Daily Archives: January 9, 2013

January 9, 2013 · 6:52 PM

Why President Obama is picking fights with Congress

President Obama is pictured. | AP Photo

It would be a mistake to attribute all of Obama’s actions to dispassionate tactics. | AP Photo

  • Because revenge is a dish best served cold?
  • He hates them for making him look weak these past four years?
  • Because he can?
  • All of the above?

Politico

Barack Obama is looking for a few good fights.

Obama, the same president who campaigned twice on breaking the cycle of conflict in Washington, sees the utility — even the necessity — of rattling Republican cages as he plunges into a succession of upcoming battles over the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, the debt ceiling, $1 trillion in automatic budget cuts, immigration reform and gun control.

(Also on POLITICO: Senate vs. President Obama over Cabinet)

Obama’s willingness to take a more overtly adversarial stance is, in part, a nod to the reality that he’s about to start his second term with solid approval numbers — “Hit now, as hard as you can, because your power starts to die in six, eight months,” according to a top aide to a Senate Republican who has often locked horns with the White House.

That entails taking a tough line with the Hill GOP on Hagel — who has vowed to battle “distortions” of his record on Iran and Israel — and stiff-arming the GOP at the start of negotiations over the debt ceiling and across-the-board spending cuts. It’s less clear whether Obama will be quite as bellicose on issues that require a more subtle approach, like immigration, guns and climate change, although his aides are talking tough.

(Also on POLITICO: Why Obama picked Hagel)

Picking a few choice fights “is a very good strategy if you know that applying all that pressure gets you the result you are looking for,” said former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, an adviser to Obama’s 2012 campaign. “But if you pick a fight, you have to be sure the tactic helps ensure the result you want rather than making it harder to achieve.”

There’s also a long-term strategy: Two months after a decisive presidential win, Obama and his party already are eyeing the 2014 midterms. Highlighting the contrasts between the White House and congressional Republicans could flip the House back to Democrats, giving Obama a final two-year governing majority that bookends the one he enjoyed during his first two years in office.

But it would be a mistake to attribute all of Obama’s actions to dispassionate tactics. After four-plus years of embittered partisan combat, he views his GOP bargaining partners with more than a little contempt, and he momentarily vanquished enemies who just can’t say “yes” to him.

His apparent conclusion, after watching the implosion of the House GOP’s effort to pass a modest tax increase before the final fiscal cliff deal, is that the best way to deal with the Capitol is to throw rocks at it — then send Vice President Joe Biden in to clean up the glass.

(PHOTOS: What they’re saying about Chuck Hagel)

“There are 536 people who will be negotiating deals — the House, the Senate and the president,” an Obama aide said. “Only one of them isn’t running for reelection again. That gives us leverage.”

Republicans see parallels between Obama’s recent tough-guy stance — he practically dared the GOP to shoot down Hagel, one of their own, during an East Room ceremony Monday — and his aggressive push for the stimulus and health reform bills early in his first term.

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· 6:37 PM

AIG backs down, won’t sue the government

An AIG sign is shown. | AP Photo

Apparently the Board of Directors at AIG looked at the bigger picture down the road and saw the proverbial “Scarlet G”  (for greed) that would have marked their brand for a very long time.

Politico

That didn’t take long.

In the face of furious criticism from Washington and elsewhere, American International Group’s board of directors announced Wednesday the firm would not participate in a shareholders lawsuit against the government over the terms of a taxpayer bailout that saved the company from ruin.

AIG took a $182 billion bailout during the financial crisis, and the idea that it would join a lawsuit arguing the terms of taxpayers’ largesse were unfair sent steam coming out of the ears of many lawmakers and government officials.

(See also: AIG press release)

“[R]emember the crook that broke his leg robbing a house then sued them for negligence on safety? yes, well he’s now AIG’s gen counsel,” Austan Goolsbee, the former top White House economist, said on Twitter early Wednesday.

Members of Congress were equally furious, with some sending letters to the company demanding an explanation.

“There’s an old joke about [comedian] Jack Benny,” newly retired Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told POLITICO on Tuesday. “One of the great jokes was that he had a show — where he’s walking and some guy comes up to him and sticks a gun in his face and says, ‘Your money or your life.’ And he says, ‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking.’ I mean, that’s AIG.”

One former senior administration official who worked on the AIG bailout joked Wednesday, “To paraphrase Churchill, the board did the right thing after having exhausted every other alternative.”

Lawmakers expressed a similar reaction.

“I’m pleased to hear that after receiving the largest bailout by the government to a private company in United States history, AIG has decided not to sue the taxpayers who provided it,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said Wednesday.

The outrage was unleashed after news broke late Monday that AIG’s board was meeting to consider whether to join a $25 billion lawsuit over whether the terms of the bailout were unfair to shareholders, who claim they were deprived of billions of dollars.

The suit is being led by Starr International, once one of the largest investors in AIG that is led by former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg, which asked AIG to join its legal action.

The company argued it had to consider joining the legal action as part of its “fiduciary and legal obligations.”

A source familiar with the matter said AIG CEO Robert H. Benmosche told Treasury officials after the board meeting that the company always planned to reject joining the lawsuit.

The source also said lawyers for Starr International had trouble answering questions about the merits of the suit from AIG directors during the meeting.

“In considering and ultimately refusing the demand before us, the board of directors properly and fully executed our fiduciary and legal obligations to AIG and its shareholders,” Robert Miller, chairman of the AIG board of directors, said in a statement Wednesday. “America invested in 62,000 AIG employees, and we kept our promise to rebuild this great company, repay every dollar America invested in us, and deliver a profit to those who put their trust in us.”

Now, the question is how much damage the company has done to its reputation both in the marketplace and with officials in Washington.

“Interesting that despite all they’ve been through, the company still can’t seem to gauge the headline and regulatory risk inherent in their post-2008 status,” said Paul Equale, a Washington attorney and consultant. “The board plugged the hole, but it was the executive leadership that teed up the issue in the first place. Those same execs now need to do some quiet repair work in Washington.”

The controversy followed soon after what had been good news for the company: Last month the Treasury Department sold its remaining shares in AIG.

In recent weeks the insurer has been airing ads that say “thank you” to Americans for the rescue — a sentiment Benmosche assured is sincere in a statement the company released Tuesday night.

“AIG has paid back its debt to America with a profit, and we mean it when we say thank you to the American people,” said Benmosche.

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· 8:14 AM

Fiscal Cliff Polling Shows Little Support For John Boehner, Wider Approval For Obama

Fiscal Cliff Polling

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) received only 31 percent approval in a recent poll for his handling of fiscal cliff negotiations, with only 38 percent of his own party giving their approval.

The American People prefer real leadership, not a really poor attempt at showmanship and constant capitulation to the most extreme segments of the Republican Party…

The Huffington Post

Americans are largely split in their reaction to the “fiscal cliff” agreement, but united in their dislike for the role played by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), according to a Washington Post/ABC poll released Tuesday.

Americans were divided on the fiscal cliff agreement, with 45 percent approving and 38 percent disapproving, although far more strongly disapproved than strongly approved. Democrats were more than twice as likely as Republicans to approve of the deal.

Women, minorities and those with lower incomes were likely to support the deal, while other groups were more divided, according to ABC.

President Barack Obama won a majority of support for his handling of the crisis, as 52 percent of Americans approved of his approach, while 37 percent disapproved.

John Boehner, by contrast, saw a 20-point net negative rating, with 31 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving of his handling of the deal.

The fiscal cliff’s resolution gave a bump of several points to both politicians over their performances in a previous ABC/Post poll from December.

As a Pew poll released Monday also showed, Boehner’s low ratings come in large part from Republican unhappiness with his leadership. While Obama has broad support from Democratic voters, just 38 percent of Republican voters approved of Boehner’s work on the negotiations.

Both Boehner and Obama actually picked up points among their opposing parties during the debate, The Fix notes:

Just 8 percent of Republican voters approved of the way Obama was handling negotiations in a December Post-ABC survey, while in the new poll roughly one in four (23 percent) said he had done a good job. Democrats jumped from 14 to 27 percent in approving of Boehner’s handling of the issue.

The ABC/Post poll surveyed 1,000 adults between Jan. 2 and Jan. 6, with a 4 percent margin of error.

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· 7:51 AM

Outrageous! Washington’s jaw drops at possibility of AIG lawsuit…

This week the AIG board will consider whether to join a $25 billion lawsuit. | AP Photo

Unbelievable…

Politico

Remember when AIG took a $182 billion bailout only to turn around and hand out seven-figure bonuses to the same guys who tanked their company?

Grab the pitchforks — it gets better.

Now the insurance organization might join a lawsuit against the U.S. government over the terms of the bailout — saying the deal that saved the company cheated shareholders.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — who faced calls for his firing over the AIG bailout — and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are furious, according to one Democratic lawyer. Other officials inside the agencies were angered by the news, too, sources in the department told POLITICO.

Neil Barofsky, former inspector general for the Wall Street bailout said AIG’s possible lawsuit would be a “giant middle finger to the taxpayer.”

One of President Barack Obama’s top aides agreed: “Definition of Chutzpah: AIG, saved by taxpayers, contemplating suit,” David Axelrod tweeted.

Many Treasury and Fed insiders have long believed the terms of the AIG bailout — which only wrapped in recent weeks — were far too generous, not too punitive as the lawsuit is expected to contend.

This week, the AIG board will consider whether to join a $25 billion lawsuit over whether the terms of the bailout were unfair to shareholders, who claim they were deprived of billions of dollars.

AIG began airing ads in recent weeks that say “thank you” to Americans for the rescue — a sentiment AIG’s CEO Robert H. Benmosche assured is sincere in a statement the company released Tuesday night.

“AIG has paid back its debt to America with a profit, and we mean it when we say thank you to the American people,” said Benmosche.

He went on to explain that the company has no choice but to consider suing the government. “At the same time, the board of directors has fiduciary and legal obligations to the company and its shareholders to consider the demand served on us and respond in a fair, appropriate, and timely manner. Tomorrow’s board meeting is about listening to all of the parties involved and gaining a thorough understanding of the issues. We anticipate making a decision in the next several weeks.”

The Treasury and the Fed haven’t released official responses to the news of the potential lawsuit, first reported by The New York Times.

One former administration official, who worked on the AIG bailout, was in a state of disbelief.

“I can’t imagine that they will actually do it. Because whatever recovery they might possibly gain would be totally swamped by the enormous hit to their reputation,” the former official said. “What I don’t understand is why they have not ruled it out already. They have had plenty of opportunity to do so.”

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· 7:31 AM

Florida Governor Inflates Cost Of Medicaid Expansion By 2,500% To Avoid Implementing Obamacare

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R)

Didn’t Gov. Rick Scott get enough of defrauding the Feds with Medicare embellishments in the past?

Think Progress

Internal email messages uncovered by Health News Florida reveal that Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) is knowingly citing inaccurate cost estimates to justify his refusal to expand Florida’s Medicaid program. Though the governor’s office is fully aware that the numbers are wrong, Scott continues to use them anyway, the documents show.

Florida, which has one of the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation, could extend health coverage to about one million low-income residents by accepting Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion. But the governor — an ardent Obamacare opponent — has repeatedly said that expanding Medicaid would just be too expensive, claiming it would cost the state $26 billion over the next 10 years.

As Health News Florida reports, however, that figure from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) is inflated because it doesn’t take into account the full amount that the federal government will reimburse states for choosing to expand Medicaid. A more accurate analysis found that expansion would cost the state around $1 billion:

But those numbers are based on a flawed report, state budget analysts say. A series of e-mails obtained by Health News Florida shows the analysts warned Scott’s office the numbers were wrong weeks ago, but he is still using them. [...]

The Act says the federal government will pay the lion’s share of the cost for new Medicaid eligibles if a state agrees to expand its program — a decision the Supreme Court left up to the states. The federal contribution for the new eligibles would be 100 percent between 2014 and 2016, then would taper after that to 90 percent by 2020 and stay there.

But the AHCA report assumes the federal match for the new patients would be much lower, about 58 percent. It came up with that by averaging the match amount over the past 20 years. The report doesn’t say why the authors made that assumption. [...]

As Health News Florida reported on Dec. 21, the AHCA estimates were huge in comparison to a study released by the Urban Institute and Kaiser Family Foundation, two neutral research groups that specialize in Medicaid studies. Their study estimated that if Florida agreed to expand Medicaid, about 1 million uninsured people would gain coverage at a 10-year cost to the state of around $1 billion.

According to the email chain that Health News Florida obtained, state officials began calling the AHCA’s $26 billion cost estimate into question as early as December 20. One member of the House Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee even pointed out that, since the health reform law specifies that the federal government will help fund Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, it would actually break Florida state law to expand Medicaid without using thefederal dollars mandated for that purpose.

Nevertheless, Scott has continued to repeat his false claim that Florida can’t afford to provide its low-income residents with the health coverage they need. Scott met with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday to express his concerns about what expanding Medicaid would mean for his state’s bottom line. “Growing government, it’s never free,” Scott explained to reporters. “It always costs money.” Just not as much money as Scott says it does.

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· 4:34 AM

Google Rolls Out Biggest Free Wi-Fi Network in New York City

Nyc-chelsea

When Google™ does good things, it’s usually an awesome achievement…also, I ♥ NY!

Mashable

Google, in an expansion of its role as an Internet Service Provider, introduced Tuesday New York City’s biggest contiguous free public Wi-Fi network in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

Google’s choice of location for the giant network is no surprise: Chelsea is home to Google’s New York headquarters, meaning employees out at lunch breaks or area meetings will be able to remain productive even while out of the office. The network runs between Gansevoort St. and 19 St. from 8th Ave to the West Side Highway and in area public spaces, including the Chelsea Triangle, 14th Street Park and Gansevoort Plaza.

The secured network will also be used by businesses, residents and students in the area, and it will cover the outdoor areas of the Fulton Houses, a housing project owned by the New York City Housing Authority.

“Google is proud to provide free Wi-Fi in the neighborhood we have called home for over six years,” said Ben Fried, Chief Information Officer for Google, in a statement. “This network will not only be a resource for the two thousand-plus residents of the Fulton Houses, it will also serve the five thousand-plus student population of Chelsea as well as the hundreds of workers, retail customers and tourists who visit our neighborhood every day.”

Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman, told Mashable that the new Wi-Fi network is Google’s way of “giving back to the community that we’ve been in for the past six years or so.” He also pointed out that Google has similar W-iFi networks in Mountain View, Calif., where Google’s main headquarters are located, and also in many neighborhoods with Google data centers.

Newman said the Wi-Fi network was in no way a precursor to a New York City rollout of Google Fiber, Google’s high-speed broadband service recently introduced in Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo. He told Mashable there are no plans to bring Google Fiber to New York City or to expand Wi-Fi access to other parts of the city.

Despite Google’s presence there, Chelsea is not yet a hotbed of technology startups in New York City. Google’s free Wi-Fi may change that.

Google previously worked with Boingo to provide 200 public hotspots around the city, including in several subway stations — a welcome bit of connectivity in an otherwise largely disconnected public transit system.

Would you use Google Wi-Fi if you were living, working or studying in Chelsea? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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· 12:05 AM

Taco Bell joins Wendy’s in gutting blue-collar employee hours allegedly to avoid Obamacare

America Blog

Yo no quiero Taco Bell.

Funny thing about Taco Bell’s franchise in Oklahoma claiming it’s gutting blue collar employee hours in order to avoid Obamacare’s requirement that employees working an average of 30 hours a week or more must be provided health insurance. I called around, and the requirement doesn’t kick in until 2014. So why is Taco Ball cutting employee hours now, a year early?

Same question for Wendy’s.

But it gets even odder.  The company that owns the local Taco Bells seems to be saying that they still don’t fully know what Obamacare (aka the Affordable Care Act) requires of them.

Treadwell Enterprises released the following statement Monday to News 9:

“Treadwell Enterprises, like most businesses, is still researching what the Affordable Care Act means to our operations. Regardless of the conclusion of our analysis, we will comply with this law, as we do all laws.”

If the company is still analyzing how Obamacare affects their business, then why is the franchise owned by this company already cutting back employee hours in order to save money on something that not only reportedly hasn’t even been implemented yet, but about which they haven’t even reaching any “conclusions” yet?

The more these big brands like Wendy’s and Taco Bell strike out against their blue collar employees supposedly because of an Obamacare provision that reportedly doesn’t even apply to them yet, the more it sounds like these are Republican companies simply taco belltrying to save money by making a political statement about a Democratic program and Democratic President they don’t like.

And I’m getting tired of hearing these parent companies tell us that they’re not responsible for what their franchises do.  You license them your good name, you’re responsible for what they do under your name. Period.

It’s time to write Taco Bell off along with Wendy’s, unless both companies get their franchises in line.  I go to both Taco Bell and Wendy’s.  But I wont in the future if it means financing Republican activists who are out to hurt their workers.

And this parent company of the Taco Bell in Oklahoma also runs a series of KFC’s and Ruby Tuesdays in the state, so those brands are implicated in this as well, since KFC and Ruby Tuesday seem to think this company is a fine business to partner with.

PS Someone on Facebook just made a fascinating point: There are employees at Taco Bell and Wendy’s who are touching our food and who don’t have adequate health insurance, and thus adequate health care? And they’re touching our food.

 Video:  Guthrie Taco Bell Worker Speaks After Hours Cut To Avoid Health Insurance Mandate.

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