Ryan Grim2013-05-20T10:42:06-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=ryan-grimCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Ryan GrimGood old fashioned elbow grease.Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul Push For Hemp Legalization In Senate Fighttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-20T05:00:00-04:002013-05-20T10:15:21-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
Paul and McConnell had hoped to insert the measure into the farm bill as it was being considered by the Agriculture Committee, but a jurisdictional spat broke out, as often does in the Senate. McConnell, a member of the committee, approached Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) last Monday night about inserting the provision, according to Senate aides, and was told that the Judiciary Committee had jurisdiction and he would need a waiver from its chairman, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.). Hemp laws are the purview of the Drug Enforcement Administration, even though hemp is not a drug and has no psychoactive potential, no matter how much a person smokes.
McConnell faces reelection in 2014, and has been working so closely with Paul that some aides have begun to refer to the libertarian newcomer and tea party favorite as the "shadow minority leader" -- a term that presumably expires if McConnell wins his race. McConnell brought Jesse Benton, a longtime aide of Rand Paul and Ron Paul, onto his campaign. With Rand Paul in his corner, there is little chance for a tea party candidate to successfully challenge McConnell, and Paul's energized base may boost turnout in the general election. If McConnell's effort on hemp is any guide, he's taking nothing for granted.
McConnell approached Leahy to ask for the waiver, but was rejected, sources said. McConnell returned to Stabenow and again asked that she insert the provision, and Stabenow said no. She offered, instead, to allow a vote on an amendment, and said that she would introduce it on his behalf. (Minority leaders rarely appear at committee hearings in person.) McConnell declined the offer and by proxy voted against the farm bill in committee. Holly Harris, chief of staff to Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, a strong hemp advocate, said that her office had been told by Senate Republican leadership that Leahy had refused the waiver request, citing Judiciary Committee turf, confirming what several Senate sources told HuffPost.
A Judiciary Committee spokeswoman wouldn't address the details, but confirmed the broader dispute, noting that the industrial hemp bill was referred to Judiciary, not Agriculture, because it amends the Controlled Substances Act, referring to a bill cosponsored by Paul, McConnell and Oregon Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden. She noted that no amendment was offered during the Agriculture Committee debate, and said that Leahy had no objection to McConnell or Paul offering an amendment on the Senate floor. A second source said that Leahy has privately expressed support for industrial hemp. Indeed, Vermont's Agriculture Secretary, Chuck Ross, is a strong hemp backer and was previously Leahy's state director. And Leahy would be an unlikely enemy of hemp, given that he is the Senate's most out-of-the-closet Deadhead.
The Kentucky hemp backers are mystified at the procedural complications in the Senate, but are pushing hard against them. "Commissioner Comer is making a lot of well-placed calls to Vermont," said Harris Friday, noting that senators should know that when he ran for commissioner on a hemp platform as a Republican, he was laughed at in the state capital. He won in a landslide, the highest vote-getter on the ballot for any office. The Kentucky legislation was similarly underestimated, but with bipartisan backing and the help of the group Vote Hemp -- which Harris called "the greatest grassroots operation I've ever seen" -- it became law this year.
After the committee vote, aides to McConnell asked the staff of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to insert the provision into the bill before putting it on the floor, but Reid's aides declined, adding that he is welcome to offer the provision as an amendment, said a Democratic aide familiar with the talks.
The full Senate will begin debating the farm bill on the floor next week. McConnell's backing, which came as a surprise this year, gives hemp a credible chance of passage if it comes for a vote.
The push to legalize hemp has made dramatic strides in recent weeks. A serendipitous encounter at the Kentucky Derby connected prominent local advocates with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer, a Republican, was at a private pre-derby party when he found himself informally lobbying Boehner and his chief of staff Mike Sommers. Boehner and Sommers were interested enough to invite Comer and backers of Kentucky's successful hemp legalization law to meet in Washington.
Boehner subsequently sat down with Comer and state Sen. Paul Hornback, a Republican, and state industrial hemp commission member Jonathan Miller, a Democrat.
Boehner told the trio he would talk with McConnell about how a federal bill might be moved forward. "I was impressed with his knowledge of this issue," Comer said of Boehner. "At the end he said, 'This is funny, because this issue's been around a long time: My daughter was talking about this 15 years ago.' So this is something he knows a lot about. And the difference today as opposed to 10 years ago, is the only people who were pushing this issue 10 years ago were the extreme right or left, or people who wanted to legalize marijuana." Boehner discussed the idea of including it in the farm bill.
Kentucky's hemp bill, Senate Bill 50, allowing Bluegrass State farmers to grow industrial hemp for the first time in decades, became law in April. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and local police had expressed concern that allowing farmers to cultivate hemp would enable them to disguise the cultivation of illegal marijuana, which looks very similar to hemp, but contains much higher levels of THC, the psychoactive agent in cannabis. Experts dismissed that argument, noting that cross-pollination between hemp plants and marijuana plants would significantly reduce the potency of the marijuana and devalue the crop. Beshear and Kentucky police remained skeptical, though the governor did not ultimately veto the legislation, letting it become law without his signature.
The chief objection, Miller said, came from a small element of law enforcement "based on the fear that this is a slippery slope, that they would lose money with marijuana eradication." The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, however, backed the bill.
Now Kentucky awaits federal action to approve the plant's cultivation. The DEA currently classifies hemp as a Schedule I substance with "a high potential for abuse" alongside heroin and LSD, even though industrial hemp has no potential for abuse.
A similar effort to Paul and McConnell's in the House, boosted by members of Kentucky's congressional delegation -- everyone but Rep. Harold Rogers (R) -- is underway. Should those efforts fail, the senators have vowed to seek a waiver from the DEA granting Kentucky special dispensation to grow hemp.
Other states to pass laws allowing hemp licensure include Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia and Colorado. While some have sought federal validation of state laws from the DEA, those efforts to date have been unsuccessful.]]>Darrell Issa: 'You Don't Accuse The IRS Until You've Had A Nonpartisan, Deep Look'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-18T16:49:21-04:002013-05-18T20:04:20-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
The comments back up the White House argument that administration officials did not know enough about the investigation to condemn the IRS until the IG completed his work recently. A Treasury Department official, Neal Wolin, was informed that the IG was looking into the situation this past summer, a revelation the media and GOP have seized on to suggest the White House may have covered up the scandal in the midst of a campaign.
Issa is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"I know approximately what's in it," Issa told Bloomberg Businessweek on Monday when asked if he knew what would be in the report. "I knew what was approximately in it when we made the allegations about a year ago. This is one of those things where it's been, in a sense, an open secret, but you don't accuse the IRS until you've had a nonpartisan, deep look. That's what the IG has done. That's why the IGs in fact exist within government, is to find this kind of waste and fraud and abuse of power."
Issa, according to an aide, asked the IG for an investigation last spring, after hearing allegations of selective targeting of conservative groups. The IG told him in a letter this summer that he was looking into it.
The groups singled-out were applying for nonprofit status as "social welfare" organizations, a loophole that allows political groups to conceal donors and accept unlimited contributions.
UPDATE: 8 p.m. -- Frederick Hill, spokesman for the Oversight committee, responded this evening:
The Oversight Committee knew about the audit because it requested it. We released (or re-re-released) this letter a week ago.
It does not explain why Obama Administration officials knew about serious allegations of wrongdoing within the Treasury Department but failed to ask questions and take immediate action.
]]>Jeff Merkley Pushes 'Monsanto Protection Act' Repealtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-16T17:26:39-04:002013-05-17T17:34:27-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/public learned that it had been passed by Congress with no debate and signed into law by President Barack Obama.
The provision allows Monsanto and other companies to continue selling genetically engineered seeds, even if a court has blocked them from doing so. Merkley will press for a floor vote on his repeal amendment when the farm bill is taken up next week, a Merkley aide told HuffPost.
Federal courts have recently ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had failed to consider the potential harm some genetically engineered crops may have, and acted too hastily in approving their sale. The industry fought back with the farm bill rider, preventing the enforcement of court rulings.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) spoke out against the rider on the Senate floor, but the chamber is typically empty, and his objection was not enough to block it from passage.
A Monsanto spokesperson wasn't immediately available to comment.
]]>OFA Refuses To Push On Keystonetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-16T11:42:20-04:002013-05-16T15:47:19-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
Leaders of the group have on multiple occasions told gatherings of activists and donors that OFA will not pressure the White House on Keystone regardless of its members' interest in the project, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would move heavy crude from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf. The administration recently pushed back a decision on approving the pipeline to November, December or even 2014. OFA's refusal to press the administration on the controversial Keystone project is reminiscent of its decision not to pressure Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on gun purchase background checks, despite -- or perhaps because of -- OFA Chairman Jim Messina's close relationship with him. Baucus voted against the president and subsequently announced his retirement.
The reticence worries those who hoped that the Obama campaign's legacy would be a strong, independent grassroots movement that could bring outside pressure on Washington, rather than continuing to act as an arm of the president. Instead of a new organization that will push the White House from a progressive flank, on Keystone, OFA is in effect pushing grassroots activists in the opposite direction. Its approach to the pipeline indicates it is shaping up to be little more than another element of the administration that activists must lobby.
OFA was born during the 2008 presidential campaign as Obama for America, then became Organizing for America during his first term, working with the Democratic National Committee to push the Obama agenda and reelect the president. It has since been transformed into Organizing for Action. Liberals had high hopes that the new incarnation of OFA would turn its efficient and powerful campaign organization into something that would boost the progressive movement.
"I was hoping to see those tools and that amazing development skill set applied to something that was going to be responsive to bottom-up energy on issues that members are excited to say something about," said Farhad Ebrahimi, a major progressive donor. "But it seems like they're still just running it like electoral campaigners and saying, this is the menu you can order off of. But it's not a potluck."
OFA spokeswoman Katie Hogan said that the organization's job is to back the president's agenda. "OFA was founded to support the President's agenda, an agenda a majority of the american people voted for in 2012," she said in a statement. "It has been made clear since our first day as an organization that we support the President's plans from comprehensive immigration reform, to reducing gun violence to climate change, including the completion of the state department review. Just this week OFA held almost 100 action planning sessions on climate change in communities across the country to talk about the action that can be taken right now to call out members of congress for denying that climate change is a man-made problem."
Becky Bond, the head of CREDO, an online progressive group with some three million members, said she asked people who lived nearby to attend the OFA meetings Wednesday and press the case for taking on Keystone. "If the model works the way OFA leadership says the model will work, it's a grassroots driven organization. We want to strengthen that part of it," she said.
Behind the scenes, several major donors have been pressing OFA to take on the issue. OFA executive director Jon Carson, a former White House official whose job had been to coordinate with outside progressive groups, attended a recent Climate and Energy Funders meeting in San Francisco and pitched the wealthy attendees on contributing to OFA, which as a 501(c)(4) can accept unlimited secret contributions. Ebrahimi, who attended the gathering, told HuffPost that Carson was clear that OFA would not be working against Keystone.
"In the Q&A a bunch of funders and donors start asking about the pipeline and saying, 'It's the biggest thing going on in the national level in terms of environmental issues,' and the answer everybody kept on getting from him is, 'Well, we're not engaged on that,'" Ebrahimi said of the April meeting. "He really seemed, when he was on stage, that he just wished he didn't have to talk about it."
Carson shared the stage in San Francisco with Kathleen Welch, who advises wealthy donors and is a highly influential figure in Democratic fundraising circles, playing a central role in steering money to environmental and climate coalitions. She was a key player in Clean Energy Works, a massive green coalition that blew through tens of millions of dollars in a failed attempt to push climate change legislation. Ivan Frishberg, who ran the political operations for Clean Energy Works and is close with Welch, is now running the climate campaign for OFA. OFA initially offered to make Frishberg available to discuss Keystone, but later stopped responding to queries. Welch declined to comment to The Huffington Post for this article.
"The community that tried to move a climate bill fundamentally lacks political power and doesn't have the ability to either deliver punishment or reward to members of Congress who don't vote for us," Welch said on a 2011 post-mortem conference call. "Unless we're really willing to play hardball, I don't think we can win on big issues like this."
That tough talk clashed with Welch's appearance on the stage with Carson, where she encouraged donors to get behind OFA, according to Ebrahimi.
Welch recently joined the Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy liberals who attempt to coordinate their political giving, through her organization Corridor Partners, and advises a number of donors connected to it.
Carson, after the event with Welch, traveled from San Francisco down to Laguna Beach, where he pitched the Democracy Alliance donors. Despite skepticism from Keystone opponents, Carson persuaded the network to name OFA a central part of its portfolio, meaning that donors would be encouraged to steer money its way. OFA is in desperate need of the cash infusion: Despite setting a goal of $50 million, it raised under $5 million in the first quarter of this year. The news of OFA's elevation by the Democracy Alliance was leaked to the Los Angeles Times, the paper of record for wealthy West Coast donors. The normally secretive organization made its chairman Rob McKay available to the Times for an interview, as well as press-shy Carson.
"They care about progressive infrastructure, but they also want to maintain a close relationship with the president," said one source involved with the Keystone and Democracy Alliance fight, who wanted to remain anonymous so as not to alienate the administration. "The White House is watching very closely who gives to OFA."
A White House official emphasized to HuffPost that OFA is an independent organization, and that on Keystone, "in line with long standing precedent the State Department is conducting the review."
McKay, in a statement to HuffPost, said that his network doesn't take policy positions. "The Democracy Alliance has built a community of progressive funders with a range of perspectives on policy issues, and while the organization doesn't take policy positions, we encourage and facilitate healthy discussion on the issues," he said. "Our primary focus is on identifying and recommending for our members those organizations that can collaborate with one another as part of the progressive infrastructure and work together to strengthen our democracy and create a future where every American has the opportunity to succeed."
But at the same time they are elevating OFA, McKay and other wealthy donors are putting public pressure on the White House to reject the pipeline project, arguing it has "comparable urgency and importance" to the fight to end slavery. In an aggressive move, a group of some 150 Democratic donors sent a letter to Obama last week urging him to reject the pipeline's permit, and leaked it to Washington Post White House correspondent, Juliet Eilperin. (Its existence was first reported in HuffPost Hill.)
"He made one of the most important decisions of his presidency and for our nation when he decided that he would fight for the 13th Amendment to end slavery even if it took every ounce of his political capital," the funders wrote in their letter, which was organized by Betsy Taylor, an advisor to some of the top climate-focused donors. "Your decision on Keystone may not be so weighty, but we believe it holds a comparable urgency and importance, not strictly as a pipeline decision but as a presidential choice that will signal a fundamentally new direction for our nation."
The signatories, who pledged to support Obama's climate campaign "in every possible way," include business leaders, celebrities and clean energy philanthropists. Along with McKay and his wife Anna Hawken, a number of Democracy Alliance donors signed the letter: Faye Straus and Sandor Straus, John Hunting, Nick Hanauer, Jeff Clements, Anne Bartley, Judith Avery and Brian Arbogast.
The letter sends a conflicting message: If you approve the pipeline, we'll stop funding you. Meanwhile, we'll fund your organization which refuses to take a stand on the pipeline.
Acknowledging that the donor community is "not monolithic," Taylor said that people she's spoken to are already withholding money from OFA because of its reluctance to take on Keystone. "I do think OFA has already paid the price of remaining neutral. How can you remain neutral when the earth is hotter than it's ever been? I want them to succeed, but I don't think they should have high expectations from climate-focused donors," she said. "Many of [the donors] are deeply troubled by the president's failure on Keystone and they're not writing checks."
The refusal to take a position would be less significant if OFA hadn't decided to make climate change its first major priority. "They're set up not to get ahead of the president, but it's a deep problem, because it's the most pressing climate issue and they're sitting it out," Taylor said.
The group kicked off its climate change effort with an April email blast to 20 million subscribers featuring a video compilation of Republican climate deniers in Congress. "We are tracking a set of folks who are sitting there ... who have said goofy things about climate denial that play well to some small set of folks but are really out of step with the science and the facts," OFA's climate change campaign manager Frishberg told HuffPost at the time. "We are going to start to organize in a set of districts to hold those folks accountable for the fact that they deny climate change."
Such messaging is straight from the administration's playbook. Delivering a commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden ribbed his Republican colleagues who deny climate change, questioning whether they'd even received an education.
"Today," said Biden, "you're all graduating in another world that has changed equally and profoundly. Different dangers, and different possibilities. Climate change left unattended by people with whom I work, and I marvel at whether they got an education. No, I'm serious. To deny climate change today? As my brother Jim would say, 'Go figure!'"
Biden drove home his climate-change talking points in an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this month. "We've been dealing with a Congress where a significant portion of the other party thinks there's no such thing as global warming," he said in an interview with historian Douglas Brinkley. "If we had a different Congress," he added, "I think you'd see a more aggressive emissions legislation."
CREDO's Bond said that focusing on denialist Republicans hints at a "cynical election strategy" that misses the reality that executive action is the best hope for the climate during Obama's second term. "As terrible as it is to have Republican serving in Congress, and even on the Science Committee, who deny the science … they really don't have anything to do with real action on climate change at this point," she said.
On Monday CREDO helped organize hundreds of Keystone protesters in a rally outside Obama's fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Before that CREDO helped organize a rally in San Francisco, during the president's April fundraising trip there, designed to pressure the president on Keystone. The demonstration drew hundreds.
Grassroots pressure has yet to move OFA. On a conference call with local activists earlier this year, OFA acknowledged the elephant in the room. Carson, according to audio of the call provided to HuffPost by an activist, volunteered that while OFA is "going to be very respectful" of people's opinions on the pipeline, they won't be taking a stand on it or organizing around it in either direction.
Carson's comments didn't comfort fellow conference call participant and local OFA activist Lee Diamond, who expressed concern about the president's "all-of-the-above" energy approach, particularly as it pertains to Keystone. "We’re still going to have a problem in June or July if, you know, if the administration says Keystone is going to go ahead," Diamond said on the conference call with Carson. "Because Keystone is just like cutting the legs out from under our efforts. And it is the one thing -- we talk about a carbon tax -- but this is the one thing that he can do, you know, as the president, with leadership, [to] move us into the future that we need to be in."
OFA's Frishberg, the climate change campaign manager, told Diamond on the call that the advocacy group's only position on Keystone is that they want the review process to continue, which is in line with the president. "OFA hasn’t had a position with Keystone at all," he told Diamond. "In the email that was sent out, the only reference was to preserving the president’s authority in the State Department process to make that decision, and I don’t think anybody here has a sense one way or the other about what the president’s position on the State Department recommendation will be on this."
As a resident of Jersey Shore, Diamond, 52, observed firsthand the kind of havoc a shifting climate can wreak in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which severely damaged or destroyed 46,000 New Jersey homes, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In a Friday interview with The Huffington Post, Diamond said OFA's silence on Keystone puts him in an uncomfortable position, especially since he's already dissatisfied with the president's climate policies.
"He's good on a lot of issues but he's terrible on this issue," said Diamond, who organized for Obama in five states in 2008 and in Virginia in 2012. "He's better than a lot of other politicians but we need more. I think that climate change is the central environmental issue of our time … if we don't have a climate then we don't have anything." If the president supports Keystone, Diamond adds, he's "done with Obama."
In early April, more than 1,000 activists protested the president's fundraiser in San Francisco. February brought the largest environmental rally in U.S. history outside the White House. In a petition organized by CREDO, The Other 98% and Rainforest Action Network, more than 50,000 people pledged to commit civil disobedience if Keystone is approved -- with some vowing to get arrested in front of OFA offices.
Climate activists were initially heartened by OFA's decision to tackle their issue, which has remained in the background in Washington since Congress failed to pass cap-and-trade legislation in 2009. But the organization's failures to address Keystone, an issue that's been at the core of the environmental advocacy movement for years now, signals an identity crisis for OFA as it seeks to emphasize its grassroots credentials.
"OFA can't keep ignoring the pipeline in the room," said Jamie Henn, a spokesman for the climate advocacy group 350.org. "Environmentalists, young people, and progressives have made it very clear that Keystone XL is their top climate priority for the president, because it's a decision that he gets to make all by himself. OFA working on climate without advocating against Keystone XL would be like the president campaigning for LGBT rights without taking a position on gay marriage."
"If President Obama rejects the pipeline, I'm sure that thousands of environmentalists would be glad to volunteer for OFA and support much of the president's agenda," he added. "But those people aren't going to knock on a single door or make a single phone call if the president sells them out to Big Oil."
These donors and activists are wondering why OFA won't take a position on Keystone. Ebrahmi thinks its leaders are worried that a loss would disappoint its members and donors. But he also said he wouldn't turn away from OFA if it fought on Keystone and lost.
"I would absolutely be proud of them for fighting as hard as they could [even if they lost]," he said. "They assume that if they lose the fight that it's just a loss and they haven't gained anything by building relationships, building movement infrastructure, etcetera. And that's actually very much an electoral campaigner's mindset. That's not a grassroots organizer's mindset."
This post was updated to include comment from OFA spokeswoman Katie Hogan.
CORRECTION: This post initially stated that the donor letter threatened to withhold funding if Obama approved the pipeline. That was not explicitly stated in the letter. The post also stated that if Obama opposes Keystone, an Obama organizer would withdraw support. The organizer, who opposes Keystone, would withdraw support if Obama supports the project.]]>Tom Morello To Play Tribute Concert For Friend, Dying Iraq War Veteran, Tomas Youngtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-15T12:54:23-04:002013-05-15T13:52:27-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
On that night, the lead guitarist of the band Rage Against the Machine will host “Tribute to Tomas Young.” Morello and Young became close friends long before the Internet came to know Young as the gravely wounded veteran who authored a viral open letter to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War.
Morello and Young met in 2007 when Young was making a documentary, "Body of War" and wanted to use a song by The Nightwatchman -- the name of Morello's solo act. The film documents Young's attempt to reintegrate into the United States after being shot in the leg and through the spine while serving in Iraq in 2004.
The two stayed in touch and sparked a friendship through their shared love of music and their outspoken criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. "Human shrapnel from that conflict continues to rain down, often in silence," Morello told The Huffington Post. "But in Tomas' case, not so silent, and that's one of the reasons I admire him so much."
Along with making "Body of War," Young was a leader of the advocacy group Iraq Veterans Against the War. While at times Morello admits that his friend feels like his efforts fall "on deaf ears or, at best, preach to the choir. I have a different view of this ... There is nothing more courageous than a soldier that stands up against an unjust war, and for our generation he's the guy."
"He speaks with a uniquely authoritative voice about the Iraq conflict and the Bush-Cheney administration dragging America into a war that the net result is creating disposal lives, both here and in Iraq, in an unrepentant way," Morello said.
After he was gravely wounded in Iraq, Young never walked again and endured a series of medical setbacks that left his body deteriorated and resulted in the removal of his colon in November.
"This way, instead of committing the conventional suicide and I am out of the picture, people have a way to stop by or call, and say their goodbyes. I felt this was a fairer way to treat people than to just go out with a note."
Morello recently visited Young. The pair talked music and played video games. "It's just very, very sad," Morello said.
"It made me wonder. On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War -- I know what Tomas Young was doing, he was dying in a hospice bed in Kansas City. I wonder what Dick Cheney was doing on that night, who he was dining and toasting with?" Morello asked HuffPost. "One thing I'm confident ... he doesn't give a shit about is Tomas Young or the countless other Tomas Youngs, both in the United States and Iraq."
Morello said he isn't sure how much time Young has left, and that's why it's important to pay "tribute to him and a tribute to the soldiers and veterans across this great land who stand up against unjust and immoral wars and behavior by the government and their corporate sponsors."
"On that night, we're going to have a great time playing music and trying to get our hands on the wheel of history," Morello said.
Below, read what Morello called "the most damning indictment of war since the Vietnam era," Young's open letter to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War:
A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.
I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.
I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.
]]>William Ostendorff, NRC Commissioner, Invested In Honeywell During Plant Lockouttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-14T12:04:13-04:002013-05-14T20:50:13-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
A lockout of the union workforce at Honeywell in 2010 and 2011 raised safety concerns that the agency investigated. And Honeywell battled the commission over a critical regulatory exemption it sought, a fight that finally went against the company in January 2013. Honeywell has also held regular discussions with the NRC regarding an upgrade to its emergency preparedness in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in March 2011.
Ostendorff personally visited the Illinois plant, known as the Honeywell Metropolis Works Uranium Conversion Facility, on Oct. 5, 2012, according to an NRC document. Later that month, on Oct. 16, the NRC issued a "confirmatory order" listing upgrades that needed to be made for earthquake and other natural disaster preparedness before the plant could re-open, at the same time praising Honeywell for its cooperation. "Due, in part, to Honeywell’s cooperation and stated commitment to protect workers and public safety, the NRC decided to issue a Confirmatory Order in lieu of a Notice of Violation and consideration of civil penalties," read the NRC's public statement at the time.
The NRC's commissioners are chosen by the president, but are typically selected in a bipartisan pair. Ostendorff was the GOP choice, picked in 2009. A former captain in the Navy, Ostendorff also worked in the Bush administration as a top official in the National Nuclear Security Administration, and was previously a GOP staffer on the House Armed Services Committee from 2003 to 2007.
His term officially began in April 2010, and he was confirmed to a second term in 2011, which runs until 2016. In 2009, he signed his personal financial disclosure form in November and listed his ownership of Honeywell International, putting it at a range of $1,000 to $15,000. In March and April 2011, two forms, the most recent available, list his Honeywell investment increasing in value to a range of $15,000 to $50,000.
Ostendorff, like all senior officials at the NRC, promised not to participate in decisions that could have "a direct and predictable effect on my financial interests," according to a letter he sent to the agency's ethics office when he was tapped for the post in 2009.
In a statement to the Huffington Post Monday, an Ostendorff spokesperson noted that top NRC officials are not specifically barred from owning shares of Honeywell. "The stock was sold last summer before the Commission considered an adjudicatory matter last fall involving the Honeywell operation that holds an NRC license. Commissioner Ostendorff followed applicable NRC requirements," the statement added.
When notified of Ostendorff's investment, Stephen Lech, president of the United Steelworkers Local 7-669, which represents workers at Honeywell's plant in Illinois, responded: "I'm speechless."
"Even if he did sell his stock before the decision to approve the current seismic work, his investment in the company prior to that is inappropriate," Lech added later. "He was on the commission prior to and during our lockout in 2010 and 2011 when we were pleading with the agency to prevent the company from operating our facility with unsafe and untrained scab labor. During that same period, the scabs in [the] plant had a release of deadly hydrofluoric acid and the NRC took no enforcement action, instead referring the incident to OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration]."
A reader tipped off HuffPost to the existence of Ostendorff's Honeywell investment in response to a request for NRC staffers to share stories about the ongoing internal turmoil that led former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko to resign. (Send additional tips to ryan@huffingtonpost.com.)
In August 2012, HuffPost reported that Ostendorff was under investigation for attempting to thwart a probe into safety concerns at the Palisades Power Plant on Lake Michigan, a location represented by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). Last Monday, news broke that the plant was leaking "slightly" radioactive water.
The NRC updated its list of restricted securities in a December memo sent to The Huffington Post by an NRC official. But the memo also adds that even if a stock were not on the list, it could still present a conflict. "There is no prohibition against owning security interests in entities not on this list. However, employees are required to disqualify themselves from participation in any NRC particular matter involving parties affecting the financial interest of any entity not on this list if they, their spouse, or minor children, collectively hold securities worth more than $15,000 in that entity," the memo reads.
Honeywell does not appear on the December 2012 list of restricted securities, but the memo does bar commissioners from investing in "[e]ntities licensed or regulated by the Commission to mill, convert, enrich, fabricate, store, or dispose of source, byproduct or special nuclear material," which Honeywell does. The company's sheer size may have kept the firm off the list, since its nuclear operations make up only a small part of its overall business.
While Honeywell has had a host of issues before the NRC, few have come up for a vote, which meant that Ostendorff wasn't legally required to divest until fall of 2012. But current and former NRC officials say that rules focusing exclusively on cases that require a formal vote do not address how NRC policy is set, and understate the role commissioners can play in influencing issues that don't come up for a formal vote.
The NRC has some of the strictest restrictions on investment for its senior leaders, because its decisions don't just have a tangential relationship to companies' bottom lines, but can make or break a quarter, or a year. Honeywell's stock tanked in 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis, but it has been rising steadily since.
"It's unfortunate that anyone in such a powerful position within the NRC would even own stock in a company that they have regulatory authority over," Lech said.
Clarification: This piece has been updated to clarify that uranium conversion, rather than enrichment, is conducted at the Honeywell facility in Illinois, and that Honeywell has had regular discussions with the NRC over emergency preparation upgrades and has not entered into any related litigation.
]]>Sallie Mae Profit Boosts College Endowments And Pension Funds As Students Pay Moretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-09T18:30:49-04:002013-05-10T09:57:18-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
The previously unreported investments mean that education professionals are able to profit twice off the same student: first by hiking the cost of tuition, then through dividends and higher valuations on their holdings in Sallie Mae, the largest student lender and loan servicer in the country, which profits by charging relatively high interest rates on its loans and not refinancing high-rate loans after students graduate and get well-paying jobs.
Sallie Mae is a former government-sponsored enterprise that was fully privatized in 2004 and now trades publicly as SLM Corp.
“It’s a conflict of interest,” said Barmak Nassirian, a longtime higher education analyst who most recently served as associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars & Admissions Officers. “There is something inherently problematic about benefitting from the financing of the tuition you charge through investments in any lender.”
On average, the annual cost of education at public schools has risen 57 percent since 2005 to nearly $18,000, according to College Board figures Sallie Mae cites in its latest quarterly pitch to investors. Students at private schools are paying more than $39,000, or nearly 44 percent more than they did in 2005.
The so-called “cost of attendance gap”, or the difference between what a four-year degree will cost incoming freshmen versus the amount of government loan money available to them, has risen over the past 10 years by 59 percent to nearly $152,000 for the typical student who started at a private school in 2011, Sallie Mae tells investors. For public school students, the gap has increased 90 percent to about $69,000.
Sallie Mae loans, which are relatively more expensive now than they were before the financial crisis, help “bridge the funding gap,” the company says.
The funds’ investments in Sallie Mae come as Washington policymakers increasingly turn their attention to student debt burdens, weighing stimulative measures that could boost refinancings or increase loan modifications for distressed borrowers, in the face of increasing evidence that student debt is hurting the economy.
The highly profitable company -- it generated a 21 percent return on equity last year -- attributes its earnings in part to the lack of competition in a market in which borrowers’ need for credit is only increasing.
“The margins here are really a function of alternative financing opportunities,” John Remondi, Sallie Mae president and chief operating officer, told investors in January. “And if you think about our products, we're making loans to the parents and students, family education loans. Their alternatives are fairly limited.”
Sallie Mae reported $939 million in net income last year, its highest since 2006. The publicly-traded company, which enjoys a government guarantee on most of its $174 billion in assets, has been profitable in eight of the last 10 years, generating a cumulative $7.3 billion profit.
Its shares have risen 54 percent over the past year, outpacing the 19 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, America’s benchmark equity gauge.
The endowments of Furman University, Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, and University of Michigan all hold stakes in Sallie Mae through their investments in Highfields Capital Management, a hedge fund that manages more than $11 billion and is the second-biggest Sallie Mae shareholder. As of the end of last year, Highfields owned nearly 40 million shares of Sallie Mae, or 8.6 percent of the company’s common stock.
Highfield investors, according to securities filings, primarily consist of charitable foundations, endowments, pension plans, and governmental entities, among others. The hedge fund was founded by two top executives of the Harvard Management Co., the Ivy League university's investment arm, which kicked in $500 million to launch the fund.
Pension funds for teachers and other school employees such as the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System, State Teachers Retirement Board of Ohio, Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, Teacher Retirement System of Texas and California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) also own significant chunks of Sallie Mae, as does asset manager TIAA-CREF, which oversees retirement funds for teachers, among others.
Highfields Capital declined to comment. The funds either declined to comment or said their ownership stakes were due to passive investments in index funds. Sallie Mae’s shares form part of the S&P 500 and the Russell 3000 Index.
Still, the funds are enjoying bumper returns thanks to their passive investments, aided by borrowers who may be paying more than they would if the student loan market was functioning properly, policymakers have said.
“The issue becomes whether maximizing returns should be tempered by additional concerns and ethical considerations,” Nassirian said of higher-education professionals who have holdings in Sallie Mae. “This form of ‘double-dipping’ can create a very dangerous loop, where you have incentives beyond what you claim in your public rhetoric -- namely to put students into deeper debt.”
“This is a much more subtle and much less mechanistic dysfunction than we have seen in the past,” he added.
In 2006 -- the last year Sallie Mae reported at least $1 billion in profit and enjoyed a return on equity above 20 percent -- student borrowers who took out private Sallie Mae loans that were then securitized were borrowing at interest rates that were about 4.4 to 5.0 percentage points above a benchmark borrowing rate for financial corporations known as the three-month commercial paper rate, according to a review of the company’s bond documents.
For private loans that were securitized last year, students were paying interest rates about 6.8 to 7.5 percentage points above the benchmark corporate rate.
In all, over the last three years the margin enjoyed by Sallie Mae and its investors on private loans the company securitized on average has been about 2 percentage points higher than it was in 2006 relative to the overall corporate borrowing rate.
“Sallie Mae’s private education loans are designed to help students graduate with less debt and pay off their loans faster than other private loan alternatives,” said spokeswoman Patricia Nash Christel. “In fact, we’ve lowered our interest rates three times in the last four years, eliminated origination fees, added borrower-friendly safeguards, and created variable and fixed rate choices as well as in-school payment options to save families money.”
However, the reduction in interest rates for students has not matched the decline in the cost of borrowing throughout the economy. In other words, students are not fully enjoying the benefits of today’s low-interest rate environment, a source of frustration to some government officials.
Martha Holler, another Sallie Mae spokeswoman, disputed the use of commercial paper rates to measure the company’s margins on private student loans. Holler said it would be more appropriate to use the company’s self-reported funding costs specifically related to its private student loan originations, which in the form of long-term equity and debt is more expensive than commercial paper. By that measure, she argued, the company’s margins have slightly decreased since 2006.
But such a measure would exclude the company’s overall cost of funds, which enables the company to finance a wide range of assets more cheaply, boosting earnings. Sallie Mae's cost of funds is substantially lower now than it was in 2006, the year before the credit crunch is widely acknowledged to have started.
Sallie Mae’s preferred measurement also neglects the relative interest rate paid by student borrowers, whose rates in a normally functioning competitive market would move in tandem with interest rates in the broader economy. The commercial paper rate measures the borrowing costs of financial corporations like Sallie Mae, and influences how they price loans offered to households.
In 2012, the company borrowed funds at an average interest rate of 1.45 percent. In 2006 it was 5.37 percent. Interest rates paid by its student borrowers on all of the company’s loan products have not dropped by a corresponding amount, enabling the company as a whole to record a higher spread between its cost to borrow and what it earns off loans to students.
Sallie Mae’s margins also benefit from its Utah-based bank, which since the beginning of 2006 has been responsible for originating and funding “virtually all” of its private student loans, according to the company’s most recent annual report.
The bank relies on deposits to fund student loans. According to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data, the bank's cost of funds last year was 1.11 percent.
Sallie Mae’s overall margins have increased to 1.78 percent, from 1.54 percent in 2006.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a report on student loan affordability this week that high margins for private student lenders, such as those enjoyed by Sallie Mae, may be due to the lack of options for student borrowers.
“These excess credit spreads may be a symptom of insufficient competition,” the regulator said.
The company originated nearly half of all private student loans in the 2011-2012 academic year, according to a January investor presentation. In addition, it’s responsible for roughly half of all outstanding student loan securities.
Sallie Mae’s low borrowing costs also are aided in part by a borrowing agreement it has with the Federal Home Loan Bank in Des Moines, a government-sponsored entity originally created to provide cheap financing to home mortgage lenders.
As part of its 2010 agreement, Sallie Mae can post government-backed education loans as collateral for credit. At the end of last year, Sallie Mae was able to borrow as much as $8.5 billion.
In the quarter ending March 31 of this year, Sallie Mae had borrowed $2.1 billion with an average interest rate of 0.30 percent. Holler said there was “no connection” between the company’s Federal Home Loan Bank credit facility and private student loans.
The CFPB said it was “worth noting” that Sallie Mae enjoys the use of the government-backed credit facility “at favorable terms,” despite the fact that it “does not originate a noteworthy level of mortgages.”
The CFPB highlighted Sallie Mae in its report, noting the company’s “extraordinary gains” on a federal program designed to aid student borrowers and its apparent reliance on cheap government financing.
For example, the consumer bureau’s report pointed out that a 2008 law called the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act helped Sallie Mae achieve gains of $284 million in the 2009 fiscal year and $321 million in the 2010 fiscal year off sales of student loans to the Education Department.
The company defended its actions in a statement, saying, “Given the dire circumstances the markets were facing at the time, this intervention afforded 6 million students to access higher education at an extremely low cost to the Department of Education."
The lack of competition for new loans means today’s borrowers are paying higher relative rates, and when they graduate there are fewer opportunities to refinance those loans into cheaper debt.
With increasing exceptions, a student borrower’s credit profile typically improves after graduation, as the borrower has secured a degree and likely a decent-paying job. In theory, an employed college graduate has a better credit score -- meaning he is less likely to default on his debts -- than when he originally took out his education-related loans.
Like a company that has become more profitable and is therefore less likely to default or homeowners who have gained equity in their home since first taking out their mortgage, experts reckon that borrowers with student loans should be able to refinance their high-rate debt as their credit profile improves.
But unlike borrowers with home mortgages, the CFPB has said that borrowers with student loans are unable to “take advantage of today’s historically low interest environment.”
Refinancings of high-rate student loans by Sallie Mae, the biggest student loan company, are scant. “There's not a whole lot of refinancing activity in the private student loan space,” Remondi told investors in January.
Stephen Burd, a senior policy analyst focusing on education at the New America Foundation, a Washington policy group, said that Sallie Mae’s status as an industry leader influences how the broader market operates and could help to explain why refinancings are so infrequent.
“Sallie Mae is the biggest player in this space and if they were doing refinancings, other companies would have to follow their lead to remain competitive,” Burd said.
During U.S. Senate testimony last year, Remondi told lawmakers that students with Sallie Mae loans are benefiting without refinancings because most of the loans are co-signed by parents, and their interest rates generally are dictated by their parents’ credit scores.
“So, to some extent, they're already gaining the benefit of the parental co-signing on that account based on the interest rate at that time,” Remondi said.
“Very rarely do we see interest rates or more loan products being refinanced because the credit profile of the obligor has changed in such dramatic ways that change the overall interest rate structure,” he added. “And I think because of those two reasons, you see a very limited marketplace for private education loan consolidation and refinancing activities.”
In fact, in securities filings the company warns investors that if policymakers provide refinancing opportunities for student borrowers, it could negatively impact earnings, as high-rate debt is paid off and the company’s servicing volumes shrink.
“The adoption and implementation of any such proposals, individually or in combination, could significantly increase our costs, affect our ability to service and collect loans, significantly alter whether or not we remain in certain businesses and the form in which we do so and materially and adversely impact our business, financial condition and results of operations,” Sallie Mae warns investors of potential policy emanating from Washington.
The CFPB suggested this week that policymakers could stimulate refinancing activity by creating a program that would provide lenders such as Sallie Mae with cheap loans that would be secured by newly refinanced student loans as collateral. Such a program could resemble Sallie Mae’s multi-billion dollar credit facility with the Federal Home Loan Bank in Des Moines, for example.
The lack of competition and the prevalence of high-rate loans is having a broader impact than on Sallie Mae’s bottom line. It’s depressing America’s economy.
Millions of student borrowers are paying record relative interest rates on their government loans, according to a HuffPost review, frustrating efforts by the Fed to reduce borrowing costs for households and businesses.
The panel of senior U.S. regulators charged with safeguarding the financial system known as the Financial Stability Oversight Council recently warned that education loans may hamper economic growth and limit home purchases as overly indebted households and young workers cut back on consumption and borrowing. The panel joined the Federal Reserve’s interest rate-setting panel, the Federal Open Market Committee; the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research; the CFPB; and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in alerting about the possible danger student debt poses to either financial stability or the broader economy.
“The whole student loan problem is a problem that should be of deep concern to this body,” cautioned CFPB director Richard Cordray during testimony last month before the Senate Banking Committee. “These are young people that we should care a great deal about.”
Cordray’s agency estimates that Americans owe $1.1 trillion from loans used to finance higher education, exceeding credit card and car loans as the second-largest source of household debt behind home mortgages. About $150 billion of their education borrowings are private, non-government guaranteed loans, roughly a quarter of which are owned by Sallie Mae, according to CFPB data and Sallie Mae’s securities filings.
“They’re the ones with the ambition, aspirations and dreams, and they're getting saddled with debt that they don't understand,” Cordray said of student borrowers. “It's holding them back and it's making them unable to rise and succeed and become leaders in our society.”
He added: “It's a significant problem and we're going to be doing everything that we can to address it at the bureau.”
Some members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee said in March that they viewed “the high level of student debt” as a risk to aggregate household spending over the next three years, posing a downside risk to economic growth, according to meeting minutes.
It was the first time the FOMC, which sets interest rates that affect trillions of dollars of loans and securities, had ever mentioned student loans as a possible risk to the economy, according to a review of past meeting minutes.
New York Fed researchers said last month that younger workers with student debt are less likely than their unburdened peers to have home mortgages or auto loans -- the first time that has been observed in at least 10 years and a worrying development for government officials who have long associated student debt with college education and better-paying jobs.
As policymakers search for solutions to the burgeoning problem of an indebted generation of college graduates, some lawmakers are zeroing in on mandating loan modification schemes or allowing more troubled student borrowers to discharge their unpayable debts in bankruptcy.
Sallie Mae says it supports allowing borrowers to discharge student debt through bankruptcy, subject to certain conditions. A company spokeswoman said that Sallie Mae has modified more than $1 billion in private education loans since 2009 with interest rate reductions or extended repayment terms.
Sallie Mae has already engaged with lawmakers on the issue. Federal records show the company spent more than $1.4 million lobbying members of Congress last quarter.]]>Kentucky Hemp Lobby Makes Inroads In Washingtontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-08T18:25:22-04:002013-05-08T18:29:21-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
Kentucky's Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer, a Republican, told The Huffington Post that he was at a private pre-derby party on Saturday when he found himself chatting with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his chief of staff Mike Sommers. Comer talked shop.
The topic at hand was the fate of the hemp industry in Kentucky, which could become the first state in the nation to successfully lobby for federal approval. Boehner and Sommers were interested enough to invite Comer and the chief supporters of the state's legalization bill to a meeting in Washington.
On Tuesday night, Boehner sat down with Comer and the bill's lead backers, Republican state Sen. Paul Hornback and Democrat Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky state treasurer who currently serves on the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission (and who also moonlights as a HuffPost blogger). Sommers confirmed the meeting took place.
According to Comer, Boehner told the trio he would talk with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about how a federal bill might be moved forward to remove hemp from the list of controlled substances. On Thursday, Comer and the Kentucky legislators plan to meet with McConnell, who surprised observers back home by endorsing Hornback's hemp bill, a move that quickly brought the state GOP in line.
The most likely path to passage for hemp legislation runs through the farm bill, as an amendment. That bill goes up for debate in the Senate Agriculture Committee next week -- fortuitous timing for hemp.
"I was impressed with his knowledge of this issue," Comer said of Boehner. "At the end he said, 'This is funny, because this issue's been around a long time. My daughter was talking about this 15 years ago.' So this is something he knows a lot about. And the difference today, as opposed to 10 years ago, is the only people who were pushing this issue 10 years ago were the extreme right or left, or people who wanted to legalize marijuana." Comer spoke with HuffPost and a Roll Call reporter in the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), their home base while they're in Washington, working with the group Vote Hemp, which advocates on behalf of the industry.
Kentucky's hemp bill, Senate Bill 50, became law in April and allows Bluegrass State farmers to grow industrial hemp for the first time in decades. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and local police have expressed concerns that allowing farmers to cultivate hemp would enable them to disguise the cultivation of illegal marijuana, which looks very similar to hemp but contains much higher levels of THC, the psychoactive agent in cannabis. Experts dismissed that argument, noting that cross-pollination between hemp plants and marijuana plants would significantly reduce the potency of the marijuana and devalue the crop. Beshear and Kentucky police remained skeptical, though the governor did not ultimately veto the legislation, letting it become law without his signature.
The chief objection, Miller said, came from a small element of law enforcement who feared "that this is a slippery slope, that they would lose money with marijuana eradication." The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, however, backed the bill.
Now Kentucky awaits federal action to approve the plant's cultivation. The Drug Enforcement Administration currently classifies hemp as a Schedule I substance with "a high potential for abuse," alongside heroin and LSD, despite the fact that industrial hemp has zero potential for abuse.
Comer said that the DEA has so far declined to meet with him or the Kentucky lawmakers, so they are hoping instead to meet with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA. He said that meetings with the Departments of Energy and Agriculture went well.
Paul and McConnell are co-sponsoring federal legislation that would remove the plant from the DEA's list of illegal drugs. A similar effort is also underway in the House, boosted by members of Kentucky's congressional delegation, with the exception of Rep. Harold Rogers (R). Should those efforts fail, the senators have vowed to seek a waiver from the DEA granting Kentucky special dispensation to grow hemp.
Other states that have also passed local laws allowing hemp licensure include Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia and Colorado. While some have sought federal validation of state laws from the DEA, those efforts have been unsuccessful to date.]]>Elizabeth Warren: Student Loans Should Have Same Rate Big Banks Gettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-08T18:18:42-04:002013-05-09T14:27:24-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
With some student loan rates set to double on July 1 -- from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent -- Warren's bill would reduce student loan interest rates to 0.75 percent, opening the Fed's discount window to students.
"Every single day, this country invests in big banks by lending them money at near-zero rates," Warren told The Huffington Post. "We should make the same kind of investment lending money to students, who are trying to get an education."
The freshman senator said she plans to mobilize students -- those most affected by student loans -- to help get the bill through the Senate. "This is about their lives and if they are active in this fight, we can make this change," Warren said.
The Fed justifies loaning money essentially for free to major banks so they can maintain liquidity during emergencies. But Warren noted that student loan debt also affects the economy. Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, reported by Washington Post's Wonkblog, found that the amount of student loan debt of Americans under the age of 25 has doubled in less than a decade, from $10,649 in 2003 to $20,326 in 2012. Along with this increase in student debt comes a decrease in the likelihood someone will take out an auto loan or a home mortgage. That burden is a drag on the economy.
Warren pointed to the GI Bill and National Defense Education Act loans, which funded her education. "It wasn't just soldiers that got the education, it was the whole economy that benefitted from that investment," Warren said. "Why not give students a break? Why not let them in on the same great deal that the big banks get?"
According to the Project on Student Debt, college students who graduated in 2011 owed more than $26,000 in student loans, which Warren said is, "crushing our young."
Warren ran for Senate promising to fight against an economic system she described as "rigged" in favor of big business. She said her legislation is intended to raise questions about why banks get a dramatically subsidized loan rate and what can be done to reduce debt burdens for students and consumers. The simple answer -- that the Fed could subsidize students instead of banks -- is an uncomfortable one and goes to a core inequality at the heart of the financial system.
Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive public policy think tank, in endorsing Warren's bill, said in a press release that "Instead of kicking students when they are down, we should end the student debt crisis."
]]>Republicans Sean Duffy, Phil Gingrey Oppose Obama's Social Security Cuttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-07T19:03:23-04:002013-05-08T11:43:18-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
When Obama offered the chained CPI proposal, Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, charged with electing Republicans to the House, slammed it as "a shocking attack on seniors." In general, though, the response has been muted.
But the letters from Gingrey and Duffy underscore the difficulty that advocates of cutting Social Security face. The letters were sent to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) as part of his "Citizen Whip" project, through which he asks people across the country to write their member of Congress and forward him the reply. The specific question: "Are you for or against a cut in the cost of living increases for seniors and veterans who receive Social Security and veterans benefits?"
For months, Republicans demanded that Obama spell out specific cuts that he was willing to agree to, though they themselves wouldn't do the same, because specific cuts to government spending tend to be unpopular. And cuts to Social Security are about as unpopular as anything currently under discussion, according to a variety of surveys.
Duffy, who formerly starred on MTV's "The Real World," appears well aware of the program's popularity and repeatedly refers to cutting it as "the president's plan," though he leaves the door open to cuts for younger generations.
"President Obama, in his Fiscal Year 2014 Budget request, recently proposed changing how the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) is calculated by the federal government," Duffy wrote to one constituent. "I strongly disagree with the President's plan to reduce Social Security benefit increases for current seniors. As your Congressman, I will fight to make sure there are no COLA reductions for current retirees. Today's seniors deserve the benefits they have rightfully earned and I will continue working on proposals that strengthen the program."
Gingrey also rejected the plan. "Many economists claim that the current CPI calculation overstates annual cost-of-living increases and leads to larger benefit increases than necessary to compensate for inflation. The chained CPI, however, would lead to an estimated 0.25 to 0.3% decrease in the COLA, thereby decreasing benefit increases for Social Security beneficiaries," he wrote. "While I agree that we need to find ways to trim the federal budget so we do not continue to run up unsustainable debts for our children and grandchildren, doing so by cutting Social Security benefits is not the correct approach. One of the reasons I decided to run for Congress was to protect Social Security for current retirees, as well as to fix the program so that future retirees can benefit from it as well. My commitment to protect Social Security, not only for today but for the future generations, has not waivered [sic]."
Gingrey spokeswoman Jen Talaber said the letter does not spell out opposition to chained CPI. He "remains committed to preserving Social Security for current and future beneficiaries," Talaber said. "Nowhere in his letter does he contradict himself or indicate opposition to chained CPI." Gingrey is running for Senate in a competitive primary in Georgia.
On Tuesday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), also a candidate for Senate, came out against chained CPI, much as other Democrats running for Senate, including in red states, have done.
A HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in December found that 16 percent of Americans said the proposal to switch to chained CPI was a good idea, while 54 percent said it was a bad idea. And the proposal was unpopular across the political spectrum, with 56 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of independents saying they thought the proposal was a bad idea.
Another December HuffPost/YouGov poll found that by a margin of 52 percent to 25 percent, a majority of Americans said proposals that would cut benefits for future beneficiaries should not even be considered as part of a budget deal.
]]>Bill To Collect Sales Tax On Online Purchases Faces Uncertain Future In Housetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-07T18:10:38-04:002013-05-07T18:10:43-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/overwhelming support to a bill to empower states to collect sales tax on online purchases, chances for its passage in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives are far less certain.
The overwhelming 69-27 vote in the Senate, however, has given the measure momentum and surprised even some of its backers. "It's going to be a tough challenge, but I think a doable challenge," Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a co-sponsor, told The Huffington Post. "The big bipartisan Senate vote put to rest the argument that this is a new tax."
The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that states have the right to collect sales tax for online and catalog purchases, but states currently rely on consumers to voluntarily pay that tax to state collectors. Under the new legislation, private software companies would provide programs to online retailers to collect those taxes and then transmit the money to state governments. The bill has been a key issue for state and local leaders and has gained support from Amazon and Walmart.
The bill was immediately referred to the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte, who expressed concerns about the bill Monday evening but pledged give it a fair hearing.
"I do not believe the Marketplace Fairness Act is sufficiently simplified yet," Goodlatte said Monday (see below for his full statement). "There is still not uniformity on definitions and tax rates, so businesses would still be forced to wade through potentially hundreds of tax rates and a host of different tax codes and definitions."
Operatives on and off the Hill say the bill's fate rests in Goodlatte's hands, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is committed to moving it through the regular process.
Fifteen GOP governors have come out in support of the bill. For them, it's a way to get more revenue without raising taxes or cutting spending back home. And Amazon, which previously opposed the measure, is now a supporter. (Amazon has brick and mortar warehouses in so many states that it's being forced to collect sales taxes anyway.)
The strongly conservative wing of the Republican party, meanwhile, is working hard to beat it. "It's become a conservative litmus test," said one high-level GOP operative. "On the other hand, most governors are pressuring members and retailers have a lot of juice. Think how many jobs the big boxes [stores] produce in each district."
The measure, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, is the second element of a two-part strategy employed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) aimed at gathering support and campaign cash for Democrats from brick-and-mortar merchants and retailers like Best Buy and Walmart. Part one of Durbin's strategy was to regulate the swipe fees banks can charge merchants. A Democratic operative close to Durbin confirmed that the Marketplace Fairness Act is part two of the plan.
Back in 2012, Durbin told This American Life that senators spend an inordinate amount of time "conjuring up new ideas on how to raise money."
"I think most Americans would be shocked-- not surprised, but shocked-- if they knew how much time a United States senator spends raising money. And how much time we spend talking about raising money, and thinking about raising money, and planning to raise money. And, you know, going off on little retreats and conjuring up new ideas on how to raise money," he said.
That Congress is even dealing with the online sales tax issue is an example of how the need to raise campaign cash helps set the agenda. As one moderate Democratic senator put it during the swipe fee fight, "I'm surprised at how much of our time is spent trying to divide up the spoils between various economic interests. I had no idea. I thought we’d be focused on civil liberties, on education policy, energy policy and so on."
"The fights down here can be put in two or three categories: The big greedy bastards against the big greedy bastards; the big greedy bastards against the little greedy bastards; and some cases even the other little greedy bastards against the other little greedy bastards," the senator said.
Both the swipe fee and online sales tax efforts were cosponsored by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), and involved unusual bipartisan coalitions. In order to win over enough Republicans, the argument that the the online sales tax bill does not create a new tax has been central to its advocates, who have taken to describing it as a "due tax," a term coined by Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who is handling outreach to fellow Republicans.
Welch, the bill's co-sponsor, told HuffPost that the states' rights argument will be key to selling the legislation to House Republicans. Boehner told Politico on Tuesday that he will let the bill work through the Judiciary Committee first.
Opponents, including eBay and lawmakers from states without sales taxes, have argued that the legislation would turn small businesses into tax collectors and saddle them with both monetary and time costs.
Briann Bieron, the senior global public policy director for eBay, said that he and other opponents of the measure plan to discuss the need to overhaul the Senate version of the bill with committee members, including exempting online businesses with less than $10 million in revenue from the tax requirement. The current language exempts online businesses with less than $1 million in revenue. Bieron told HuffPost that a "more open" House process will be beneficial and allow for all sides to be considered.
Womack spokeswoman Claire Burghoff told HuffPost that her boss plans to work with Goodlatte, the committee chairman, to "maintain the integrity of his bill."
Michael Kercheval, the president and CEO of the International Council of Shopping Centers, told HuffPost that members of Congress should expect to hear from small businesses in their districts. The small business lobby, which supports the bill, has argued that the ability to skirt sales taxes while shopping online pushes consumers away from brick-and-mortar stores and leaves states without much-needed revenue.
The National Conference of State Legislatures has estimated that states collectively lost $23 billion in uncollected online sales taxes last year. Kercheval said that money could be best used to offset property tax hikes at the local level, as well as budget cuts. "No one wants to cut police, fire and schools," he said. "That is what those local taxes support."
Read Goodlatte's full statement on the bill below:
I do not believe the Marketplace Fairness Act is sufficiently simplified yet. While it attempts to make tax collection simpler, it still has a long way to go. There is still not uniformity on definitions and tax rates, so businesses would still be forced to wade through potentially hundreds of tax rates and a host of different tax codes and definitions. There is also concern that despite disclaimers the bill could create due process type concerns regarding the ability for affected businesses to sufficiently petition for relief from aggressive state actions and could open the door for states to tax or even regulate beyond their borders. I am open to considering legislation concerning this topic but these issues, along with others, would certainly have to be addressed. The Committee will also look at alternatives that could enable states to collect sales tax revenues without opening the door to aggressive state action against out-of-state companies.
]]>Tom Coburn Pushes Gun Amendments On Water Resources Billtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-07T15:01:18-04:002013-05-07T19:20:52-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/One measure would allow gun owners to carry their firearms to outdoor recreational areas that are currently off-limits, and the other would create a registry of the guns and ammunition owned by the federal government.
Areas controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- such as hundreds of the nation's lakes and thousands of campsites and miles of trails -- are currently gun-free zones, even if the state where the land is located allows concealed weapons. Coburn's amendment, however, would grant precedence to state laws and permit people to carry guns in some of these places.
Coburn told The Huffington Post on Tuesday that he had filed the amendment, saying it would be "just like we have everywhere else." In 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that allows loaded firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges.
As gun-control groups continue to push for expanding background checks for firearms sales, Coburn's amendment would quietly deliver a significant victory to groups like the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America, which have been pushing such a measure for years.
Pro-gun lawmakers have also attempted to kill the Corps' gun ban repeatedly over the past few years, with Coburn also offering the same amendment in 2012. He said last year that it would provide "consistency in gun laws across government jurisdictions."
Last year, after the House approved a similar amendment, NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox said, "NRA strongly supported this amendment as it takes a step closer toward ending the patchwork of firearm laws and regulations that govern federal lands managed by different federal agencies."
Coburn's second amendment would require federal agencies to account for all the guns and ammunition in their possession. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) charged last month that the federal government had gone on an ammunition-buying spree so that there won't be any bullets left for ordinary Americans.
The Water Resources Development Act, currently sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and David Vitter (R-La.), is traditionally biennial legislation authorizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' water projects. The Obama administration expressed concern with some provisions of the bill on Monday, saying the White House wants to continue working with Congress on the differences.
UPDATE 7:08 p.m. -- Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, Boxer chastised her Republican colleagues for offering amendments about guns on the water bill.
"We're working on a critical infrastructure bill, and the first two Republican amendments are not about jobs, are not about business, are not about commerce -- are about guns!" she said incredulously.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) spokesman Don Stewart tweeted on Tuesday afternoon that both of Coburn's amendments will receive a vote on Wednesday.
This story has been updated to include details of the proposed amendments.]]>Bill Clinton At Deficit Summit: 'Paul Krugman Is Right In The Short Run'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-07T10:58:51-04:002013-05-07T17:13:35-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, has been the leading opponent of deficit hysteria and austerity, while Peterson has spent some $500 million since 2007 encouraging deficit reduction.
Clinton, interviewed on a keynote panel by MSNBC's Tamron Hall, began by saying he wanted to address "one factual dispute."
"I think everybody in this debate has an obligation to say what they believe," said Clinton. "I think Paul Krugman's right in the short run, and Pete Peterson and Simpson-Bowles and all those guys, everybody's right in the long run. And the question is timing."
By raising the specter of Krugman, the bane of the deficit-hawk movement, Clinton is sending another signal that the politics of austerity are waning. "It's obvious that if you overdo austerity, you get Europe," he said, noting 12 percent unemployment on the continent.
Clinton's very appearance at the summit, however, testifies to the movement's enduring strength. Clinton was sure to speak out Tuesday against the problem of long-term debt. He warned that if interest rates spiked unexpectedly, the resulting increase in debt costs would "make the sequester look like a Sunday afternoon walk in the park."
In another sign that austerity politics seem to be falling out of fashion, Peterson and his son attempted to walk away from the label. "The austerity movement thing gets conflated into anything that involves dealing with the budget. But that is just false if you are talking about some reform that doesn’t kick in for 10 years but has no impact immediately," Michael Peterson told Politico's Morning Money in advance of the summit.
Speaking before Clinton, Pete Peterson noted that "recently I've been called a deficit scold. Well, that may be half right." Peterson allowed that he is, instead, "a long-term debt scold," a problem he warned is a "primary, indeed a transcendent threat to our country's future."
UPDATE 2:01 p.m. -- "I think I'd rather have unnecessary root canal work than listen to a Pete Peterson fiscal summit, but that's good to know," Krugman said Tuesday of Clinton's compliment.]]>Red-State Democrats Buck Obama On Social Security Cutstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-06T17:06:31-04:002013-05-07T10:51:50-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
In his most recent budget proposal, Obama included a measure to reduce the cost-of-living adjustment related to senior and veterans benefits as a compromise offer to Republicans. He had already put so-called chained CPI on the table during both debt ceiling and fiscal cliff negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and defended his move this time by emphasizing it was a reform "championed by Republicans leaders in Congress" that would only be made in exchange for new tax revenues.
But Democrats have repeatedly relied on their defense of Medicare and Social Security during election years, and the 2014 crop of candidates are no different: Eight of the 14 Senate Democrats seeking reelection have come out against chained CPI.
Democratic Sens. Kay Hagan (N.C.), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Mark Pryor (Ark.), all running in states won by Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, have publicly opposed the president's effort, going so far as to co-sponsor a Senate resolution against chained CPI last week. Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), running in bluer states, also co-sponsored the resolution.
"Adequate annual Cost of Living Adjustments are critical for the millions of Americans who rely on these benefits to make ends meet," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who introduced the resolution, said in a statement. "The truth is that the way we currently calculate COLAs is already inadequate to keep up with rising medical costs. The Chained CPI would take us even further in the wrong direction by directly cutting benefits for millions of Americans. This resolution expresses our steadfast opposition to doing so."
Other Senate Democrats up for reelection who didn't sign the resolution were still unfavorably disposed toward chained CPI. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) opposes the cost-of-living cut, her office confirmed to HuffPost, and has said Social Security should be off the table in debt talks.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) has been open to the chained CPI cut, but insisted a "circle of protection" must be established for the most vulnerable Americans.
Begich is taking the cause a step further, announcing two new bills last week aimed at protecting Social Security benefits. The first would eliminate the income cap for Social Security taxes. Currently, income above $113,700 is exempt from FICA taxes. Eliminating the cap would make the program solvent for the next 75 years with no additional reforms needed.
The second bill would push the cost-of-living argument in the opposite direction: Instead of reducing benefits for seniors, it would weight the inflation calculation to account for those products seniors buy disproportionately, such as health care.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has not co-sponsored the resolution, and a spokesperson for Landrieu declined to elaborate. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) hasn't either. As a leading deficit hawk, Warner is a backer of the chained CPI proposal and faces little threat in his home state, where the former governor remains popular.
Opposition to chained CPI had typically been associated with progressive Democrats. That they are now being joined by conservative Democrats, who are thought to be more willing to find middle ground with Republicans on a budget deal, underscores how difficult it will be for Obama to cut Social Security.
"I think the Democratic opposition you have seen against CPI just says if Republicans want a grand deal and they want CPI, then they are going to have to produce votes," said a top Senate Democratic aide. "It isn't going to be 50 Dems and 10 Republicans, but rather something like 40-20 or 35-25."
Finding 20 or 25 Republicans who will support tax hikes is a tall order, however, especially without the buy-in of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Internal Democratic surveys have found that chained CPI is the least popular entitlement reform of those addressed, according to a Democratic official who has reviewed the polling. Voters said they would raise taxes, lift the retirement age or attempt any other reform that pollsters have presented, rather than reduce the cost-of-living adjustment.
When Obama included the proposal in his fiscal year 2014 budget, progressive critics warned that not only was it bad policy, but it was bad politics and would hurt Democratic candidates, who would be associated with cutting Social Security. Hence last week's Senate resolution.
"It's only an association with our candidates if they agree with it," Guy Cecil, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told HuffPost. Washington "tend[s] to view races through the prism of what's happening at the White House, what's happening on the Senate floor and what the president is doing. Voters don't always process races that way, and that's why we try to draw these other contrasts out of the race in terms of their own personal history."
Cecil said that in general he advises Senate candidates not to blindly follow the president. "I think it's advantageous for us to run candidates that are true to what they believe and express that," he said. "The advice that we give to every single candidate is the same: When you agree with the president, you should say so; when you disagree with the president, you should say so; and you shouldn't be ham-handed about either one."
When the American people disagree with the president, it makes the decision easier. A HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted last December found that only 16 percent of Americans said the proposal to switch to chained CPI was a good idea, while 54 percent said it was a bad idea. The proposal was unpopular across the political spectrum, with 56 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of independents saying they thought it was a bad idea.
Another December HuffPost/YouGov poll found that a 52 percent to 25 percent majority of Americans said proposals that would cut Social Security or Medicare benefits for future beneficiaries should not even be considered as part of a budget deal.
At the moment, Democratic operatives are counting on the improbability of Obama reaching a budget deal with Republicans. The two parties remain deeply divided on how to reduce the deficit, and there's every chance vulnerable Senate Democrats won't have to vote on a budget that includes chained CPI before the midterm election. And even if a deal were passed, operatives said they were confident Democrats wouldn't bear the brunt of public anger over entitlement cuts in 2014.
Obama has not given up hope of a deal. He followed up his recent high-profile dinner conversations with Senate Republicans by sending two of his senior aides to Capitol Hill to spell out in detail exactly what he was willing to offer to get a grand bargain -- one that would implement austerity by raising taxes and cutting spending.
The April 25 meeting involved roughly 20 Republican senators as well as White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and senior aide Rob Nabors, who is the White House's point man on congressional relations. Nabors and McDonough brought with them a PowerPoint presentation outlining what the president was willing to accept in a bipartisan deal.
"Basic message is, here is our plan. We put it on paper. Specifics. You don't like something or want to change something, then fine, but you have to come back to us with your specifics before we ask Senate Dems to sit down and engage," said a Democratic aide familiar with the briefing.
But much like their opponents, Republicans are also skeptical about the prospects of a deal. HuffPost asked Don Stewart, McConnell's spokesman, whether the briefing had led to anything productive. "Has the president dropped his demand for a massive tax hike?" Stewart responded.
Emily Swanson contributed reporting.
CORRECTION: This article has been edited to correct a quote from Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). Coons said a "circle of protection" must be established for vulnerable Americans.]]>Change.org Opens Platform To Small Donorstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-01T09:00:00-04:002013-05-02T11:18:01-04:00Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/
The new technology, outlined to HuffPost by Change.org officials, will allow regular users to chip in a small amount to assure that a certain number of prospective supporters are able to see a campaign. A second significant change will allow users to flag campaigns as hateful or misleading, an effort to counteract the criticism that Change was allowing corporate Astroturf groups to effectively purchase the appearance of grassroots support -- with particular attention focused on Fix The Debt, a coalition of CEOs and other groups lobbying for austerity.
Previously, Change.org's business model had relied solely on a handful of large organizations who would pay to run campaigns that would lead to email acquisition. That led to criticism that the company was working with organizations whose mission was inimical to progressivism. Last summer, the company announced it was dropping Michelle Rhee's "Students First." Over the next few months, it reevaluated its advertising policy and instituted a dramatic change -- no longer would companies or organizations need to clear a progressive litmus test. The resulting criticism led to continued thought about the business model.
In November, Alex Lawson, an activist with Social Security Works, which was battling Fix The Debt, proposed to Change.org's Benjamin Joffe-Walt that the company allow users to flag campaigns "specifically aimed at misrepresentation, not being honest or disclosing conflicts," as he suggested in an email to Joffe-Walt. "So this could apply as much to a grassroots campaign as an Astroturf campaign. If a person starts a petition against apples but doesn't disclose they sell oranges that would be flagged."
Lawson told HuffPost he's pleased the company is implementing the idea. "Fix the Debt is an Astroturf organization whose entire sheen of grassroots support they bought from Change.org," he said. "That is the problem I had with Change's old model, it was simple for Wall Street criminals to purchase the appearance of people power, and no way that the grassroots could expose that effort. I am happy that Change.org is listening to the criticism and creating tools that should empower the grassroots over the plutocrats."
A host of other changes are being explored as well, said Joffe-Walt. Future changes might allow users to donate directly to a petition sponsor, or fund a suite of campaign tools, or, for instance, pizzas for organizers or door knockers.
"Over the next year, we will develop a variety of products to enable our grassroots userbase to crowd fund the Change.org campaigns they care about to help them win. As a first step, we are launching 'Promoted Petitions' (link live later today)," he said. Only petitions that have demonstrated grassroots support -- defined for now as at least 250 signatures -- will be eligible for promotion. In beta testing, Joffe-Walt said, the average spend has been $18.
"We see promoted petitions as the first step in better enabling users and organizations to fund grassroots campaigns, and part of the trend towards the democratization of both funding and online advertising," he said. "This is what our users wanted: one of the questions we most frequently receive is how petition creators and supporters can promote their campaigns to more people. Organizations currently have the ability to do this, and we want to give individual petition creators access to the same sort of tools that organizations have to promote their campaigns."
The new feature is in part a response to petition fatigue. Currently, petition signers and starters can freely share their campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, email them to friends or otherwise push them around. But if the same Facebook friend shares dozens of petitions a week, his or her friends start to tune it out.
Change.org currently has 35 million users. It faces competition from, among others, the nonprofit SignOn.org and the White House's We The People petition software, but is the largest online petition company. Earlier this week the company won a Webby for best activism site.
Change.org officials gave Fast Company a product run-through, which can be seen here.
Denis Dison, vice president of communications at The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, praised the changes at Change in an email to The Huffington Post.
"In electoral politics, good campaign managers don’t miss an opportunity to ask supporters to contribute," Dison said. "This tool pushes that best practice to individual online campaign starters in a really unique and seamless way."
This post has been updated to include comment from the Victory Fund.]]>