prohibit this practice. So Mr. Perez convinced his Justice colleagues and officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to drop two False Claim Act cases against the city, in exchange for St. Paul withdrawing Magner from the nation's highest court.

Mr. Srinivasan played a role in these machinations, although it's unclear to what extent. He was the principal lawyer at Justice responsible for crafting the government's position on Magner . The Supreme Court accepted certiorari on Magner on Nov. 7, 2011. According to an ongoing House oversight investigation, Mr. Perez had discussions with Mr. Srinivasan about Magner and asked him for advice on how to get a case withdrawn from the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday the Senators might ask if Mr. Perez explained his quid pro quo to Mr. Srinivasan. If so, did Mr. Srinivasan have concerns? If not, did Mr. Srinivasan question why a high-ranking Justice official wanted to deny the Supreme Court the ability to clarify a law? If not, why not?

In a statement to House investigators, Mr. Perez said "I don't recall ever telling Mr. Srinivasan" about the quid pro quo, which is a convenient evasion. On Wednesday the Senators have a chance to get a definitive answer. Mr. Srinivasan's response will speak to his legal judgment, which is surely something the Senators need to understand before voting on his nomination.

 

 

 

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