Archive for category Politics
First 100 Days: Unfilled Positions Threaten Obama’s Ambitious Agenda
By Stephen Clark
FOXNews.com
Saturday, April 25, 2009
President Obama, during his first 100 days in office, hasn’t allowed modesty to stop him from pushing the most ambitious agenda since FDR.
But his plan to reform health care, energy and education could be upended by gaping holes that he has yet to fill in his administration.
Obama is outpacing George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on appointments, but like his predecessors, he is bogged down in a system that has grown increasingly cumbersome over the years. And his task has been made even more difficult by his own tougher-than-ever background checks and ethics rules.
“It’s not hampering his ability to set his agenda,” New York University professor Paul Light, an expert on the federal government, told FOXNews.com. “But it will hamper the implementation of his agenda. The real challenge for Obama is to get some people in key positions where they have to produce actual results.”
As of this week, Obama has had 74 appointments confirmed by the Senate, compared with 30 by George W. Bush at the same point in time.
Ronald Reagan holds the record among modern presidents for most appointments confirmed by the Senate at the end of 100 days: 83, according to the White House Transition Project.
“Obama right now is out in front of all those guys, except Reagan,” Terry Sullivan, executive director of the project, told FOXNews.com.
But Obama still has hundreds of positions left to fill. Of the 542 positions that affect policy, the Senate has confirmed 37 percent, according to the project.
What’s at stake is much more than bragging rights for how quickly Obama can fill in an organizational chart with undersecretary of this and deputy assistant secretary of that.
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Senate report: Rice, Cheney OK’d CIA use of waterboarding
Lil Cheney
4/23/2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Top Bush administration officials gave the CIA approval to use waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique, as early as 2002, a Senate intelligence report shows.
On July 17, 2002, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who later became secretary of state, said the CIA could proceed with “alternative interrogation methods,” including waterboarding, when questioning suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah.
The decision was contingent on the Justice Department’s determining the method’s legality. A week later, Attorney General John Ashcroft had determined the “proposed interrogation techniques were lawful,” the report said.
The same techniques also were used in the interrogations of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the first person charged in the United States in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
The release of the report, prepared by the attorney general’s office at the request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, details and declassifies the advice given to the CIA regarding its interrogation techniques.
The techniques again gained the endorsement of the Bush administration in spring 2003 when the CIA asked for a “reaffirmation of the policies and practices in the interrogation program.”
In a meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney, CIA Director George Tenet, Ashcroft, Rice and their legal counsels, “the principals reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy,” the report said.
Scottsdale turns down stimulus funds
by Lynh Bui – Apr. 23, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
While most Valley cities and towns have been lining up to grab their share of federal stimulus dollars, Scottsdale is taking a pass.
The Scottsdale City Council voted this week to turn down more than $224,000 in federal stimulus funds earmarked for public-safety improvements.
Fiscally conservative members of the City Council worried that accepting the money would create overhead that would burden future city budgets. They also were concerned that the city would be accepting the money just for the sake of spending it.
Since President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act rolled out, some Scottsdale officials have made it clear they wouldn’t take any stimulus dollars if it would add to the government or if it wouldn’t boost the economy as the law intended.
Scottsdale is one of the first Valley cities to turn down stimulus funding.
Maricopa County received more than $10.5 million in money set aside for aiding law enforcement to divide among 16 cities and towns. Scottsdale’s share came out to about $234,000.
US to spend $6B on Cold War weapons cleanup
Amid the Cold War, a Lookout Mountain Studios cameraman photographing the mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb test during Operation Plumb Bob in 1957.
by Richard Lardner – Apr. 22, 2009 11:22 AM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The Energy Department will spend $6 billion as part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package to clean up nuclear weapons sites at Cold War-era facilities, with more than half the money going to sites in Washington and South Carolina, a senior official told Congress on Wednesday.
The government will focus on decontaminating and demolishing tainted facilities, removing radioactive waste and trying to restore soil and groundwater, Ines Triay, the department’s acting assistant secretary for environmental management, told a Senate Armed Services panel.
More than $1.9 billion will be spent on cleanup at the Hanford site, a former plutonium production complex on the Columbia River in southeastern Washington. The site produced plutonium used in the first nuclear bomb. The government said there are more than 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste in 177 underground storage tanks there along with 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel and nine tons of plutonium.
In South Carolina, the government will spend more than $1.6 billion at Savannah River Site to shut down nuclear reactors and ship more than 4,500 cubic meters of waste out of the state.
Triay told the Senate panel that cleanup projects have been delayed to pay for more urgent programs. She said the total cost estimate for necessary cleanup is $14.3 billion.
Fidel Castro: Obama ‘Misinterpreted’ Raul’s Words
Posted by admin in Politics, World News on April 22nd, 2009
Fidel Castro
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 
HAVANA — Fidel Castro said Tuesday that President Barack Obama “misinterpreted” his brother Raul’s sentiments toward the United States and bristled at any suggestion Cuba should free political prisoners or reduce official fees on money sent to the island from the U.S.
Raul Castro touched off a whirlwind of speculation that the U.S. and Cuba could be headed toward a thaw in nearly a half-century of chilly relations last week, when he said Cuban leaders would be willing to sit down with their U.S. counterparts and discuss “everything,” including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners on the island.
Obama responded at the Summit of the Americas by saying Washington seeks a new beginning with Cuba, but he also said Sunday that Cuba should release some political prisoners and reduce official taxes on remittances from the U.S. as a sign of good will.
That appeared to enrage Fidel Castro, 82, who wrote in an essay posted on a government Web site that Obama “without a doubt misinterpreted Raul’s declarations.”
The former president appeared to be throwing a dose of cold water on growing expectations for improved bilateral relations — suggesting Obama had no right to dare suggest that Cuba make even small concessions. He also seemed to suggest too much was being made of Raul’s comments about discussing “everything” with U.S. authorities.
Obama Tackles Credit-Card Fees
Posted by admin in Mixed Economy, Politics on April 22nd, 2009
President Obama speaks during his first Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Apr. 20, 2009. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Top News April 22, 2009, 12:01AM EST
Card companies are heading to the White House to “discuss” billing practices, but they’re already raising rates to prepare for tougher rules
It’s hard to find a group more publicly reviled than credit-card companies. On Apr. 23, President Barack Obama plans to convene executives at the White House to challenge high card rates and predatory practices, while Congress readies legislation that would crack down on the industry.
But most of the crackdown that Congress is contemplating is already in rule changes approved by the Federal Reserve late last year that become effective in July 2010. And the soaring rates are the banking industry’s way of bracing for that more restrictive environment.
Credit-card defaults may be the next hammer to fall on many debt-strapped consumers. Card holders are watching the interest rates skyrocket and seeing their credit lines vanish overnight. Card companies argue that they are simply repricing their accounts for rising risks. Not only do they have to get changes in before the Fed rules take effect, they have to contend with worrying default rates and delinquencies that could cut into profits.
Higher Delinquency Rates
By the end of last year, U.S. card holders already were showing increasing signs of fatigue, and an inability to make even minimum payments. The delinquency rate, which measures how many customers are 30 days or more late on their credit-card bill, hovered at an astronomical 5.56%. According to the Federal Reserve, that’s the highest rate since the agency started recording it in 1991. If unemployment continues to rise and tops 10%, as many economists expect, the delinquency rate will likely rise, as more Americans struggle to stay afloat.
What’s in an Obama-Chavez handshake?
Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:56pm EDT
By Steve Holland – Analysis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – What’s in a handshake? The clasping of hands by President Barack Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has set off a debate over what kind of signal Obama was sending.
To the White House, the friendly Obama-Chavez encounter at a weekend summit of Latin leaders was a sign of a new U.S. foreign policy aimed at improving relations around the world.
“It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States,” Obama said.
But to some of his critics, the handshake was a sign of American weakness.
“Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture of Chavez smiling and meeting with the president as proof that Chavez is now legitimate, that he’s acceptable,” Republican Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, told NBC’s “Today” show.
Obama and Chavez had two highly public encounters at the summit in Trinidad and Tobago — a handshake, a chat and then later when Chavez gave Obama a book, “The Open Veins of Latin America,” published in 1971 by Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview with the Fox News Channel, said Obama’s encounters with both Chavez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega were not helpful and “sets the wrong standard.”
He accused Obama of taking an apologetic tone about past U.S. policy on his trips to Europe and Latin America.
“I think you have to be very careful. The world outside there, both our friends and our foes, will be quick to take advantage of a situation if they think they’re dealing with a weak president or one who is not going to stand up and aggressively defend America’s interests,” Cheney said.
