House passes credit card bill that helps consumers

House passes credit card bill that helps consumers.

By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon, Ap Business Writer – 54 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Riding a crest of populist anger, the House on Thursday approved a bill to restrict credit card practices and eliminate sudden increases in interest rates and late fees that have entangled millions of consumers. The legislation, dubbed the Credit Card Holders‘ Bill of Rights, passed by a bipartisan vote of 357-70 following lobbying by President Barack Obama and members of his administration.

The measure would prohibit so-called double-cycle billing and retroactive rate hikes and would prevent companies from giving credit cards to anyone under 18.

If they become law, the new provisions won’t take effect for a year, except for a requirement that customers get 45 days’ notice before their interest rates are increased. That would take effect in 90 days.

Similar legislation is before the Senate, where its prospects appear promising.

Consumer advocates and some Democrats have unsuccessfully sought for years to bring new rules to the industry.

“A big vote in the House will create an even bigger momentum as it goes to the Senate,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters.

Supporters want to put a final congressional package under Obama’s eager pen by the Memorial Day holiday. They acknowledged, though, that House passage of the measure was an opening salvo and a lengthy legislative slog lies ahead, in which industry interests could prevail in getting restrictions weakened.

“The administration supports Congress’ efforts to … provide additional strong and reliable protections for consumers that ban unfair and abusive practices,” the White House said in a statement following the House vote. “The nation’s credit card system must have more accountability, including more effective oversight and more effective enforcement of credit card issuers who violate the law.”

Obama’s engagement in the issue diverged sharply from his handling of a plan to spare hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure through bankruptcy, which met defeat in the Democratic-controlled Senate Thursday on a 45-51 vote. Obama had embraced the plan, but facing stiff opposition from the banking industry, he did little to pressure lawmakers who worried it would encourage bankruptcy filings and catapult interest rates higher.

Before approving the credit card bill, the House adopted a series of amendments — some of which were pushed by the White House — that amplified the restrictions on industry practices.

The House measure incorporates Federal Reserve regulations due to take effect in July 2010 but goes further by adding restrictions for credit cards for college students as well as other changes. Payments made by card holders that exceed the minimum monthly level would have to be applied first to the portion of the remaining balance with the highest interest rate, and then to any other balances in descending order.

Consumers would have to be notified 30 days before their accounts are closed.

Double-cycle billing eliminates the interest-free period for consumers who move from paying the full balance monthly to carrying a balance.

Opponents tried vainly on the House floor to temper a fast-moving bill with amendments that would have given credit card issuers some openings to raise rates within the proposed restraints.

“We shouldn’t take credit opportunities away,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. “I just want consumers to have choices. I want there to be a competitive marketplace.”

Hensarling and other Republican opponents endorsed the bill’s requirements for clearer disclosure in the fine print of credit card agreements. But they said the legislation overall could prompt lenders to restrict credit in an already tight market to compensate for the new requirements.

That’s the leading argument made by banking industry executives against the legislation.

Edward Yingling, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, said the group “strongly believes that any additional legislative efforts should strive to achieve the right balance between enhancing consumer protection, and ensuring that credit remains available to consumers and small businesses at a reasonable cost.”

“We continue to believe that more work needs to be done to achieve that balance,” he said.

Supporters of the bill also drew on the economic crisis to make their case.

“Americans deserve a fair shake,” said Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo. The credit card industry “has taken advantage of millions of vulnerable Americans.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the bill’s chief sponsor, said the changes were needed because “many people are turning to their credit cards because they have lost their jobs.”

Boosters of the bill are tapping into rising public anger over corporate excesses and the conduct of banks and other companies receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

“At a time when millions of families continue to struggle to make ends meet, additional safeguards are needed to ensure consumers are not being saddled by questionable industry practices,” the powerful AARP, the lobbying group representing seniors, said in a statement supporting the bill.

Obama met at the White House last week with executives of the credit card industry and made clear he wants to sign a bill into law. He reaffirmed it as a priority at his prime-time news conference Wednesday evening, saying legislation was a must to protect consumers from “abusive fees and penalties.”

The administration is advocating stricter practices that could crimp banks’ revenue at the same time the government is shoring up the financial institutions with hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout aid.

The credit card changes could cost the banking industry more than $10 billion a year in interest payments, according to a study by the law firm Morrison & Foerster.

Amid the recession and rising job losses, consumers — even those with strong credit records — have been defaulting at high levels on their credit cards. Banks already battered by the mortgage and credit crises have been bleeding tens of billions in red ink from the losses.

U.S. credit card debt has jumped 25 percent in the past 10 years, reaching $963 billion in January, according to figures from the White House. The average outstanding credit card debt for households that have a card was $10,679 at the end of 2008, according to CreditCard.com, an online market.

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House bill: H.R.627

Senate bill: S.235

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On the Net:

http://thomas.loc.gov/

Obama gives nuanced defense of his stance on torture – Los Angeles Times

Obama gives nuanced defense of his stance on torture – Los Angeles Times.

He says harsh interrogation methods may have yielded useful information but that they should still be ruled out. His stance suggests complications in ending Bush-era counter-terrorism tactics.

By Peter Wallsten and Greg Miller
April 30, 2009

Reporting from Washington — In a strikingly defensive explanation of his stance on Bush-era anti-terrorism tactics, President Obama on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the harsh interrogation techniques he has banned might have yielded useful information, but that he was nonetheless willing to rule them out on moral grounds.

It was a nuanced performance as Obama walked viewers of his prime-time news conference through a policy that has led him to declare tactics such as waterboarding torture but to stop short of advocating prosecution of the architects of the practices.

 

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He conceded that “it may be harder” to get information, but what “makes us, I think, still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals, even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.”

Coming as Obama confidently assessed his work during his first 100 days in office, his comments on torture underscored a gnawing dilemma: His desire to roll back elements of President Bush’s “war on terrorism” could be more complicated than he had envisioned.

Obama is caught between growing public sentiment against igniting a national debate over past interrogation tactics and a still-emerging insistence by his liberal base that is growing more aggressive in its calls for investigations and prosecutions.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: PRESIDENT OBAMA’S FIRST 100 DAYS

In conceding that intelligence was gleaned from the harsh techniques, Obama may be making himself vulnerable to arguments by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other conservatives that he is making the country less secure.

At least one survey this week showed that Cheney’s arguments have support and that the shadow of Sept. 11 looms larger in the public mind than Obama might have initially realized.

A majority of Americans, 53%, said they opposed Obama’s release of classified memos detailing the Bush administration’s legal rationale for the interrogation tactics used on suspected terrorists, while just 40% supported it, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey.

The poll also found that half of Americans opposed Obama’s order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects, and that a clear majority opposed the idea of criminal investigations of Bush administration figures.

Moreover, even though a majority believes that America used torture, a plurality said that the interrogations “helped by extracting valuable information.”

Obama’s remarks showed that he believes he must take on the former vice president in what is emerging as a battle to either justify or discredit harsh interrogation techniques.

The issue is not going away, now that the Pentagon has agreed to release a series of photos of abused inmates in Iraq and Afghanistan, the result of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Obama revealed Wednesday that he had read classified memos recently cited by Cheney as evidence that the CIA’s interrogation program produced information that prevented terrorist attacks.

Cheney has formally requested the declassification of those documents, and U.S. intelligence officials have indicated that the memos, or at least portions of them, are likely to be released.

Obama did not dispute Cheney’s assertions about the memos but appeared to try to blunt their potential impact by shifting the argument.

The assertion that the CIA’s methods worked doesn’t answer what Obama called the core question: “Could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques?” Obama asked. “And it doesn’t answer the broader question: Are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?”

Obama was asked, twice, whether the Bush administration engaged in torture, which would be illegal. He tried to draw a difficult distinction, never going so far as to say that his predecessor’s policies broke the law.

“I believe that waterboarding was torture,” Obama said. “And I think that whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.”

Obama harked back to the restraint shown by Prime Minister Winston Churchill when Britain was under German attack in World War II.

“London was being bombed to smithereens [and] had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, ‘We don’t torture,’ ” Obama said. “Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what’s best in a people.”

To many human rights advocates calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor or a public inquiry, Obama’s answers were remarkable for what he did not say: that he would back an investigation. So activists tried to put those words into his mouth later Wednesday.

Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the ACLU, said that Obama’s statements led to the “inevitable conclusion that government officials who authorized torture must be held accountable for violating the law.” Amnesty International issued a stern statement declaring that Obama’s comment on waterboarding “means criminal investigations must follow.”

But, to the disappointment of his liberal base, Obama clearly did not want to go there.

“It’s a grave disappointment,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“He admits what was done was torture. And yet he won’t dot the ‘i’ or cross the ‘t.’ Why not?”

Ratner answered his own question, pointing to conservatives’ arguments that Obama’s actions are putting the country at risk.

“It’s having an effect,” Ratner said. “It’s out there, and this argument is up for grabs, which is why Obama’s going to have to be firmer as we move forward.”

peter.wallsten@latimes.com

greg.miller@latimes.com

Chrysler files for bankruptcy protection, will partner with Fiat – USATODAY.com

Chrysler files for bankruptcy protection, will partner with Fiat – USATODAY.com.

Enlarge By Valentin Flauraud, Reuters A woman poses next to a Fiat 500 displayed at the 79th Geneva Car Show in March 2009. Collapse of the talks means Chrysler is headed for bankruptcy protection unless a deal can be salvaged by the government’s deadline of 11:59 p.m. ET tonight. Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli By by Bill Pugliano, Getty Images     From staff and wire reports WASHINGTON — Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday and will form an alliance with the Italian carmaker Fiat Group in an effort to revive the nation’s ailing third-largest automaker. The Obama administration said it had long hoped to stave off bankruptcy, but it became clear that a holdout group of creditors wouldn’t budge on proposals to reduce Chrysler’s $6.9 billion in secured debt. Clearing those debts was a needed step for Chrysler to restructure by a government-imposed Thursday deadline.   BANKRUPTCY FILING: Chrysler’s Chapter 11 petition   Chrysler now has “a chance not only to survive but thrive” thanks to the deal with international car company Fiat and a $6 billion loan from the government, President Obama said Thursday. He said the company’s decision to file for bankrupcy “is not a sign of weakness,” but rather a necessary step that will allow the company to survive. FIND MORE STORIES IN: United States | Washington | Barack Obama | White House | Germany | New York | Detroit | Canada | Michigan | Ohio | General Motors | Auburn | Chrysler LLC | Ontario | Geneva | Milan | United Auto Workers | Lansing | Jennifer Granholm | Fiat | United States Department of the Treasury | Johnson Controls | Cummins | Robert Nardelli | Sergio Marchionne Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli says he will step down after the company emerges from bankruptcy protection. Nardelli says on the CNBC cable network that the Treasury Department did not ask him to resign. But he felt it would be an appropriate time to leave after bankruptcy.   VIDEO: Obama’s remarks on Chrysler/Fiat deal, bankruptcy NARDELLI STATEMENT: CEO’s letter to Chrysler employees   Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on Thursday with the hopes of emerging in as little as 60 days under the new partnership with Fiat. The government, which has already poured $4 billion in loans into Chrysler, would provide up to $8 billion more to carry the company through bankruptcy, said senior administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The government will also help appoint a new board of directors. The deals give Chrysler “a new lease on life,” Obama said. Under bankruptcy, Chrysler would still sell cars and the government would back its auto warranties. But Chrysler said Thursday that it will idle its plants during the legal proceedings. After emerging from bankruptcy, the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based automaker would end up owned by the United Auto Workers union, the U.S. government and Fiat. The Canadian and Ontario governments, which are also contributing financing, would have small stakes. But Fiat, which the Obama administration hopes can jump start Chrysler with its fuel-efficient and lower-emission technology, could end up the majority stakeholder. Fiat would initially get 20%, a share that could rise to 35% if certain benchmarks are met. Fiat said Thursday it could get an additional 16% by 2016 if Chrysler’s U.S. government loans are fully repaid.   PHOTOS: What Fiat is making these days   Obama said Chrysler Financial, the arm of the company that makes loans to buyers and to dealers to finance their inventories, will be merged into GMAC Financial Services, once General Motors’ finance arm. The new GMAC will get government support. Chrysler’s base of dealers would also be pared down. The president, who has previously urged Americans to consider refinancing their homes to save money and avoid forclosure, on Thursday urged people to buy American. “If you are considering buying a car,” he said, “I hope it will be an American car.” The Treasury Department’s auto task force has been racing in the past week to clear the major hurdles that prevented Chrysler from coming up with a viable plan to survive the economic crisis ravaging nation’s automakers. Along with the Fiat deal, the UAW ratified a cost-cutting pact Wednesday night. Treasury reached a deal earlier this week with four banks that hold the majority of Chrysler’s debt in return for $2 billion in cash. But the administration said about 40 hedge funds that hold roughly 30% of that debt also needed to sign on for the deal to go through. Those creditors said the proposal was unfair and they were holding out for a better deal. “I don’t stand with them,” Obama said. A person briefed on Wednesday night’s events said the Treasury Department and the four banks tried to persuade the hedge funds to take a sweetened deal of $2.25 billion in cash. But in the end, this person said most thought they could recover more if Chrysler went into bankruptcy and some of its assets were sold to satisfy creditors. This person asked not to be identified because details of the negotiations have not been made public. On Thursday, a group of funds identifying themselves as 20 of Chrysler’s “non-TARP lenders” released a statement saying they had been sidelined during negotiations between lenders and the government. The group, which said it holds $1 billion in Chrysler debt, complained that the four banks were “obviously conflicted” because they had accepted money from the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program while they had not gotten TARP money. The group said its offer to the Treasury Department to reduce its claim to 40% was “flatly rejected or ignored.” Fiat is getting its stake in Chrysler for giving the company access to its fuel-efficient technology, a move toward cleaner cars that the Obama administration thinks is critical to Chrysler’s future survival. The company has committed to building Fiat cars in Chrysler factories, to be sold as Chryslers. Obama’s auto task force in March rejected Chrysler’s restructuring plan and gave it 30 days to make another effort, including a tie-up with Fiat. Chrysler’s bankruptcy filing said it owes more than $10 million apiece to 20 of its unsecured creditors, many of whom are vendors and suppliers. At the top of that list were: Ohio Module Manufacturing Co. ($70.3 million), BBDO Detroit Inc. ($58.1 million), Johnson Controls Inc. ($50.3 million), Continental Automotive ($47 million), Cummins Engine Co. ($43.9 million) and Germany-based Germersheim Spare Parts ($36.2 million). Contributing: USA TODAY’s Mimi Hall and the Associated Press’ Ben Feller reported from Washington, USA TODAY’s Sharon Silke Carty and the Associated Press’ Tom Krisher reported from Detroit, Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy, Kimberly S. Johnson in Detroit and David Eggert in Lansing, Mich.

As Detroit Is Remade, the U.A.W. Stands to Gain – NYTimes.com

As Detroit Is Remade, the U.A.W. Stands to Gain – NYTimes.com.

The bondholders gets thrown under the bus in favor of the labor Unions. How unfair! 

By MICHELINE MAYNARD and NICK BUNKLEY

 

Published: April 29, 2009

DETROIT — In the devastating slump that has forced one of Detroit’s automakers into bankruptcy and another to the edge of it, the United Automobile Workers union stands to become one of the industry’s few winners.

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Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

The union’s Local 7 hall in Detroit, where voting on a Chrysler deal was taking place Wednesday. The United Automobile Workers represents nearly all workers at Detroit automakers.

Related

Room for Debate: Rescue the Auto Workers?

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Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Members of U.A.W. Local 1264 in Sterling Heights, Mich., voted Wednesday at their union hall on a deal with Chrysler.

According to restructuring plans proposed this week, the union will have more than half the stock in Chrysler and a third of General Motors, meaning it will have tremendous influence, with the government, in determining the future of the companies.

The United Automobile Workers union said Wednesday that its members ratified a cost-cutting deal with Chrysler by a 4-to-1 margin.

“Our members have responded by accepting an agreement that is painful for our active and retired workers, but which helps preserve U.S. manufacturing jobs and gives Chrysler a chance to survive,” Ron Gettelfinger, the union’s president, said in a statement.

The prospect of a big ownership stake for the U.A.W. in G.M. has angered holders of billions of dollars in bonds, who stand to get only a fraction of the restructured company. As for Chrysler, the banks, hedge funds and others that lent it money have been promised only cash, not stock.

“We believe the offer to be a blatant disregard of fairness for the bondholders who have funded this company and amounts to using taxpayer money to show political favoritism of one creditor over another,” a group of G.M. bondholders said in a statement this week.

The U.A.W. members at both automakers stand to lose some of their pay and benefits, but the cuts are not as deep as those faced by airline and steel workers when their companies went bankrupt. Under proposed deals devised by the Treasury Department, U.A.W. pensions and retiree health care benefits would largely be protected.

The U.A.W. has derived its leverage in part from the support of a Democratic president and Congress. But it also results from a long-term strategy to build support in Washington that stretches back more than 60 years.

“We have to fight both in the economic and political fields, because what you win on the picket lines, they take away in Washington if you don’t fight on that front,” Walter P. Reuther, the union’s best known president, said in 1947.

Mr. Reuther and every succeeding U.A.W. president invested significant amounts of time and money to pursue that goal.

In the last 20 years, the U.A.W. has donated more than $25.4 million to federal candidates, 99 percent of it to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets.org, a site that tracks campaign contributions.

The union ranks No. 16 on the group’s list of top 100 political donors, known as “heavy hitters.” The U.A.W. was well ahead of G.M., which gave $10 million in that period, ranking it 73rd. Chrysler and Ford Motor did not make the list.

Mr. Gettelfinger, the current president, has also been an effective, steel-nerved leader, and has managed to maintain the union’s importance in recent negotiations, even though the U.A.W. has lost nearly 200,000 members since he took office in 2003.

Mr. Gettelfinger’s influence stems in part from the fact that the U.A.W. represents nearly all the auto workers at the Detroit companies. (Workers at a few plants are represented by the I.U.E.) By contrast, airline workers are represented by multiple unions.

“The U.A.W. is so overwhelmingly dominant,” said Duane Woerth, former president of the Air Line Pilots Association. “You’re only talking to one union and that gives them more power.”

Mr. Woerth, whose union was involved in 22 bankruptcy cases involving big and small airlines during his tenure as its president, said the pressure that bondholders and other investors might put on the U.A.W. has been mitigated by Democrats’ support.

For example, the union has yet to complete a deal with G.M., which laid out an offer to its bondholders this week that would pay them about 41 cents on the dollar. In order for the deal to succeed, 90 percent must accept it, which analysts say is unlikely given bondholders’ criticism of the offer.

Only this week did the U.A.W. come to terms at Chrysler, facing a Thursday deadline set by the administration.

The tactics have won admiration from others in the labor movement, even those forced to grant concessions to bankrupt companies.

Robert Roach Jr., a general vice president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said a successful outcome for the U.A.W. and the auto companies would benefit the economy, and in the process help his 650,000 members at major airlines, aircraft makers and other companies.

“We’re all in this,” Mr. Roach said. “The corporations, the federal government, the taxpayer, the cities and the states. If we are able to save these auto companies, that will be good for everybody.”

But many of the U.A.W. members who voted Wednesday on the Chrysler proposal were struggling to see the benefits of the cuts they were agreeing to.

The deal suspends cost-of-living pay increases, limits overtime pay and reduces paid time off. It also eliminates dental and vision benefits for retirees.

It also provides for Fiat to begin building cars in at least one Chrysler plant.

“Either you vote for it or it’s bankruptcy,” said Bruce Clary, 58, who was an electrician at a Detroit engine plant until being laid off in January. “And it may be bankruptcy anyway.”

At Chrysler’s Jefferson North assembly plant nearby, the oldest auto plant still operating in Detroit, workers said the consequences of rejecting the deal would be far worse than the concessions that it would force.

“This was the best deal we could get,” said John Davis, who has worked at Chrysler for 33 years. “We did our part, and now the banks need to do their part.”

21 Regional Nonprofits Withdraw From United Way – washingtonpost.com

21 Regional Nonprofits Withdraw From United Way – washingtonpost.com.

 

By Megan Greenwell

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

 

Twenty-one area nonprofit groups have suspended their memberships in the United Way and joined a fledgling competitor, citing years of frustration with a steady decline in workplace giving in the Washington region and lingering distrust of the local United Way since it was nearly destroyed by scandal earlier this decade.

The new group, called Community1st, includes some of the region’s most prominent nonprofits, including the Make-a-Wish Foundation of the Mid-Atlantic, WETA public television and the Whitman-Walker Clinic. The nonprofits’ leaders are scheduled to announce the move at a news conference this morning, where they will be joined by officials from America’s Charities, the Chantilly-based federation that will oversee their alliance.

“I and a lot of others were stuck in the way things have always been, thinking that the United Way was the only way to do things,” said Community1st board member Carolyn Stevens, director of development at House of Ruth, a network of shelters and services for women and children.

The move represents the biggest challenge — and one of only a handful in the country — to United Way’s primacy in workplace fundraising. It is a blow to the United Way of the National Capital Area’s efforts to move beyond its recent history, which included an investigation of fraudulent accounting that sent the group’s former chief executive to prison in 2004.

The United Way has replaced its entire board and hired a new chief executive since Norman O. Taylor resigned amid charges of financial mismanagement in 2002 and his predecessor, Oral Suer, was sentenced in 2004. But it has struggled to recover from a severe downturn in fundraising. Last year’s campaign brought in $35.3 million, a slight decline from the previous year and much less than the $90 million raised before the scandals.

United Way’s interim chief executive, Angela R. Woods, said she is disappointed by the groups’ departure but believes that improvements to the United Way’s reputation and relationship-building will ultimately bring them back to the organization. United Way announced this month that William A. Hanbury, CEO of Washington’s tourism agency, Destination D.C., who is known for his fundraising prowess, will take over July 1.

“A large part of our mission right now is rebuilding trust,” Woods said. “We’ve got to get people re-engaged in the United Way, and the fundraising piece will come.”

Despite the development, the United Way of America’s singular role in U.S. workplace fundraising campaigns remains little changed. The national group, based in Alexandria, is the largest nonprofit agency in the country, raising more than $4 billion a year for tens of thousands of nonprofits.

In Washington, America’s Charities has raised a fraction of the United Way’s totals, just $8 million last year. But it and a few other groups are beginning to compete in communities across the nation.

About 35 percent of Washington area corporations’ employee giving campaigns are run through America’s Charities, some at large workplaces such as ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin and SAIC. One expert estimates that about 60 percent of companies now offer employees an alternative to donating through their United Way campaigns.

The Washington Post’s annual employee campaign is administered by United Way.

“Employees, especially younger ones, want the maximum choice in how they give and who they give to,” said Stephen K. Greenhalgh, a consultant who wrote a 2006 report on workplace campaigns. The report was funded by America’s Charities, which adopted some of his suggestions.

Nonprofit group leaders involved in Community1st said America’s Charities lured them from the United Way by promising lower overhead costs, easily customized fundraising campaigns and fewer restrictions on where donors’ money is directed.

In the cities of Austin and Orlando, where the government employees’ giving campaigns are through America’s Charities, the average gift is $70 a person, according Don Sodo, CEO of America’s Charities. In the Washington region, he said, so many government employees have declined to donate that the average is $7.

“That means we need to do better,” he said.

ExxonMobil community relations adviser Patrick Dexter said employees have been very pleased with the flexibility of the America’s Charities campaign, which the company joined in 2002 after the United Way’s problems. ExxonMobil workers can donate to any registered nonprofit organization in the United States, and because the company pays a fee to America’s Charities, 100 percent of the donations go to the nonprofit groups.

Catherine C. Martens, Community1st’s board chairman and CEO of the Bethesda-based Make-a-Wish Foundation of the Mid-Atlantic, said the key point of Sodo’s pitch to her was that America’s Charities passes on 98 percent of each donation to its nonprofit groups.

United Way keeps 10 percent of most donations to its member nonprofit groups, and smaller donations go to a community fund, not the designated group. Woods said the United Way cannot efficiently distribute small donations because of processing costs.

N. Korea threatens nuclear, missile tests – USATODAY.com

N. Korea threatens nuclear, missile tests – USATODAY.com.

Let’s see who is in charge here.

SEOUL (AP) — North Korea has threatened to conduct nuclear and missile tests in anger over U.N. criticism of its rocket launch earlier this month.

Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that the country “will be compelled to take measures for self-defense, including nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests” unless the U.N. Security Council apologizes immediately.

The Council adopted a statement earlier this month denouncing the North’s April 5 rocket launch and calling for tightening sanctions.

North Korea conducted its first-ever nuclear test in 2006.

SCOTUS Showdown: The Voting Rights Act by Hans A. von Spakovsky on National Review Online

SCOTUS Showdown: The Voting Rights Act by Hans A. von Spakovsky on National Review Online.

By Hans A. von Spakovsky

Today, in Washington, Justice Department lawyers will tell the Supreme Court that the South is still so permeated with racism that it cannot be trusted to run its elections without prior approval — from Justice Department lawyers. On those dubious grounds, they will urge the Court to uphold Section 5 of the LBJ-era Voting Rights Act — a “temporary/emergency” provision that is now 44 years old. The case is Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder. Lawyers for the district, population about 3,500, will argue that Congress’s 2006 renewal of Section 5 was unconstitutional; and if the justices base their decision purely on the law and the applicable facts, they will agree. But race is the eternal third rail of politics in Washington, and the reaction to a finding that any portion of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional would be so fierce that the Court may shy away from doing what it should. The 1965 Voting Rights Act contains two important, but distinctly different, provisions. Section 2 prohibits the denial of voting rights based on “race or color.” It’s a permanent, nationwide provision. Section 5, however, was supposedly a temporary measure that applied only to a small number of states (most of them in the South). It provided that, if those covered states wanted to enact any law that affected voting in any way, they would have to get approval from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division (or a federal court in Washington, D.C.) before the law could take effect. Initially in force for five years, Section 5 was renewed in 1970, 1975, 1982 and then, in 2006, for another 25 years.   There’s no question that Section 5 was legal and necessary in 1965, a time of fire hoses, police dogs, and bullhorns. Some state and local governments were still systematically trying to prevent blacks from voting, and they were creative in devising new ways to discriminate. Section 5 effectively prevented these states and localities from passing new legislation intended to get around federal law and court orders.   To identify jurisdictions that would need to get their laws pre-approved, Congress designed a formula: The jurisdiction must have had a “test or device” (like a literacy test, or an examination to certify “good moral character”) that denied voting rights, and have had less than 50 percent registration or turnout in the 1964 election. As Section 5 was successively renewed, the latter requirement was updated to reflect registration and turnout rates in the 1968 and 1972 elections, but it has not been updated since. This means that the nine fully covered states, and certain specified localities in seven other states, still labor under strict pre-approval requirements based on decades-old voting data. In 2006 Congress refused to update the formula to reflect current registration and turnout data. If it had, almost none of these jurisdictions would have been covered. Turnout of black voters equals or surpasses that of white voters in many of the covered states, clear evidence that the “temporary/emergency” measure is no longer needed and the widespread discrimination of 1965 is long gone. Race relations have changed dramatically in the last two generations, especially in the South. In 1965 black elected officials were virtually unknown in the covered states; today they number in the thousands. In covered states such as Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, 31 to 45 percent of Democratic state legislators are black. Of the ten states with the largest number of black elected officials in 2001, eight — Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, and Michigan — are covered fully or partly under Section 5. Over the years, objections to state election-law changes have dwindled. The Civil Rights Division receives thousands of submissions — such as measures to open new polling places — every year. Since 1965, the division has objected to only 1 percent of all submissions. In the past ten years, the objections have run about 0.2 percent. Such a low rate can hardly justify continuing the extensive intrusion into a state’s lawmaking ability, particularly when you consider the dubiousness of many of the division’s objections: In case after case, courts have overturned the positions taken by the Civil Rights Division. What makes the situation even worse is that Section 5 reverses the usual standard that requires the federal government to prove discrimination. Instead, the submitting jurisdiction must prove that its proposed change would not have a discriminatory effect. That’s a very tough standard that can be made even tougher by opposition from partisan career lawyers at the Civil Rights Division. Too often they use Section 5 to try to stop laws (for example, ones requiring voters to show ID) that they find politically objectionable, while ignoring applicable legal standards. Most covered jurisdictions don’t have the resources to fight the Civil Rights Division, even when it is clearly in the wrong. That is why organizations that serve minority groups love Section 5. Unlike with Section 2, they don’t have to prove a case in court to stop redistricting plans or other legislation they don’t like; they just call their friends and former colleagues at the Civil Rights Division and tell them to object. More than one court decision has noted the embarrassing and highly unethical coordination between the Civil Rights Division and such outside groups. Based on any reasonable statistical measure, the difference in voter participation between covered and uncovered states has disappeared. The “legislative record” developed by Congress in 2006 deliberately stayed away from exploring the differences in minority office-holding rates and voter turnout between covered and noncovered states — because doing so would have shown there was no basis for extending the law. Even the relatively small number of voting-discrimination cases filed under Section 2 show the exact opposite of what the proponents of Section 5 would like: More Section 2 cases are filed in states that are not covered under Section 5. No one can truthfully assert that state governments in Virginia and Georgia are still racist and full of defiant government officials, particularly when compared with noncovered neighboring states such as Pennsylvania and Tennessee. There is no difference that justifies such an intrusive and extraordinary law. Given all these developments, it should be easy for the Supreme Court to make the right decision on this case. A renewal based on 40-year-old evidence that studiously ignored seismic changes in our society, elections, and democratic institutions should not stand. But, afraid of being labeled racist, a cowardly Congress renewed Section 5 just three years ago. Let’s hope the justices have the courage to do what Congress did not: consider the applicable facts and law, and do the right thing. —Hans A. von Spakovsky, a visiting legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, was formerly a member of the Federal Election Commission and a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department.

100 days in office, Obama coronated Messiah

100 days in office, Obama coronated Messiah.

Is this blasphemy or what?

Posted: April 25, 2009
7:13 pm Eastern

By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

 

“The Truth” by Michael D’Antuono

On his 100th day in office, President Obama will be “crowned” in messianic imagery at New York City’s Union Square.

Artist Michael D’Antuono’s painting “The Truth” – featuring Obama with his arms outstretched and wearing a crown of thorns upon his head – will be unveiled on April 29 at the Square’s South Plaza.

According to a statement released about the portrait, “The 30″ x 54″ acrylic painting on canvas depicts President Obama appearing much like Jesus Christ on the Cross: atop his head, a crown of thorns; behind him, the dark veil being lifted (or lowered) on the Presidential Seal. But is he revealing or concealing, and is he being crucified or glorified?”

Even the title of the piece, “The Truth,” suggests a play on biblical themes, as Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Get “The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama’s War on American Values” and learn about the looming hostile attack on Judeo-Christian values and freedoms Americans hold dear

“More than a presidential portrait,” writes D’Antuono on a website touting the painting, “‘The Truth’ is a politically, religiously and socially-charged statement on our nation’s current political climate and deep partisan divide that is sure to create a dialogue.”

Like others in the news who have depicted Obama in Christ-like imagery, D’Antuono insists he isn’t claiming the man is Messiah, but only inviting “individual interpretations.”

“‘The Truth,’ like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder,” claims the exhibit’s press release.

D’Antuono even invites the public to email him with reactions to the piece, answering his posed question, “What’s your truth?”

As WND has reported, D’Antuono follows others who have cast Obama in messianic imagery.

Clark’s Obama sculpture, riding a donkey at the Iowa Capitol

In January, artist Matthew J. Clark paraded a sculpture of Obama riding a donkey and preceded by waving palm fronds, reminiscent of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in the 21st chapter of Matthew as foretold by the prophet Zechariah: “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass.”

Like D’Antuono, Clark was also unclear about whether his piece was proclaiming Obama to be the Christ or making some social commentary. Clark’s website described the sculpture in vague terms:

“This project was inspired by my thoughts about ‘icons’ and religious symbols and whether they represent truth or merely represent,” Clark’s website reads. “The sculpture poses a question that relates to social conventions, metaphysics, and the collective response of society in reaction to fearful and uncertain times, but doesn’t impose an answer. For me, it has much more to do with the general public as followers than any leader granted power.”

Others, such as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, have been far clearer in their nearly religious adoration of Obama. As WND reported, Farrakhan declared last year that when Obama talks, “the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

Addressing a large crowd behind a podium with a Nation of Islam Saviour’s Day 2008 sign, Farrakhan proclaimed, “You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

Farrakhan pointed out that the man Nation of Islam followers refer to as “the Savior,” Fard Muhammad, had a black father and a white mother, just as Obama did.

“A black man with a white mother became a savior to us,” he said. “A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.”

WND previously reported a website called “Is Barack Obama the Messiah?” capturing the wave of euphoria that followed the Democratic senator’s remarkable rise.

The site is topped by an Obama quote strategically ripped from a Jan. 7 speech at Dartmouth College just before the New Hampshire Primary in which he told students, “… a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote” for Obama.

WND also reported on near-religious experiences surrounding Obama on the campaign trail, as supporters who came to hear him speak on several occasions fainted in the middle of the candidate’s speeches. As WND reported, some compared the fainting to fanatical swooning in the midst of a mesmerizing preacher; others, like radio host Michael Medved, thought the collapses were staged moments; and still others believed it was simply a matter of people standing in the crowds too long and growing dehydrated.

P.J. Gladnick of NewsBusters, in an article about D’Antuono’s painting on the eve of the Obama administration’s 100-day-mark, notes that the messianic parallels begun early in the presidential campaign don’t seem to be stopping:

“The artist quite clearly portrays Obama as a latter day Christ-like figure, considering the outstretched arms and the crown of thorns. Obama worship, complete with halo images, has been noted before,” writes Gladnick, “but it was nothing compared to current expressions in awe of ‘The One’ as we approach his hundredth day in office on Wednesday.”

Plan to Cut Weapons Programs Disputed – washingtonpost.com

Plan to Cut Weapons Programs Disputed – washingtonpost.com.

Defense Supporters Say 100,000 Jobs Are in Jeopardy

» Links to this article

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 28, 2009

 

 

 

Some of the nation’s largest defense contractors, labor unions and trade groups are banding together to argue that the Obama administration is putting 100,000 or more jobs at risk by proposing deep cuts in weapons programs.

The defense industry and its supporters argue that the proposals by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will increase unemployment during a historic economic crisis. Why, they ask, would President Obama push hundreds of billions in stimulus spending to create jobs only to propose weapons cuts that would eliminate tens of thousands of them?

“It doesn’t make sense that our government is looking at trying to save or create jobs at the same time it’s talking about cutting something like this,” said Jeff Goen, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter in Marietta, Ga., where Lockheed Martin does final assembly on the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, which is slated to be cut.

Lockheed and other contractors predict that up to 95,000 direct and indirect jobs are at risk because of Gates’s plan to halt production of the F-22, which is built and assembled across 48 states but which has never been used in combat. Boeing says thousands more positions could be lost if the Pentagon halts production on other programs such as the C-17 cargo plane, which is assembled at a 5,000-worker plant in Long Beach, Calif.

The clash poses a nettlesome political challenge for Obama, who relied heavily on Democratic union support during his presidential campaign but who is backing the ambitious efforts of his GOP defense secretary to remake the Pentagon budget. Opposition on Capitol Hill is being led by Republicans who hope to enlist the support of union-friendly Democrats to quash many of the proposed cuts.

Gates and other Obama administration officials argue that job-loss fears are overstated, and note that the Pentagon’s overall budget would increase by $20 billion, to $534 billion, under the plan released this month. Proclaiming the need to “reshape the priorities of America’s defense establishment,” Gates called for halting or cutting a host of programs that have been plagued by delays, cost overruns or performance problems, including the F-22, the C-17, a fleet of new presidential helicopters and the Future Combat Systems program.

But Gates and his generals have also tailored the budget to include growth in other programs that may lower the intensity of opposition, and has successfully brought Air Force generals in line on cutting back the F-22 and other programs that the service has historically championed. Although Maine would lose some jobs with the shuttering of the F-22 program, for example,  Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) praised Gates for planning to build three DDG-1000 destroyers at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works.

“A lot of people are ascribing real cleverness to Gates in the way he has structured this,” said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank. “He has spread things out in a way aimed at dividing and weakening opposition.”

The approach has already muffled criticism from Lockheed, the nation’s largest defense contractor. The Bethesda-based company would gain from an expanded order for F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters that would help make up for the end of production on the F-22. Bruce Tanner, Lockheed’s chief financial officer, told Wall Street investors last week that, on the F-22 at least, the company has accepted defeat.

“We’ve had our chance to lobby this matter,” Tanner said.

The defense sector is a major Washington powerbroker, giving nearly $26 million to congressional candidates last year and spending $150 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Even before Gates’s final proposal came out, the machinists’ union joined forces with Lockheed, Boeing and 11 other contractors to produce a slick Web site and ad campaign asserting that the F-22 program “provides jobs, a paycheck and economic security.” Boeing is running full-color newspaper ads extolling the virtues of the C-17, which Obama singles out for praise on the White House Web site, even though it is one of the biggest targets on Gates’s list.

In another ad campaign, the Aerospace Industries Association proclaimed: “Aerospace and defense is a powerful economic engine. We must keep the industry strong.” Marion Blakey, the group’s president and CEO, said the employment issue is “a compelling argument. . . . These are high-paying jobs.”

The machinists, meanwhile, are targeting Democratic lawmakers in areas with defense-related jobs, union officials said. The group’s 700,000 active and retired members will be asked to bombard lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and letters. “It’s going to be about jobs at the end of the day, but not in a selfish way,” said Rich Michalski, the union’s political director.

The criticism of Gates on Capitol Hill has been led by fellow Republicans, most of whom opposed Obama’s stimulus plan but contend that defense spending is different. “At a time of economic difficulty, it makes no sense to take a strategically important weapons system and cap it and cost 95,000 jobs in a relatively short period of time,” said  Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Key Democrats, including  Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.) and  Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the chairmen of the armed services committees, have generally withheld judgment on Gates’s proposals so far.

Gates told reporters this month that the changes will help create some jobs. He pointed to the F-22 as an example, saying that while 24,000 people are directly employed on that project, the F-35 already employs 38,000 and is projected to employ 84,000 by 2011.

“We cannot be oblivious to the consequences of these decisions,” Gates said. “But nonetheless, we have to make them as a whole in terms of what’s in the best interest of the country.”

 

Health Care Debate: A Crisis in Four Acts – HUMAN EVENTS

Health Care Debate: A Crisis in Four Acts – HUMAN EVENTS.

 

by  Robert E. Moffit

04/28/2009

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If you are waiting anxiously for Washington to begin the gigantic health care reform debate, you’re way out of the loop. President Obama, with his big majorities in Congress, has already enacted huge chunks of his health care agenda.

Look what just happened:

Act I: President Obama proposed a massive expansion of Medicaid and SCHIP, the creation of a new federal agency to undertake “comparative effectiveness” research into medical treatments and procedures, and a ma2jor federal “investment” in health information technology. They rolled through Congress. All of these items, amounting to a 10-year cost of roughly $200 billion, are now law.

Within days of his inauguration, Congress enacted a sweeping reauthorization and expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), at an estimated $65 billion over 10 years. Originally designed for children in poor working families, SCHIP has been expanded up the income scale well into the middle class, and will now include families making more than  $62,000 annually. If taxpayers pick up the health care tab for employees’ dependents, there’s no point in employers doing so. Depend on them to dump the kids into the government program. The result: more middle-class families become dependent on government health care, courtesy of the taxpayer. SCHIP expansion was the first big slap in the face of welfare reform.

Act II: Obama’s economic stimulus bill. It was the vehicle for an additional $87 billion in Medicaid spending over the next decade. Medicaid  is a poorly performing $350 billion welfare program, with low quality of care and a high usage of hospital emergency rooms.

The stimulus bill imposed no serious requirements on states to improve Medicaid quality, to reverse its horrendous record of poor quality, to encourage innovation in the financing and delivery of Medicaid services, or to prod states to get serious about their own budgetary shortfalls. On Bailout Hill, that would be asking too much. But with massive Medicaid funding and SCHIP expansion, Obama scored big on expanding government control over the health care system.

The stimulus bill was also the vehicle for a major $20 billion “investment” in health information technology, setting up a centralized coordination and oversight over the development of information technology and medical records. The bill also included the creation of a 15-member Federal Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.

In language accompanying the House version, the Council would have had the power to block usage of drugs or medical procedures that the bureaucrats deemed too expensive. In the Senate version, senators proposed restricting its scope to clinical effectiveness, not cost effectiveness. But that restriction was dropped in the House-Senate conference. Not good.

Act III: Obama’s budget proposal, just passed by the House and Senate, includes a reserve fund of $634 billion for health care reform over the next 10 years. But most experts expect the real costs will well exceed $1 trillion. In effect, President Obama says that we are spending $2.4 trillion on health care, that we are spending too much, that we are not getting value for our spending, and that we need to reduce health care spending. So what does he do? His budget adds another additional $193 billion annually by 2019 in new health care spending!

Next Up: the unveiling of a federal health insurance reform bill. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, are both working on big health reform bills. House and Senate Republicans are reportedly also drafting major alternatives for the next phase of the debate. Expect the details of these bills to surface in June.

Baucus, in particular, has outlined an agenda that’s virtually identical to the Obama agenda, including the creation of a new government-run health plan to compete with private health plans in a national health insurance exchange, which Obama has described as a regulatory “watchdog” over private health insurance.

The creation of a new government-run health plan to compete with private health plans is emerging as the hot-button issue. Most experts don’t buy the argument that you can create a level playing field between a new government-sponsored enterprise, backed by taxpayer subsidies, and private health plans, which would have to absorb their own losses.

The fact is, most Americans say they’re satisfied with their existing private health insurance; 82 percent in a recent survey ranked their coverage as excellent or good. No wonder President Obama has repeatedly said that if you like the private insurance you have today, you will be able to keep it under his health plan.

But it’s hard to see how the president can keep that promise under the structure of his reform plan and the new incentives he has created. The reason: he has not only proposed a new government-run health care plan to compete with private health plans, but has added an employer mandate. Employers would have to either offer an approved health plan or pay a tax. If employers know that the taxpayers are going to pick up the tab in a new government health plan — one that will be artificially cheaper because of taxpayer subsidies — expect a lot of employers to dump millions of Americans out of their existing private coverage into the new government-run health plan.

A top econometrics firm, the Lewin Group, surveying the possibilities of a new government plan, has estimated that anywhere from a little over 12 million to as many as 119 million Americans could be dumped, or transitioned out of , their existing private coverage.

Act IV: The summer debate on budget reconciliation. President Obama and the Congressional leadership must soon make a key decision: whether to consider health insurance legislation on its own, as part of the regular order, and try to forge a bipartisan compromise, soliciting good ideas from conservatives and Republicans in reforming the health care system. Or whether they will plunge ahead, as they did on the stimulus bill, drop any pretense at bipartisan reform of the health care system, and fold health care reform legislation into the budget reconciliation bill.

If they go the route of budget reconciliation, that deprives the Senate Republicans of the opportunity to filibuster or shape the health care bill. For all practical purposes, that would end the prospect of any meaningful input into the content or direction of health care reform. It could be an ugly business, especially with the downturn in the economy and people losing jobs also losing their insurance. The result: even more millions of Americans could end up dependent upon government health programs.

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Mr. Moffit is director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

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