Los Angeles Times — Obama champions energy bill but not its tariffs
In a Sunday-night interview with a group of reporters including writer Jim Tankersley, President Obama praised the climate bill that he helped squeeze out of the House. One point Obama took exception with was the 11th-hour addition of tariffs on foreign goods from counties that don’t take similar steps. But since the only way to get the bill passed in the more-liberal House was to add the tariffs, the bill’s real chances to pass the Senate seem even less likely without some acknowledgement of the competitive disadvantage created by the bill.
Senators know that placing burdens on the relatively clean American energy and manufacturing sectors while BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) continue to increase their industrial and carbon output will kill jobs and increase the trade imbalance. If the Senate does move a bill, expect their version to perhaps forego the tariffs and instead prevent implementation until the BRIC countries have followed suit, which is to say, never. The president said that those worries are unfounded, because the real money is in green jobs.
“‘Everyone I talk to,’ Obama said, echoing his chief selling point for the energy bill, ‘when they think about how are we going to drive this economy forward, post-bubble, keeps on pointing to the opportunities for us to transition to a clean-energy economy as a driver of economic growth.’”
Washington Post — How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue
Writer Brady Dennis working with Jeff Gerth of ProPublica, the investigative reporting shop set up by sub-prime mortgage bundlers and liberal activists Herbert and Marion Sandler, looks at how General Electric used its influence within the Obama administration to open up loopholes that have allowed the company access to some $75 billion from a fund set up to “unfreeze credit markets.” GE Capital provides industrial loans, particularly for companies that work with GE to cash in on new government initiatives like cap and trade and health care plans.
But the company won the privilege of being categorized as a bank and as a result didn’t have to use it’s own money to shore up loans or expand operations – that could be done with money borrowed from taxpayers for next to nothing.
GE can use the money until 2012, and thanks to more lobbying, keep dipping into the $340 billion fund until the end of October instead of June, as originally planned.
But in part because the Post relied on ProPublica to do its work, the overlong, overcooked article is a call for more regulation, with no sense of irony that it was regulation that has allowed GE to profit in the first place.
“GE’s Wilkerson said the company generally supports regulatory reform but thinks that it should be permitted to retain its structure.
‘Bank reform has historically included grandfathering provisions upon which investors have relied,’ he said, ‘and there is no reason this settled principle should not be followed here.’ He said the company ‘didn’t have any choice’ but to have [the Office of Thrift Supervision] as its regulator.
The company also objects to the Treasury’s proposal to force firms to separate banking and commerce because that issue ‘had nothing to do with the financial crisis,’ Wilkerson said.”
Wall Street Journal — Acorn Role in Census Challenged
Writer Jake Sherman looks at the growing outrage on Capitol Hill over the Census Bureau’s partnership with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – a pro-Democrat group implicated in voter fraud – to help identify “hard-to-count populations” for the 2010 census.
The Obama administration has some exposure on the census for first bringing control of the constitutionally mandated decennial count under chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and then picking a census director who’s life’s work as a statistician has been in developing new means for estimating populations, not counting people.
Larger populations of ACORN’s preferred constituencies – “hard to count groups” like poor, migrant and homeless populations – could expand federal welfare outlays and the Democratic majorities in Congress after 2010.
“Republicans have been blocking the confirmation vote on President Barack Obama’s choice to head the bureau, Robert Groves. There were initial concerns about Dr. Groves in part because he is an expert in statistical sampling and conservatives say the Constitution bars sampling for the decennial count. The Obama administration and Dr. Groves assured Congress sampling wouldn’t be used. Republicans have declined to comment on why the nomination has been held up.”
New York Times — New Guidance Issued on Military Trials of Detainees
Writer David David Johnston, following the reporting of the Wall Street Journal, looks at what the Obama Justice Department says about the constitutional rights of foreign fighters and terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. The White House has had to acknowledge that civilian trials for the real baddies was an impractical idea, so now the president’s men are trying to come up with a plan that will let them keep the Bush military tribunals, satisfy civil liberties concerns and still heap scorn on the previous administration.
The answer seems to be excluding statements obtained by rough treatment, with a promise to “restore military commissions as a legitimate forum for prosecutions in line with the rule of law.” But that also means convincing Congress that the likes of Kahlid Sheik Mohammed would have a way to beat the rap.
“The new legal guidance, issued in early May by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the principal interpreter of the law for the executive branch, suggested that federal courts could set aside convictions by military tribunals that were based on coerced statements on the ground that they violated a defendant’s right to due process.”
Wall Street Journal — Obama, Democrats in Congress Clash on Spending
The very modest limitations on spending that the White House is seeking as it expands outlays in almost every other area are on the two issues that generally get bipartisan support in Congress – military spending and highway construction.
Writers Naftali Bendavid and Christopher Conkey look at how the Obama plans to cut a fighter jet program and kick the can on infrastructure other than “shovel ready” stimulus projects, has rankled the archbishops of appropriations on Capitol Hill. Defense issues may be worked out, but the transportation spat centers on the administration’s need to put off by a year-and-a-half having to include a half-trillion dollars for the next transportation plan in its already sickly debt estimates. Obama wants to keep highway funding going with continuing measures until 2011.
With deficit estimates continuing to rise, the administration is getting ready to face off with the lawmakers who will help make or break even more expensive proposals like health care.
“Forty-three Democrats on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, led by Chairman James Oberstar, sent the White House a harsh letter this week rejecting its suggested 18-month delay as shortsighted. Committee members see the plan as long overdue for repairing the nation’s crumbling highways and setting in motion a modern transportation system.
‘Your proposal…will lock us into the discredited politics of the past and prevent us from moving toward the transportation system of the future,’ the letter said.”
