YouTube - Sen. Inhofe On Global Warming: 'This Thing Is Phony'
Sen. Inhofe On Global Warming: 'This Thing Is Phony'
reading 98 page study that EPA buried evidence that climate change bill was unnecessary.
Video. 5:03
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Family Security Matters » Publications » Obama Sides with Marxists Over Honduras
Family Security Matters » Publications » Obama Sides with Marxists Over Honduras
The so-called “military coup” in Honduras was a successful effort by Honduran patriots to preserve their constitutional system of government from an international alliance of communists and socialists backed by Iran. Not surprisingly, America’s Marxist President has come down on the anti-American side.
If all of this is news to you, consider yourself a victim of the “state-run media,” as Rush Limbaugh calls it. We are being bombarded with liberal media propaganda that a “military coup” took place in Honduras, and that the U.S. should therefore oppose it.
Fox News, which has been trumpeting news about the “military coup,” should be ashamed of itself for following the liberal media line.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, noted that the problem was that the deposed president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was “moving to re-write the Honduran constitution to extend and expand his power, while retaliating against those who stand in his way.”
The leftist Zelaya was democratically elected in 2005 in a narrow win (with less than a majority of the vote) but he has been attempting to unconstitutionally and illegally undercut the conservative majorities in the Congress. His main purpose has been to circumvent a prohibition on serving more than one term as president.
With his departure, Honduras may have been spared a communist future.
Nevertheless, Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quickly issued statements saying that his removal was somehow a violation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. This was a clever ruse designed to disguise the fact that all of the major elements of constitutional power in Honduras, except for the increasingly unpopular and power-hungry president, acted on behalf of the people.
The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has joined with the U.N. General Assembly President, Communist Priest Miguel D’Escoto, to demand that Zelaya be restored to power.
The new president, Roberto Micheletti, has made it clear that Zelaya was removed because he had behaved in an unconstitutional manner. “I did not reach this position because of a coup,” Micheletti said. “I am here because of an absolutely legal transition process.” Micheletti was a member of Zelaya’s Liberal Party but opposed his illegal and unconstitutional actions.
What happened is that the Legislative and Judicial branches of the government in Honduras, in conjunction with the armed forces, acted to maintain and defend their constitution from a power-mad president who was a puppet of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.
Blogger Jason Poblete commented that the Obama Administration “was quick to call the events in Honduras a coup. What has gone underreported, or not reported at all in the media or recognized by the Obama Administration, is that the democratically-elected Congress unanimously approved the change in leadership and impeached the President. If this was a constitutionally correct action why has the Obama Administration been so quick to judge and condemn?”
Claims of a “military coup” have appeared in the press because that is the way far-left officials of the Obama Administration have described it. The Administration has been just as quick to undermine freedom and democracy in Honduras as it was late in supporting the pro-freedom and pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran.
On June 28th, a “Teleconference Background Briefing” was held with the major media by “two senior officials” who were guiding coverage of the events in Honduras but whose identities were protected from disclosure by the lapdog press.
The transcript shows a New York Times reporter asking, “Is the U.S. Government calling this and considering this a coup d’état? Can you talk about the use of language? Some other governments have called it that.”
The answer was, “…I would certainly characterize a situation where a president is forcibly detained by the armed forces and expelled from a country an attempt at a coup. We – I mean, we still see him as the constitutional president of Honduras. So it was an attempt at a coup. We don’t think it was successful.”
The official is saying it wasn’t successful because the Obama White House wants to work with the Marxist governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua (backed by Iran) to bring Zelaya back to power.
At the same time, however, the official conceded that the controversy in Honduras stemmed from the effort by Zelaya to maintain himself illegally and unconstitutionally in power through a referendum or “survey” he had no right to initiate. He explained, “The fundamental political divide within Honduras was whether or not this effort by President Zelaya was seen as constitutional and legal, or whether it was seen as illegitimate and unconstitutional. And several institutions, including the public ministry, which is their equivalent of Attorney General, the Supreme Court, and the Congress had declared this survey to be illegitimate and illegal.”
Notice how the U.S. official said that “the public ministry, which is their equivalent of Attorney General, the Supreme Court, and the Congress had declared this survey to be illegitimate and illegal.”
He went on to say, “Obviously, it was the armed forces that detained the president today and expelled him from the country. But as we’re seeing now with the naming of an interim president by the congress, this was an effort that has included other political institutions.”
Indeed, this was not a “military coup” in the traditional sense of the army acting unilaterally to depose a popular president. The Army was acting in accordance with the dictates of the other political institutions.
Not only did the Congress and the Supreme Court act against Zelaya, the Catholic Church of Honduras – which is not under the sway of Marxist-oriented Liberation Theology – had opposed his illegal acts.
One question from a CNN reporter helped illustrate the incoherent nature of the Obama policy: “You said that you felt other institutions felt that it was illegal and unconstitutional, but did you think it was and did you advise the president not to invoke it?” The official replied, “Again, it’s not up to us to determine what’s legal or not within the context of Honduras. It was important for us to leave this to Honduran institutions to try to resolve.”
But that is exactly what happened when those institutions acted to remove the Marxist president, who is an ally of Castro and Chávez.
Asked if what Zelaya was doing “was in line with the constitution,” the official answered in the negative. The official further added that “…from our point of view, what was important was not inserting ourselves and trying to make a determination of what was legal or illegal, but trying to insist that the Hondurans find a way to resolve this in a way that was in accord with their constitution.”
But the Hondurans have resolved it. Why doesn’t the Obama White House stay out of it?
In the New York Times story about the “coup,” the reporter waited until the fifth paragraph to note that “the [Honduran] Supreme Court issued a statement saying that the military had acted to defend the law against ‘those who had publicly spoken out and acted against the Constitution’s provisions.’”
So it wasn’t really a coup.
The headline over the Washington Post story said, “Honduran Military Ousts President,” but the article noted that “the Honduran National Congress defiantly announced that Zelaya was out, and its members named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti the new president on Sunday afternoon. The Honduran Supreme Court also supported the removal of Zelaya, saying that the military was acting in defense of democracy.”
So rather than destroy democracy, this action restored it. This is hardly a “military coup.” There is no military official running Honduras today. And the former president wasn’t shot but given exile. He’s been told he can return but without the outside backing and interference of Chávez.
There is some question about whether Zelaya was impeached before or after the military removed him. But the point is that democratic forces acted together for the sake of their country. The timing is a matter that should be properly left to the people of Honduras and their democratically-elected institutions.
What the Obama Administration should be doing, under the circumstances, is protecting this democratic government from external threats from Chavez and Castro. Instead, it is working with Chavez and Castro to bring back to power a Marxist puppet.
Calls are already being heard from Obama’s far-left base to destabilize Honduras by cutting off U.S. military aid to the government. Human Rights Watch, the George Soros-funded group, has come out with a statement denouncing the “military coup.”
Some of these far-left activists are claiming that Obama was behind the “coup,” but this is obviously propaganda designed to force the Administration to use international bodies, such as the UN and the Organization of American States, in an effort to restore Zelaya to power.
The so-called “military coup” in Honduras was a successful effort by Honduran patriots to preserve their constitutional system of government from an international alliance of communists and socialists backed by Iran. Not surprisingly, America’s Marxist President has come down on the anti-American side.
If all of this is news to you, consider yourself a victim of the “state-run media,” as Rush Limbaugh calls it. We are being bombarded with liberal media propaganda that a “military coup” took place in Honduras, and that the U.S. should therefore oppose it.
Fox News, which has been trumpeting news about the “military coup,” should be ashamed of itself for following the liberal media line.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, noted that the problem was that the deposed president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was “moving to re-write the Honduran constitution to extend and expand his power, while retaliating against those who stand in his way.”
The leftist Zelaya was democratically elected in 2005 in a narrow win (with less than a majority of the vote) but he has been attempting to unconstitutionally and illegally undercut the conservative majorities in the Congress. His main purpose has been to circumvent a prohibition on serving more than one term as president.
With his departure, Honduras may have been spared a communist future.
Nevertheless, Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quickly issued statements saying that his removal was somehow a violation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. This was a clever ruse designed to disguise the fact that all of the major elements of constitutional power in Honduras, except for the increasingly unpopular and power-hungry president, acted on behalf of the people.
The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has joined with the U.N. General Assembly President, Communist Priest Miguel D’Escoto, to demand that Zelaya be restored to power.
The new president, Roberto Micheletti, has made it clear that Zelaya was removed because he had behaved in an unconstitutional manner. “I did not reach this position because of a coup,” Micheletti said. “I am here because of an absolutely legal transition process.” Micheletti was a member of Zelaya’s Liberal Party but opposed his illegal and unconstitutional actions.
What happened is that the Legislative and Judicial branches of the government in Honduras, in conjunction with the armed forces, acted to maintain and defend their constitution from a power-mad president who was a puppet of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.
Blogger Jason Poblete commented that the Obama Administration “was quick to call the events in Honduras a coup. What has gone underreported, or not reported at all in the media or recognized by the Obama Administration, is that the democratically-elected Congress unanimously approved the change in leadership and impeached the President. If this was a constitutionally correct action why has the Obama Administration been so quick to judge and condemn?”
Claims of a “military coup” have appeared in the press because that is the way far-left officials of the Obama Administration have described it. The Administration has been just as quick to undermine freedom and democracy in Honduras as it was late in supporting the pro-freedom and pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran.
On June 28th, a “Teleconference Background Briefing” was held with the major media by “two senior officials” who were guiding coverage of the events in Honduras but whose identities were protected from disclosure by the lapdog press.
The transcript shows a New York Times reporter asking, “Is the U.S. Government calling this and considering this a coup d’état? Can you talk about the use of language? Some other governments have called it that.”
The answer was, “…I would certainly characterize a situation where a president is forcibly detained by the armed forces and expelled from a country an attempt at a coup. We – I mean, we still see him as the constitutional president of Honduras. So it was an attempt at a coup. We don’t think it was successful.”
The official is saying it wasn’t successful because the Obama White House wants to work with the Marxist governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua (backed by Iran) to bring Zelaya back to power.
At the same time, however, the official conceded that the controversy in Honduras stemmed from the effort by Zelaya to maintain himself illegally and unconstitutionally in power through a referendum or “survey” he had no right to initiate. He explained, “The fundamental political divide within Honduras was whether or not this effort by President Zelaya was seen as constitutional and legal, or whether it was seen as illegitimate and unconstitutional. And several institutions, including the public ministry, which is their equivalent of Attorney General, the Supreme Court, and the Congress had declared this survey to be illegitimate and illegal.”
Notice how the U.S. official said that “the public ministry, which is their equivalent of Attorney General, the Supreme Court, and the Congress had declared this survey to be illegitimate and illegal.”
He went on to say, “Obviously, it was the armed forces that detained the president today and expelled him from the country. But as we’re seeing now with the naming of an interim president by the congress, this was an effort that has included other political institutions.”
Indeed, this was not a “military coup” in the traditional sense of the army acting unilaterally to depose a popular president. The Army was acting in accordance with the dictates of the other political institutions.
Not only did the Congress and the Supreme Court act against Zelaya, the Catholic Church of Honduras – which is not under the sway of Marxist-oriented Liberation Theology – had opposed his illegal acts.
One question from a CNN reporter helped illustrate the incoherent nature of the Obama policy: “You said that you felt other institutions felt that it was illegal and unconstitutional, but did you think it was and did you advise the president not to invoke it?” The official replied, “Again, it’s not up to us to determine what’s legal or not within the context of Honduras. It was important for us to leave this to Honduran institutions to try to resolve.”
But that is exactly what happened when those institutions acted to remove the Marxist president, who is an ally of Castro and Chávez.
Asked if what Zelaya was doing “was in line with the constitution,” the official answered in the negative. The official further added that “…from our point of view, what was important was not inserting ourselves and trying to make a determination of what was legal or illegal, but trying to insist that the Hondurans find a way to resolve this in a way that was in accord with their constitution.”
But the Hondurans have resolved it. Why doesn’t the Obama White House stay out of it?
In the New York Times story about the “coup,” the reporter waited until the fifth paragraph to note that “the [Honduran] Supreme Court issued a statement saying that the military had acted to defend the law against ‘those who had publicly spoken out and acted against the Constitution’s provisions.’”
So it wasn’t really a coup.
The headline over the Washington Post story said, “Honduran Military Ousts President,” but the article noted that “the Honduran National Congress defiantly announced that Zelaya was out, and its members named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti the new president on Sunday afternoon. The Honduran Supreme Court also supported the removal of Zelaya, saying that the military was acting in defense of democracy.”
So rather than destroy democracy, this action restored it. This is hardly a “military coup.” There is no military official running Honduras today. And the former president wasn’t shot but given exile. He’s been told he can return but without the outside backing and interference of Chávez.
There is some question about whether Zelaya was impeached before or after the military removed him. But the point is that democratic forces acted together for the sake of their country. The timing is a matter that should be properly left to the people of Honduras and their democratically-elected institutions.
What the Obama Administration should be doing, under the circumstances, is protecting this democratic government from external threats from Chavez and Castro. Instead, it is working with Chavez and Castro to bring back to power a Marxist puppet.
Calls are already being heard from Obama’s far-left base to destabilize Honduras by cutting off U.S. military aid to the government. Human Rights Watch, the George Soros-funded group, has come out with a statement denouncing the “military coup.”
Some of these far-left activists are claiming that Obama was behind the “coup,” but this is obviously propaganda designed to force the Administration to use international bodies, such as the UN and the Organization of American States, in an effort to restore Zelaya to power.
Family Security Matters » Publications » Exclusive: How ‘Cap and Trade’ Bill Will Further Cripple the Economy
Family Security Matters » Publications » Exclusive: How ‘Cap and Trade’ Bill Will Further Cripple the Economy
After a contentious session in the House last Friday, the largest tax increase in history – the Waxman-Markey bill – passed 219-211. Touted as a “jobs” bill by its supporters, how many Americans realize that the jobs created will not benefit Americans, but the nations of China and India?
After a contentious session in the House last Friday, the largest tax increase in history – the Waxman-Markey bill – passed 219-211. Touted as a “jobs” bill by its supporters, how many Americans realize that the jobs created will not benefit Americans, but the nations of China and India?
On its face, the bill is part of a noble cause – noble, of course, if you believe that man is responsible for global warming (even though the trend toward global cooling is more evident than ever). In a nutshell, manufacturers will only be allowed a certain amount of carbon emissions. Those who have emissions to “spare” can trade them to other companies that need more. Those who go over the limit will be taxed.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Let’s Save The Earth™! Until, of course, you realize that all living beings are carbon-based and we all “emit” carbon when we exhale in the form of carbon dioxide. Will individual people end up being taxed just for breathing? But we digress.
Naturally, those companies that are taxed for their emissions will pass the cost on to consumers, driving up the cost of goods and services everywhere. How this helps our tanking economy is still unclear. But there’s an even more worrisome aspect to all of this. Energy prices for all will go up. Perhaps the wealthiest among us can weather such increases, but as the Wall Street Journal points out,
Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.
The Congressional Budget Office – Mr. Orszag's former roost – estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).
But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels – particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade – Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey – come from California or the Northeast.
President Obama, as part of his claim that this is a jobs bill, said, “There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy. It's happening. And there is no longer a question about whether the jobs and industries of the 21st century will be centered around clean, renewable energy. The question is, which country will create these jobs and these industries?"
Whenever you hear anyone say, “There is no longer a debate…” about anything, check your baloney detector. Has Obama spoken to the people of Spain lately? According to a study released in April, “Every ‘green job’ created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job.”
Gosh, where do we sign up?
To recap: energy and goods will become more expensive, and any creation of “green” jobs will come at the expense of others. Plus, the bill is chock full of other goodies, such as you not being able to sell your home until a government “expert” deems it environmentally friendly.
And to make this extra-special, Carol Browner of the EPA admitted to reading “major portions” of thebill – but would not state that she had read all thousand or so pages.
The eight Republicans whose votes put this bill in the “bipartisan” category are:
Mary Bono Mack - California
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-5330 Fax: (202) 225-2961
Palm Springs Office: Phone: (760) 320-1076 Fax: (760) 320-0596
Hemet Office: Phone: (951) 658-2312 Fax: (951) 652-2562
Michael Castle - Delaware
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-4165 Fax: (202) 225-2291
Wilmington Office: Phone: (302) 428-1902 Fax: (302) 428-1950
Dover Office: Phone: (302) 736-1666 Fax: (302) 736-6580
Georgetown Office: Phone: (302) 856-3334
Mark Kirk - Illinois
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-4835 Fax: (202) 225-0837
Northbrook Office: Phone: (847) 940-0202 Fax: (847) 940-7143
Leonard Lance - New Jersey
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-5361 Fax: (202) 225-9460
Westfield Office: Phone: (908) 518-7733 Fax: (908) 518-7751
Flemington Office: Phone: (908) 788-6900 Fax: (908) 788-2869
Frank LoBiondo - New Jersey
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-6572 Fax: (202) 225-3318
NJ Office: Toll Free: (800) 471-4450 Phone: (609) 625-5008 Fax: (609) 625-5071
John McHugh - New York
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-4611 Fax: (202) 226-0621
Watertown Office: Phone: (315) 782-3150 Fax: (315) 782-1291
Plattsburgh Office: Phone: (518) 563-1406 Fax: (518) 561-9723
Mayfield Office: Phone: (518) 661-6486 Fax: (518) 661-5704
Canastota Office: Phone: (315) 697-2063 Fax: (315) 697-2064
Dave Reichert - Washington
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-7761 Fax: (202) 225-4282
Mercer Island Office: Phone: (206) 275-3438 Fax: (206) 275-3437
Christopher Smith - New Jersey
Washington Office: Phone: (202) 225-3765 Fax: (202) 225-7768
Hamilton Office: Phone: (609) 585-7878 Fax: (609) 585-9155
Whiting Office: Phone: (732) 350-2300 Fax: (732) 350-6260
The Senate will take up the bill after the Independence Day break. If you’d like to make your concerns known, be sure to contact your senators.
YouTube - Carol Browner hasn't read the highly contested climate bill
YouTube - Carol Browner hasn't read the highly contested climate bill
Carol Browner hasn't read the highly contested climate bill
Video 0:29
Also some articles on the true cost and impact of "cap and trade" It is a disaster not based upon science or true estimates of the damage it will cause our country.
From CNS News
(CNSNews.com) - Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.
President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama's economic stimulus package,which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.
But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:
"Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.
Obama repeatedly has said that the United States should look to Spain as an example of a country that has successfully applied federal money to green initiatives in order to stimulate its economy.
“Think of what’s happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan, where they’re making real investments in renewable energy,” said Obama while lobbying Congress, in January to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “They’re surging ahead of us, poised to take the lead in these new industries.”
“Their governments have harnessed their people’s hard work and ingenuity with bold investments — investments that are paying off in good, high-wage jobs — jobs they won’t lose to other countries,” said Obama. “There is no reason we can’t do the same thing right here in America. … In the process, we’ll put nearly half a million people to work building wind turbines and solar panels; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to new jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.”
Included in the stimulus package, for example, was $4.5 billion to convert government buildings into high-performance green buildings.
According to the Calzada’s study, Spain is a strong example of the government spending money on green ideas to stimulate its economy.
“No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources,” says the report. “The arguments for Spain’s and Europe’s ‘green jobs’ schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs.”
But in the study’s introduction Calzada argues that the renewable jobs program hindered, rather than helped, Spain’s attempts to emerge from its recession.
“The study’s results show how such ‘green jobs’ policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil,” says Calzada. “This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made."
Pat Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a free market group, told CNSNews.com that the study’s conclusions do not surprise him. He added that the United States should expect similar results with the stimulus money it spends on green initiatives.
“There is no reason to think things will be any different here,” Michaels said. “In the short run you have to ask who is doing the hiring, and in the long run how efficient is it to have people serving technology such as windmills. We are creating inefficiencies.”
Michaels also said he was not surprised by the study’s finding that only one out of 10 jobs were permanent.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Michaels. “When we see how imperfect wind energy is and how expensive it is to maintain -- I think many of those jobs will become impermanent here in the U.S. as well.”
Inquiries for comment to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for American Progress were not answered before this story went to press.
From the Wall Street Journal
Who Pays for Cap and Trade?
Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign.
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Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.
[Review & Outlook] AP
Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."
Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.
The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).
But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.
Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.
Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.
[Review & Outlook]
Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use.
All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate.
We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit.
Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses.
And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller.
Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.
Carol Browner hasn't read the highly contested climate bill
Video 0:29
Also some articles on the true cost and impact of "cap and trade" It is a disaster not based upon science or true estimates of the damage it will cause our country.
From CNS News
(CNSNews.com) - Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.
President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama's economic stimulus package,which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.
But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:
"Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.
Obama repeatedly has said that the United States should look to Spain as an example of a country that has successfully applied federal money to green initiatives in order to stimulate its economy.
“Think of what’s happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan, where they’re making real investments in renewable energy,” said Obama while lobbying Congress, in January to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “They’re surging ahead of us, poised to take the lead in these new industries.”
“Their governments have harnessed their people’s hard work and ingenuity with bold investments — investments that are paying off in good, high-wage jobs — jobs they won’t lose to other countries,” said Obama. “There is no reason we can’t do the same thing right here in America. … In the process, we’ll put nearly half a million people to work building wind turbines and solar panels; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to new jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.”
Included in the stimulus package, for example, was $4.5 billion to convert government buildings into high-performance green buildings.
According to the Calzada’s study, Spain is a strong example of the government spending money on green ideas to stimulate its economy.
“No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources,” says the report. “The arguments for Spain’s and Europe’s ‘green jobs’ schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs.”
But in the study’s introduction Calzada argues that the renewable jobs program hindered, rather than helped, Spain’s attempts to emerge from its recession.
“The study’s results show how such ‘green jobs’ policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil,” says Calzada. “This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made."
Pat Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a free market group, told CNSNews.com that the study’s conclusions do not surprise him. He added that the United States should expect similar results with the stimulus money it spends on green initiatives.
“There is no reason to think things will be any different here,” Michaels said. “In the short run you have to ask who is doing the hiring, and in the long run how efficient is it to have people serving technology such as windmills. We are creating inefficiencies.”
Michaels also said he was not surprised by the study’s finding that only one out of 10 jobs were permanent.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Michaels. “When we see how imperfect wind energy is and how expensive it is to maintain -- I think many of those jobs will become impermanent here in the U.S. as well.”
Inquiries for comment to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for American Progress were not answered before this story went to press.
From the Wall Street Journal
Who Pays for Cap and Trade?
Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign.
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Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.
[Review & Outlook] AP
Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."
Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.
The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).
But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.
Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.
Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.
[Review & Outlook]
Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use.
All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate.
We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit.
Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses.
And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller.
Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.
Townhall.com - Printer Friendly
Townhall.com - Printer Friendly
Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which we were combating Islamic terrorists.
It’s enlightening to know that so far as the New York Times is concerned, censorship is not only moral, but mandatory, when the life of one of its employees might be at risk, but is not to be condoned when the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians might hang in the balance.
However, when it comes to hypocrisy, the Times isn’t alone. For instance, when George W. Bush fired eight U.S. attorneys, the outrage voiced by the media would have had you believe that he’d personally ripped the Constitution into a thousand tiny pieces. Compare that to the silence that greeted Obama’s dismissal of Inspector General Gerald Walpin. It had been Walpin’s responsibility to oversee government-subsidized volunteer programs, such as AmeriCorps. Walpin’s team of investigators discovered serious irregularities at St. Hope, a California non-profit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. It seems that an $850,000 grant, which was supposed to go towards tutoring Sacramento students and supporting theater and art programs, instead was used to pad staff salaries, meddle in a local school board election and pay AmeriCorps members to perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.
When Walpin recommended that Johnson, an assistant and St. Hope, itself, be cut off from federal funds, he was fired by the president. Did I mention that Mr. Johnson is a friend and was an early supporter of Barack Obama? I guess you can take the man out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the man. Not even when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
Some of us have been puzzled by the personal animosity that Obama has shown towards those, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who oppose his radical left-wing agenda. Clearly, the man is so narcissistic and thin-skinned that he can’t conceal his contempt for anyone who doesn’t openly adore him. I don’t entirely blame him, though. Like a little brat who is never disciplined by his parents when he misbehaves, Obama is the inevitable result of a media that has mollycoddled him ever since he came on the scene.
Frankly, I can’t figure out what it is that people find admirable about the president. I, myself, was profoundly upset that he couldn’t even muster up a few inspirational words for those brave souls in Tehran who were standing up to the murderous mullahs and their hand puppet, Ahmadinejad. But, on further reflection, it occurred to me that maybe he just didn’t want Americans to get any funny ideas about freedom and liberty.
In fact, I found myself wondering if the spark that ignited the demonstrations in Iran wasn’t supplied by the example of democracy taking hold in nearby Iraq, in much the same way that the French revolution was inspired by our own.
Some people have suggested that the reason Obama kept silent during the popular uprising is because he is a Muslim. The truth is, I have no idea how much he was influenced by his early years in Indonesia or by the wish to please his absentee Islamic father. I figure it’s bad enough that he calls himself a Christian, but attended a racist church for his entire adult life, spending a thousand Sundays listening to a creepy minister heap curses on Jews, white Christians and America. While I don’t know what the man believes in his heart, I do know that he would have heard the exact same message if he’d been kneeling on a prayer mat for all those years in a Baghdad mosque.
It appears to me that Obama is bent on destroying our economy, our military and our missile defense system; while, at the same time, he promotes socialized medicine, hires a racist attorney general and nominates a Supreme Court nominee who parrots the party line of La Raza. This is a man who brags about nonexistent Muslim accomplishments, while taking every opportunity to denigrate America’s character, her sacrifices and her awe-inspiring achievements.
Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city upon a hill. President Obama sees it as a slum that needs to be torn down as part of a massive reconstruction project.
If there were ever a site like Mt. Rushmore, dedicated not to heroic leaders, but rather to those who were unfaithful to their nation’s highest ideals, Barack Hussein Obama could take his rightful place alongside the likes of Vidkun Quisling, Henri Petain and Benedict Arnold.
Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which we were combating Islamic terrorists.
It’s enlightening to know that so far as the New York Times is concerned, censorship is not only moral, but mandatory, when the life of one of its employees might be at risk, but is not to be condoned when the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians might hang in the balance.
However, when it comes to hypocrisy, the Times isn’t alone. For instance, when George W. Bush fired eight U.S. attorneys, the outrage voiced by the media would have had you believe that he’d personally ripped the Constitution into a thousand tiny pieces. Compare that to the silence that greeted Obama’s dismissal of Inspector General Gerald Walpin. It had been Walpin’s responsibility to oversee government-subsidized volunteer programs, such as AmeriCorps. Walpin’s team of investigators discovered serious irregularities at St. Hope, a California non-profit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. It seems that an $850,000 grant, which was supposed to go towards tutoring Sacramento students and supporting theater and art programs, instead was used to pad staff salaries, meddle in a local school board election and pay AmeriCorps members to perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.
When Walpin recommended that Johnson, an assistant and St. Hope, itself, be cut off from federal funds, he was fired by the president. Did I mention that Mr. Johnson is a friend and was an early supporter of Barack Obama? I guess you can take the man out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the man. Not even when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
Some of us have been puzzled by the personal animosity that Obama has shown towards those, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who oppose his radical left-wing agenda. Clearly, the man is so narcissistic and thin-skinned that he can’t conceal his contempt for anyone who doesn’t openly adore him. I don’t entirely blame him, though. Like a little brat who is never disciplined by his parents when he misbehaves, Obama is the inevitable result of a media that has mollycoddled him ever since he came on the scene.
Frankly, I can’t figure out what it is that people find admirable about the president. I, myself, was profoundly upset that he couldn’t even muster up a few inspirational words for those brave souls in Tehran who were standing up to the murderous mullahs and their hand puppet, Ahmadinejad. But, on further reflection, it occurred to me that maybe he just didn’t want Americans to get any funny ideas about freedom and liberty.
In fact, I found myself wondering if the spark that ignited the demonstrations in Iran wasn’t supplied by the example of democracy taking hold in nearby Iraq, in much the same way that the French revolution was inspired by our own.
Some people have suggested that the reason Obama kept silent during the popular uprising is because he is a Muslim. The truth is, I have no idea how much he was influenced by his early years in Indonesia or by the wish to please his absentee Islamic father. I figure it’s bad enough that he calls himself a Christian, but attended a racist church for his entire adult life, spending a thousand Sundays listening to a creepy minister heap curses on Jews, white Christians and America. While I don’t know what the man believes in his heart, I do know that he would have heard the exact same message if he’d been kneeling on a prayer mat for all those years in a Baghdad mosque.
It appears to me that Obama is bent on destroying our economy, our military and our missile defense system; while, at the same time, he promotes socialized medicine, hires a racist attorney general and nominates a Supreme Court nominee who parrots the party line of La Raza. This is a man who brags about nonexistent Muslim accomplishments, while taking every opportunity to denigrate America’s character, her sacrifices and her awe-inspiring achievements.
Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city upon a hill. President Obama sees it as a slum that needs to be torn down as part of a massive reconstruction project.
If there were ever a site like Mt. Rushmore, dedicated not to heroic leaders, but rather to those who were unfaithful to their nation’s highest ideals, Barack Hussein Obama could take his rightful place alongside the likes of Vidkun Quisling, Henri Petain and Benedict Arnold.
Obama says coup in Honduras is illegal | Reuters
Obama says coup in Honduras is illegal | Reuters
The Country of Honduras ousted it's illegal president when he attempted to change the constitution of that country without mandate or sanctions to do so. he basically elected himself ruler. The supreme court of that country said his take over was illegal and they ordered the military to remove him.
naturally Obama doesn't agree with that policy of following constitutions and laws. So he disagrees with it. I expect no less, Obama doesn't follow our laws, why would he support theirs?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed.
"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
Zelaya, in office since 2006, was overthrown in a dawn coup on Sunday after he angered the judiciary, Congress and the army by seeking constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election beyond a four-year term.
The Honduran Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, and the country's Supreme Court said it had ordered the army to remove Zelaya.
The European Union and a string of foreign governments have voiced support for Zelaya, who was snatched by troops from his residence and whisked away by plane to Costa Rica in his pajamas.
Obama said he would work with the Organization of American States and other international institutions to restore Zelaya to power and "see if we can resolve this in a peaceful way."
"TERRIBLE PRECEDENT"
"It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," Obama said, noting the region's progress in establishing democratic traditions in the past 20 years.
Despite Obama's comments, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration was not formally designating the ouster as a military coup for now, a step that would force a cut-off of most U.S. aid to Honduras.
Under U.S. law, no aid -- other than for the promotion of democracy -- may be provided to a country whose elected head of government has been toppled in a military coup.
"We do think that this has evolved into a coup," Clinton told reporters, adding the administration was withholding that determination for now.
Asked if the United States was currently considering cutting off aid, Clinton shook her head no.
The State Department said it was unable to immediately say how much assistance the United States gives Honduras.
The State Department has requested $68.2 million in aid for fiscal year 2010, which begins on October 1, up from $43.2 million. This covers funds for development, Honduran purchases of U.S. arms, military training, counter-narcotics and health care but does not include Defense Department aid, a U.S. official said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he did not believe Obama had spoken to Zelaya since the ouster.
He said the administration had worked in recent days to try to prevent the coup from happening, and "our goal now is on restoring democratic order in Honduras."
OBAMA CRITICISM
Analysts said quick criticism of the coup by Obama and Clinton on Sunday pleased Latin American countries bitter about the long history of U.S. intervention in the region.
The Obama administration's stance contrasted with the equivocal position taken in 2002 by former President George W. Bush's administration, which was seen as tacitly accepting a coup against Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.
A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition he not be named said that by holding off on a legal determination that a coup has taken place, Washington was trying to provide space for a negotiated settlement.
"If we were able to get to a ... status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome," Clinton said.
The Country of Honduras ousted it's illegal president when he attempted to change the constitution of that country without mandate or sanctions to do so. he basically elected himself ruler. The supreme court of that country said his take over was illegal and they ordered the military to remove him.
naturally Obama doesn't agree with that policy of following constitutions and laws. So he disagrees with it. I expect no less, Obama doesn't follow our laws, why would he support theirs?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed.
"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
Zelaya, in office since 2006, was overthrown in a dawn coup on Sunday after he angered the judiciary, Congress and the army by seeking constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election beyond a four-year term.
The Honduran Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, and the country's Supreme Court said it had ordered the army to remove Zelaya.
The European Union and a string of foreign governments have voiced support for Zelaya, who was snatched by troops from his residence and whisked away by plane to Costa Rica in his pajamas.
Obama said he would work with the Organization of American States and other international institutions to restore Zelaya to power and "see if we can resolve this in a peaceful way."
"TERRIBLE PRECEDENT"
"It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," Obama said, noting the region's progress in establishing democratic traditions in the past 20 years.
Despite Obama's comments, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration was not formally designating the ouster as a military coup for now, a step that would force a cut-off of most U.S. aid to Honduras.
Under U.S. law, no aid -- other than for the promotion of democracy -- may be provided to a country whose elected head of government has been toppled in a military coup.
"We do think that this has evolved into a coup," Clinton told reporters, adding the administration was withholding that determination for now.
Asked if the United States was currently considering cutting off aid, Clinton shook her head no.
The State Department said it was unable to immediately say how much assistance the United States gives Honduras.
The State Department has requested $68.2 million in aid for fiscal year 2010, which begins on October 1, up from $43.2 million. This covers funds for development, Honduran purchases of U.S. arms, military training, counter-narcotics and health care but does not include Defense Department aid, a U.S. official said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he did not believe Obama had spoken to Zelaya since the ouster.
He said the administration had worked in recent days to try to prevent the coup from happening, and "our goal now is on restoring democratic order in Honduras."
OBAMA CRITICISM
Analysts said quick criticism of the coup by Obama and Clinton on Sunday pleased Latin American countries bitter about the long history of U.S. intervention in the region.
The Obama administration's stance contrasted with the equivocal position taken in 2002 by former President George W. Bush's administration, which was seen as tacitly accepting a coup against Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.
A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition he not be named said that by holding off on a legal determination that a coup has taken place, Washington was trying to provide space for a negotiated settlement.
"If we were able to get to a ... status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome," Clinton said.
YouTube - Shocking video of NY Democrat sitting through the Pledge of Allegiance
YouTube - Shocking video of NY Democrat sitting through the Pledge of Allegiance
New York State Democrats take over Congress. refuse to stand for the pledge and refuse to work with republicans in a very childish way.
All democrats in NYS need to be voted out for this disgusting display of pure partisanship. They are not following the law nor are they following the will of he people.
MUST SEE Video
New York State Democrats take over Congress. refuse to stand for the pledge and refuse to work with republicans in a very childish way.
All democrats in NYS need to be voted out for this disgusting display of pure partisanship. They are not following the law nor are they following the will of he people.
MUST SEE Video
YouTube - WH Won't Rule Out Tax Increase On Middle-Class
YouTube - WH Won't Rule Out Tax Increase On Middle-Class: "WH Won't Rule Out Tax Increase On Middle-Class"
Gibbs won't give a straight answer on the obvious.
WH Won't Rule Out Tax Increase On Middle-Class
Video 0:50
Gibbs won't give a straight answer on the obvious.
WH Won't Rule Out Tax Increase On Middle-Class
Video 0:50
KLIV - Great Mall evacuated following explosion
KLIV - Great Mall evacuated following explosion
MILPITAS -- Nearly 2,000 people were forced to evacuate the Great Mall in Milpitas Sunday afternoon, after a nearby power transformer exploded.
Officials are still investigating the cause of the explosion, which blew a metal gate off the ground that flew through the air along with some oil.
Power was mostly restored to the mall by 6 p.m.
Authorities suspect there may have been too much pressure on the transformer from too many people using a lot of power on a hot day.
MILPITAS -- Nearly 2,000 people were forced to evacuate the Great Mall in Milpitas Sunday afternoon, after a nearby power transformer exploded.
Officials are still investigating the cause of the explosion, which blew a metal gate off the ground that flew through the air along with some oil.
Power was mostly restored to the mall by 6 p.m.
Authorities suspect there may have been too much pressure on the transformer from too many people using a lot of power on a hot day.
LSU researchers: coastal restoration projects doomed to fail - NOLA.com
LSU researchers: coastal restoration projects doomed to fail - NOLA.com
Even under best-case scenarios for building massive engineering projects to restore Louisiana's dying coastline, the Mississippi River can't possibly feed enough sediment into the marshes to prevent ongoing catastraphic catastrophic land loss, two Louisiana State University geologists conclude in a scientific paper being published today.
The result: The state will lose another 4,054 to 5,212 square miles of coastline by 2100 -- an area roughly the size of Connecticut.
The reason: The Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers today carry only half the sediment they did a century ago -- between 400 million and 500 million tons a year then, compared with just 205 million tons today. The rest is now captured by more than 40,000 dams and reservoirs that have been built on rivers and streams that flow into the main channels.
Yet even if those dams were to be torn down and the river's full sediment load employed in restoration efforts -- a politically impossible scenario -- it would not be enough to turn back the tide of coastal erosion, write authors Michael Blum, a former LSU geologist now working for ExxonMobil Upstream Research Co. in Houston, and LSU geology professor Harry Roberts.
"We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable, even if sediment loads are restored, because sea level is now rising at least three times faster than during delta-plain construction," according to the paper published in the "Letters" section of Nature Geoscience magazine.
Even the river's highest potential sediment load, which created south Louisiana's once-lush and fertile delta over centuries of seasonal flooding, can no longer compete with other natural and man-made forces pushing the Gulf ever farther inland, the researchers conclude.
Increased rates of sea-level rise spurred by human-induced global warming, when combined with the state's rapid rate of subsidence, or the sinking of soft soils, will inundate vast swaths of wetlands over the next century, according to the study.
The paper predicts water levels will rise between 2.6 feet and 3.9 feet along the coast by 2100.
If the researchers are right, such land loss can't be stopped, or even substantially slowed. That means the cause of "restoration," as efforts to build new wetlands and barrier islands are termed -- creating the impression that wetlands lost over the last 70 years can be reclaimed -- is a lost one.
Roberts said he recognized the paper's conclusions would be controversial.
"Louisiana is facing some really tough decisions here," he said in an interview. "You can't do this restoration all over the coast because the whole coast is not sustainable and it never has been."
Not giving up the fight
Blum and Roberts do not, however, advocate giving up the fight to save the coast. They instead recommend that federal and state coastal restoration officials refocus their plans on larger river diversions that would deliver the remaining sediment into wetlands from locations mostly north of New Orleans.
Roberts said he and Blum wanted to avoid recommending diversion locations in the paper, but that one could be built at the Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project site, just south of the city, to rebuild wetlands that would protect the New Orleans area's eastern border.
Another might be built near the historic juncture of Bayou Lafourche and the Mississippi, which was dammed off at the turn of the 20th century, he said. A similar proposal, dubbed the third delta, has long been touted by Houma officials as a way to provide some protection to that area.
The problems with those and other locations for major diversions would be both political and cultural, Roberts warned, as each diversion would protect only a limited number of communities and would disrupt traditional commercial and recreational fishing.
A study of the ability of the Mississippi to sustain wetlands over 100 years or longer has long been advocated by state officials and the National Academy of Sciences.
One academy study in 2005 urged federal and state officials to develop a map showing what parts of the coast could be sustained with a comprehensive coastal restoration program.
And this year, an academy National Research Council panel that is reviewing the Army Corps of Engineers' Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Study recommended that the corps develop a sediment budget for the river.
Corps of Engineers study
The corps has said that, in response to that panel's recommendation, it is conducting its own study of the river's sediment load and its ability to rebuild wetlands.
The corps' coastal study will recommend ways to protect Louisiana coastal communities from storm surges caused by the equivalent of Category 5 hurricanes, using both levees and coastal restoration projects.
Roberts said bigger diversions higher up in the system of freshwater, brackish and saltwater wetlands along the coast would make it possible for the sediment to be captured within existing wetlands and the nutrients in the accompanying water to spur plant growth, or for the sediment to build land in shallower areas of open water.
Sediment released into less protected open waters through smaller diversions closer to the coast will end up being lost to the Gulf of Mexico, he said.
"We think that when you locate a diversion in the place where that process can be maximized, the retention rate could be 70 percent," he said, compared with 40 percent or less in more open areas.
Garret Graves, an adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal on coastal issues, said that while the study's conclusions seem to him overly pessimistic, the state recognizes it will not be able to restore the state's historic coastline.
"If we can extract 80 percent or greater amounts of sediment from the river and put it in strategic places, we can be more effective in replacing land," he said.
"But we are going to have to prioritize," Graves said. "Will Louisiana look like it did in 1930? No, probably not.
"But is it possible for us to sustain a significant part of the coastal area in light of protected sea level rise and the erosion we're experiencing today?" he said, "Yes."
Plants play a role
A few scientists disagree with some of the procedures used by Blum and Roberts in estimating wetlands loss.
A key concern is the authors' decision not to include the contribution of plant life in estimates of the amount of material that will be available to build wetlands in the short term, University of New Orleans coastal scientist Denise Reed said.
She has studied the rapid growth of wetlands plants and how they make up a significant part of the volume of surface soils in coastal areas.
She compared the deeper sediment beneath coastal wetlands to the yellow filling in a lemon pie, while the upper layer, containing organic material from dead plants, is the meringue topping.
The result, she contends, is that Blum and Roberts' paper underestimates the ability of rapidly growing wetlands to stay above the expected increases in sea level during the next 100 years.
The paper averages the amount of sediment deposited over the past 12,000 years in the Mississippi River's delta and compares it with the amount of sediment now carried by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers at points well above New Orleans.
In supplementary information accompanying the scientific paper, Blum and Roberts agree that organic material will be significant in areas in the northernmost wetlands. But where land already has sunk beneath the surface, its contribution is minimal, they say.
Mark Kulp, a geology professor at the University of New Orleans, said that, even with the potential flaw cited by Reed, the study represents a good first estimate that scientists and politicians can use in determining how to move forward with the dozens of coastal restoration projects already on the books.
"The delta plain of today won't look like this in 50 or 60 years, and we have to make the tough decisions now to deal with that reality," Kulp said.
The study is available at www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/index.html.
Even under best-case scenarios for building massive engineering projects to restore Louisiana's dying coastline, the Mississippi River can't possibly feed enough sediment into the marshes to prevent ongoing catastraphic catastrophic land loss, two Louisiana State University geologists conclude in a scientific paper being published today.
The result: The state will lose another 4,054 to 5,212 square miles of coastline by 2100 -- an area roughly the size of Connecticut.
The reason: The Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers today carry only half the sediment they did a century ago -- between 400 million and 500 million tons a year then, compared with just 205 million tons today. The rest is now captured by more than 40,000 dams and reservoirs that have been built on rivers and streams that flow into the main channels.
Yet even if those dams were to be torn down and the river's full sediment load employed in restoration efforts -- a politically impossible scenario -- it would not be enough to turn back the tide of coastal erosion, write authors Michael Blum, a former LSU geologist now working for ExxonMobil Upstream Research Co. in Houston, and LSU geology professor Harry Roberts.
"We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable, even if sediment loads are restored, because sea level is now rising at least three times faster than during delta-plain construction," according to the paper published in the "Letters" section of Nature Geoscience magazine.
Even the river's highest potential sediment load, which created south Louisiana's once-lush and fertile delta over centuries of seasonal flooding, can no longer compete with other natural and man-made forces pushing the Gulf ever farther inland, the researchers conclude.
Increased rates of sea-level rise spurred by human-induced global warming, when combined with the state's rapid rate of subsidence, or the sinking of soft soils, will inundate vast swaths of wetlands over the next century, according to the study.
The paper predicts water levels will rise between 2.6 feet and 3.9 feet along the coast by 2100.
If the researchers are right, such land loss can't be stopped, or even substantially slowed. That means the cause of "restoration," as efforts to build new wetlands and barrier islands are termed -- creating the impression that wetlands lost over the last 70 years can be reclaimed -- is a lost one.
Roberts said he recognized the paper's conclusions would be controversial.
"Louisiana is facing some really tough decisions here," he said in an interview. "You can't do this restoration all over the coast because the whole coast is not sustainable and it never has been."
Not giving up the fight
Blum and Roberts do not, however, advocate giving up the fight to save the coast. They instead recommend that federal and state coastal restoration officials refocus their plans on larger river diversions that would deliver the remaining sediment into wetlands from locations mostly north of New Orleans.
Roberts said he and Blum wanted to avoid recommending diversion locations in the paper, but that one could be built at the Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project site, just south of the city, to rebuild wetlands that would protect the New Orleans area's eastern border.
Another might be built near the historic juncture of Bayou Lafourche and the Mississippi, which was dammed off at the turn of the 20th century, he said. A similar proposal, dubbed the third delta, has long been touted by Houma officials as a way to provide some protection to that area.
The problems with those and other locations for major diversions would be both political and cultural, Roberts warned, as each diversion would protect only a limited number of communities and would disrupt traditional commercial and recreational fishing.
A study of the ability of the Mississippi to sustain wetlands over 100 years or longer has long been advocated by state officials and the National Academy of Sciences.
One academy study in 2005 urged federal and state officials to develop a map showing what parts of the coast could be sustained with a comprehensive coastal restoration program.
And this year, an academy National Research Council panel that is reviewing the Army Corps of Engineers' Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Study recommended that the corps develop a sediment budget for the river.
Corps of Engineers study
The corps has said that, in response to that panel's recommendation, it is conducting its own study of the river's sediment load and its ability to rebuild wetlands.
The corps' coastal study will recommend ways to protect Louisiana coastal communities from storm surges caused by the equivalent of Category 5 hurricanes, using both levees and coastal restoration projects.
Roberts said bigger diversions higher up in the system of freshwater, brackish and saltwater wetlands along the coast would make it possible for the sediment to be captured within existing wetlands and the nutrients in the accompanying water to spur plant growth, or for the sediment to build land in shallower areas of open water.
Sediment released into less protected open waters through smaller diversions closer to the coast will end up being lost to the Gulf of Mexico, he said.
"We think that when you locate a diversion in the place where that process can be maximized, the retention rate could be 70 percent," he said, compared with 40 percent or less in more open areas.
Garret Graves, an adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal on coastal issues, said that while the study's conclusions seem to him overly pessimistic, the state recognizes it will not be able to restore the state's historic coastline.
"If we can extract 80 percent or greater amounts of sediment from the river and put it in strategic places, we can be more effective in replacing land," he said.
"But we are going to have to prioritize," Graves said. "Will Louisiana look like it did in 1930? No, probably not.
"But is it possible for us to sustain a significant part of the coastal area in light of protected sea level rise and the erosion we're experiencing today?" he said, "Yes."
Plants play a role
A few scientists disagree with some of the procedures used by Blum and Roberts in estimating wetlands loss.
A key concern is the authors' decision not to include the contribution of plant life in estimates of the amount of material that will be available to build wetlands in the short term, University of New Orleans coastal scientist Denise Reed said.
She has studied the rapid growth of wetlands plants and how they make up a significant part of the volume of surface soils in coastal areas.
She compared the deeper sediment beneath coastal wetlands to the yellow filling in a lemon pie, while the upper layer, containing organic material from dead plants, is the meringue topping.
The result, she contends, is that Blum and Roberts' paper underestimates the ability of rapidly growing wetlands to stay above the expected increases in sea level during the next 100 years.
The paper averages the amount of sediment deposited over the past 12,000 years in the Mississippi River's delta and compares it with the amount of sediment now carried by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers at points well above New Orleans.
In supplementary information accompanying the scientific paper, Blum and Roberts agree that organic material will be significant in areas in the northernmost wetlands. But where land already has sunk beneath the surface, its contribution is minimal, they say.
Mark Kulp, a geology professor at the University of New Orleans, said that, even with the potential flaw cited by Reed, the study represents a good first estimate that scientists and politicians can use in determining how to move forward with the dozens of coastal restoration projects already on the books.
"The delta plain of today won't look like this in 50 or 60 years, and we have to make the tough decisions now to deal with that reality," Kulp said.
The study is available at www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/index.html.
Wastewater Treatment Plant Pays for Chemical Reporting Violation -- Occupational Health & Safety
Wastewater Treatment Plant Pays for Chemical Reporting Violation -- Occupational Health & Safety
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 has settled an administrative case involving hazardous chemical inventory reporting violations at the municipal wastewater treatment plant in Lincoln, Ill., operated by Environmental Management Corp. The company will pay a civil penalty of $12,500 and purchase 10 direct-fired heaters for diesel school buses, valued at $41,000, for two Logan County school districts.
According to EPA, the plant was storing chlorine and diesel fuel over the minimum threshold level and failed to provide emergency and hazardous chemical inventory forms to state and local authorities. Richard Karl, EPA Region 5's Superfund director said, "the company has since switched from chlorine to sodium hypochlorite, has cooperated fully with the investigation, and is now in compliance."
EPA emphasized that responders need to know what chemicals are stored at facilities so they can take steps to protect people living and working in the area.
Chester East Lincoln and Hartsburg-Emden school districts will receive the direct-fired heaters for diesel school bus retrofits, which EPA said will reduce the amount of diesel emissions from the buses. The agency noted that diesel emission reduction is one of its priority projects.
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 has settled an administrative case involving hazardous chemical inventory reporting violations at the municipal wastewater treatment plant in Lincoln, Ill., operated by Environmental Management Corp. The company will pay a civil penalty of $12,500 and purchase 10 direct-fired heaters for diesel school buses, valued at $41,000, for two Logan County school districts.
According to EPA, the plant was storing chlorine and diesel fuel over the minimum threshold level and failed to provide emergency and hazardous chemical inventory forms to state and local authorities. Richard Karl, EPA Region 5's Superfund director said, "the company has since switched from chlorine to sodium hypochlorite, has cooperated fully with the investigation, and is now in compliance."
EPA emphasized that responders need to know what chemicals are stored at facilities so they can take steps to protect people living and working in the area.
Chester East Lincoln and Hartsburg-Emden school districts will receive the direct-fired heaters for diesel school bus retrofits, which EPA said will reduce the amount of diesel emissions from the buses. The agency noted that diesel emission reduction is one of its priority projects.
GAO: Arms Sales Program Still Flawed
GAO: Arms Sales Program Still Flawed
In March 2008, the Department of Defense disclosed that it mistakenly transferred intercontinental ballistic missile parts to Taiwan through a U.S. program that sells pre-approved defense articles and services to foreign governments.
In a new report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says the departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security still haven't corrected weaknesses that the GAO identified -- as early as 2003 -- in the government's monitoring of articles shipped through the foreign military sales (FMS) program.
The GAO, an investigative arm of Congress, told Congress in a report released last week that the inadvertent shipment of the missile parts to Taiwan raised "questions about whether previously identified weaknesses have been resolved."
The FMS program remains an integral part of U.S. national security and foreign policy, the GAO said. The program, in which the Air Force, Army and Navy participate, sold more than $36 billion in defense equipment and services to foreign governments during fiscal 2008, a 56 percent increase from fiscal 2007.
Poor communication among federal agencies is a chronic problem, so the GAO's conclusions were not surprising, said Dick Reynolds, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who was vice commander of the Air Force Materiel Command.
"We've got a lot of government agencies that are supposed to work together, and a lot of times, they don't," Reynolds said.
The Air Force has bigger concerns, including its need for a new aerial refueling tanker aircraft, new search and rescue helicopters, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Reynolds said.
The Air Force Security Assistance Center, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, manages the Air Force's portion of the program. The unit at Wright-Patterson arranges sales of U.S. warplanes, weapons and spare parts to American allies and works with 90 countries and nine NATO entities.
According to the GAO, the State Department hasn't finalized its regulations to establish the Defense Department's duties in verifying whether the correct items are being shipped to foreign countries. Federal port customs officials lack information needed to verify that FMS shipments are properly authorized, and the Defense Department lacks data needed to effectively administer and oversee the program, the GAO said.
The State, Defense and Homeland Security departments told the GAO they will work to improve coordination.
In March 2008, the Department of Defense disclosed that it mistakenly transferred intercontinental ballistic missile parts to Taiwan through a U.S. program that sells pre-approved defense articles and services to foreign governments.
In a new report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says the departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security still haven't corrected weaknesses that the GAO identified -- as early as 2003 -- in the government's monitoring of articles shipped through the foreign military sales (FMS) program.
The GAO, an investigative arm of Congress, told Congress in a report released last week that the inadvertent shipment of the missile parts to Taiwan raised "questions about whether previously identified weaknesses have been resolved."
The FMS program remains an integral part of U.S. national security and foreign policy, the GAO said. The program, in which the Air Force, Army and Navy participate, sold more than $36 billion in defense equipment and services to foreign governments during fiscal 2008, a 56 percent increase from fiscal 2007.
Poor communication among federal agencies is a chronic problem, so the GAO's conclusions were not surprising, said Dick Reynolds, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who was vice commander of the Air Force Materiel Command.
"We've got a lot of government agencies that are supposed to work together, and a lot of times, they don't," Reynolds said.
The Air Force has bigger concerns, including its need for a new aerial refueling tanker aircraft, new search and rescue helicopters, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Reynolds said.
The Air Force Security Assistance Center, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, manages the Air Force's portion of the program. The unit at Wright-Patterson arranges sales of U.S. warplanes, weapons and spare parts to American allies and works with 90 countries and nine NATO entities.
According to the GAO, the State Department hasn't finalized its regulations to establish the Defense Department's duties in verifying whether the correct items are being shipped to foreign countries. Federal port customs officials lack information needed to verify that FMS shipments are properly authorized, and the Defense Department lacks data needed to effectively administer and oversee the program, the GAO said.
The State, Defense and Homeland Security departments told the GAO they will work to improve coordination.
Shell says some output shut in by Nigeria Forcados attack
Shell says some output shut in by Nigeria Forcados attack
Shell said Monday some oil production had been shut in following an
attack on its Forcados offshore platform in the Delta state in Nigeria, a
claim denied by security forces.
"We have received reports of an attack on two well clusters at Estuary
field in the western swamp operations. Some production has been shut in as a
precautionary measure while we investigate to determine what really happened,"
a Shell spokeswoman said.
Nigeria's main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the
Niger Delta, earlier Monday said it had attacked the Forcados platform and
that clusters 11 and 30 were engulfed in fire after a "massive explosion."
"Hurricane Piper Alpha has struck at the Shell Forcados offshore platform
in Delta state today, Monday, June 29, 2009, at about 03:30 hours," the group
said in an e-mail.
The MEND statement also said it had sunk a gunboat with between 20 and
23 soldiers on board.
A Joint Task Force spokesman denied its forces had clashed with MEND
fighters.
"The pipelines MEND said they attacked are isolated and not manned by JTF
personnel. So there could not have been any confrontation with militants,"
spokesman Colonel Rabe Abubakar said.
The military launched a major offensive against armed groups in the Niger
delta last month, bombarding their camps from the air and sea and sending in
battalions of soldiers.
Four armed groups' leaders, including a militia commander in the main
oil city Port Harcourt, Ateke Tom, have agreed to accept a government offer of
amnesty in return for disarming. MEND, which claims to be fighting for a
greater share of the nation's oil wealth, is not among the group of four.
OUTPUT LOST FROM EARLIER ATTACK
Shell said on June 18 that some oil production had been halted
following an attack on the Trans Ramos pipeline at Aghoro-2 community in
Bayelsa. The damaged pipeline supplies crude to the Forcados terminal.
The company had already declared force majeure on Forcados oil loadings
for the rest of June through July because of previous damage to another major
trunk line in the Chanomi Creek area of Delta state.
Militants bombed the Forcados oil tanker loading platform in February
2006, forcing Shell to suspend output. Forcados can pump about 380,000 b/d.
For more news about Nigerian oil production, please see Platts' web feature
at http://www.platts.com/Oil/Resources/News%20Features/nigeriaoil09/index.xml
Shell said Monday some oil production had been shut in following an
attack on its Forcados offshore platform in the Delta state in Nigeria, a
claim denied by security forces.
"We have received reports of an attack on two well clusters at Estuary
field in the western swamp operations. Some production has been shut in as a
precautionary measure while we investigate to determine what really happened,"
a Shell spokeswoman said.
Nigeria's main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the
Niger Delta, earlier Monday said it had attacked the Forcados platform and
that clusters 11 and 30 were engulfed in fire after a "massive explosion."
"Hurricane Piper Alpha has struck at the Shell Forcados offshore platform
in Delta state today, Monday, June 29, 2009, at about 03:30 hours," the group
said in an e-mail.
The MEND statement also said it had sunk a gunboat with between 20 and
23 soldiers on board.
A Joint Task Force spokesman denied its forces had clashed with MEND
fighters.
"The pipelines MEND said they attacked are isolated and not manned by JTF
personnel. So there could not have been any confrontation with militants,"
spokesman Colonel Rabe Abubakar said.
The military launched a major offensive against armed groups in the Niger
delta last month, bombarding their camps from the air and sea and sending in
battalions of soldiers.
Four armed groups' leaders, including a militia commander in the main
oil city Port Harcourt, Ateke Tom, have agreed to accept a government offer of
amnesty in return for disarming. MEND, which claims to be fighting for a
greater share of the nation's oil wealth, is not among the group of four.
OUTPUT LOST FROM EARLIER ATTACK
Shell said on June 18 that some oil production had been halted
following an attack on the Trans Ramos pipeline at Aghoro-2 community in
Bayelsa. The damaged pipeline supplies crude to the Forcados terminal.
The company had already declared force majeure on Forcados oil loadings
for the rest of June through July because of previous damage to another major
trunk line in the Chanomi Creek area of Delta state.
Militants bombed the Forcados oil tanker loading platform in February
2006, forcing Shell to suspend output. Forcados can pump about 380,000 b/d.
For more news about Nigerian oil production, please see Platts' web feature
at http://www.platts.com/Oil/Resources/News%20Features/nigeriaoil09/index.xml
YouTube - Catastrophe - How Obama Is Selling Out American Sovereignty
YouTube - Catastrophe - How Obama Is Selling Out American Sovereignty
Catastrophe - How Obama Is Selling Out American Sovereignty
Dick Morris
Video 1:54
Catastrophe - How Obama Is Selling Out American Sovereignty
Dick Morris
Video 1:54
Deadly Ambush in Tribal Region Could Indicate Looming Threat to Pakistan's Army - washingtonpost.com
Deadly Ambush in Tribal Region Could Indicate Looming Threat to Pakistan's Army - washingtonpost.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 29 -- The Pakistani military is at war with the Taliban, but the ambush that killed 16 soldiers in the tribal region of North Waziristan on Sunday was still somewhat unexpected.
"There is no operation which was either planned or being conducted in North Waziristan," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a Pakistani military spokesman, told reporters Monday. "This attack was completely unprovoked."
The Taliban assault on an army convoy passing through the village of Inzar Kas was one of the deadliest incidents for the military during its two-month-old offensive against the insurgents. But to some analysts, it also served as a warning of a bigger threat -- the possibility that disparate Taliban factions might be closing ranks to battle the army in Pakistan.
The group that has asserted responsibility for Sunday's ambush is led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, one of the many militant commanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan who fight -- sometimes against each other -- under the banner of the Taliban. In early 2008, Bahadur's group struck a peace deal with the local administration in North Waziristan, a mountainous tribal region along the Afghan border where the Pakistani government exerts little control. But a spokesman for his group announced Monday that because of U.S. drone bombings and Pakistani military activity, that peace has been shattered.
"We will carry out attacks on the security forces," Hamdullah Hamdi told reporters.
The failure of the accord in North Waziristan is a blow to the government as it plans a major operation in neighboring South Waziristan, home of Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's main Taliban foe and the man blamed for multiple suicide bombings and the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The region to the north is important because military strategists expect to use it as a transit route for ground troops and supplies.
Bahadur's call to arms followed another announcement by a formerly pro-government Taliban commander in South Waziristan, Maulvi Nazir, who last week warned that his fighters intend to target the military in response to its offensive and the drone strikes.
"These two, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, they were focused on Afghanistan," said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst and retired Pakistani army brigadier with experience in the northwestern tribal areas. "What we've heard is they've called back their fighters from Afghanistan and are bringing them to Pakistan."
Earlier last week, the government suffered yet another setback to its efforts to turn other fighters against Mehsud, when Taliban commander Qari Zainuddin, an enemy of Mehsud's, was killed by one of his own security guards.
"It was too naive to think he could defeat Baitullah Mehsud," Shah said of Zainuddin.
The string of developments suggests that the government's new efforts to take on Mehsud in South Waziristan could prove more challenging than its recent push into the Swat Valley, where military officials say they have nearly regained the territory from the Taliban. For the past two weeks, aircraft have strafed Mehsud's territory in preparation for a ground assault against his thousands of followers.
"The militants' attacks on military convoys and installations in North Waziristan are part of a well-thought-out Taliban strategy to expand the war to other territories from South Waziristan, where the army is currently operating," said Talat Masood, a defense analyst and retired general. "We will see more such attacks in coming days."
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 29 -- The Pakistani military is at war with the Taliban, but the ambush that killed 16 soldiers in the tribal region of North Waziristan on Sunday was still somewhat unexpected.
"There is no operation which was either planned or being conducted in North Waziristan," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a Pakistani military spokesman, told reporters Monday. "This attack was completely unprovoked."
The Taliban assault on an army convoy passing through the village of Inzar Kas was one of the deadliest incidents for the military during its two-month-old offensive against the insurgents. But to some analysts, it also served as a warning of a bigger threat -- the possibility that disparate Taliban factions might be closing ranks to battle the army in Pakistan.
The group that has asserted responsibility for Sunday's ambush is led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, one of the many militant commanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan who fight -- sometimes against each other -- under the banner of the Taliban. In early 2008, Bahadur's group struck a peace deal with the local administration in North Waziristan, a mountainous tribal region along the Afghan border where the Pakistani government exerts little control. But a spokesman for his group announced Monday that because of U.S. drone bombings and Pakistani military activity, that peace has been shattered.
"We will carry out attacks on the security forces," Hamdullah Hamdi told reporters.
The failure of the accord in North Waziristan is a blow to the government as it plans a major operation in neighboring South Waziristan, home of Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's main Taliban foe and the man blamed for multiple suicide bombings and the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The region to the north is important because military strategists expect to use it as a transit route for ground troops and supplies.
Bahadur's call to arms followed another announcement by a formerly pro-government Taliban commander in South Waziristan, Maulvi Nazir, who last week warned that his fighters intend to target the military in response to its offensive and the drone strikes.
"These two, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, they were focused on Afghanistan," said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst and retired Pakistani army brigadier with experience in the northwestern tribal areas. "What we've heard is they've called back their fighters from Afghanistan and are bringing them to Pakistan."
Earlier last week, the government suffered yet another setback to its efforts to turn other fighters against Mehsud, when Taliban commander Qari Zainuddin, an enemy of Mehsud's, was killed by one of his own security guards.
"It was too naive to think he could defeat Baitullah Mehsud," Shah said of Zainuddin.
The string of developments suggests that the government's new efforts to take on Mehsud in South Waziristan could prove more challenging than its recent push into the Swat Valley, where military officials say they have nearly regained the territory from the Taliban. For the past two weeks, aircraft have strafed Mehsud's territory in preparation for a ground assault against his thousands of followers.
"The militants' attacks on military convoys and installations in North Waziristan are part of a well-thought-out Taliban strategy to expand the war to other territories from South Waziristan, where the army is currently operating," said Talat Masood, a defense analyst and retired general. "We will see more such attacks in coming days."
To Israelis, It's a Suburb, Not a Settlement; To Palestinian Villagers, It Means a Barrier on Their Land - washingtonpost.com
To Israelis, It's a Suburb, Not a Settlement; To Palestinian Villagers, It Means a Barrier on Their Land - washingtonpost.com
MODIIN ILLIT, West Bank, June 29 -- Chaim Hanfling knows a lot about this settlement's population boom. Six of his 11 siblings have moved here from Jerusalem in recent years to take advantage of the lower land prices, and at age 29, he has added four children of his own.
Located just over the Green Line that marks the territory occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the booming ultra-Orthodox community, home to more than 41,000 people, shows why the settlement freeze demanded by the Obama administration is proving controversial for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and also why Palestinian officials are insisting on it.
Amid their gleaming, modern apartment buildings, with Tel Aviv visible on the horizon, residents say they have little in common with the people who have hauled mobile homes to hilltops in hopes of deepening Israel's presence in the occupied West Bank. But they are having lots of babies -- and they expect the bulldozers and cement mixers to keep supplying larger schools and more housing, a typically suburban demand that the country's political leadership is finding hard to refuse.
"We don't feel this is a settlement," said Hanfling. "We're in the middle of the country. It's like Tel Aviv or Ramat Gan," another Israeli city.
Across a nearby valley, residents of the Palestinian village of Bilin have watched in dismay as Modiin Illit has grown toward them and an Israeli barrier has snaked its way across their olive groves and pastureland. Two years ago, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the fence relocated, but nothing has happened. A weekly protest near the fence, joined by sympathetic Israelis and foreigners, has led to a steady stream of injuries, with protesters hit by Israeli fire and Israeli troops struck by rocks. One villager, Bassem Abu Rahmeh, died in April when a tear gas canister hit him in the chest.
"The court said, 'Move the fence,' so why is he dead?" villager Basel Mansour said as he surveyed the valley between Bilin and Modiin Illit from his rooftop. "Why hasn't it been moved?"
Amid a dispute with the Obama administration over the future of West Bank settlements, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak left for the United States on Monday for talks with White House special envoy George J. Mitchell. Local news reports say he may propose a temporary construction freeze of perhaps three months, though Netanyahu's office said it is committed to "normal life" proceeding.
Of the nearly 290,000 Israelis who live in West Bank settlements, nearly 40 percent reside in three areas -- Modiin Illit, Betar Illit and Maale Adumim -- where the impact of a settlement freeze would probably be felt most deeply.
Debate over West Bank settlements is separate from discussion of Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their national capital. The Obama administration has also asked Israel to freeze construction in Jerusalem neighborhoods occupied after the 1967 war.
"The goal is to find common ground with the Americans," said Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev. "Israel is willing to be creative and flexible."
Palestinian officials said Monday that they will not restart peace talks with Israel until a full settlement freeze is declared.
A trip across the valley outside Modiin Illit shows why the settlements remain a central Palestinian concern.
When the Israeli barrier was built around Modiin Illit, it looped into Palestinian territory -- too far, according to the Israeli Supreme Court, whose 2007 decision said that the route went farther than security needs required in order to make room for more building in the settlement.
Planned additions to the community have since been canceled by the Defense Ministry, which is in charge of construction in the West Bank. Israel Defense Forces Central Command spokesman Peter Lerner said the military has designed a new route for the fence that will return land to Bilin, but has not received funding.
The lack of an agreed-upon border, Palestinian officials and human rights groups said, figures into a variety of problems -- such as the violence that flares regularly between Palestinians and settlers, as well as larger policy matters. The rights group B'Tselem said in a recent report that neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority is taking clear responsibility for wastewater treatment in settlements or Palestinian towns and villages -- putting local drinking water at risk.
Facing U.S. demands, Israel has said it will take no more land for settlement and has agreed to remove more than 20 unauthorized outposts. But even that has proved slow going. The government recently proposed dismantling the outpost of Migron, a settlement of about 40 families that is under legal challenge for being built on private Palestinian land, by expanding another settlement nearby.
"The individuals in outposts shouldn't be rewarded" for building illegally, said Michael Sfard, an attorney for the group Peace Now who helped prepare a lawsuit against Migron.
In the City Hall of Modiin Illit, such struggles seem part of a different world. Pointing from a hillside to bulldozers busy in one part of town and graded sites ready for building in another, Mayor Yaakov Guterman said the city has 1,000 apartments under construction but is running out of room.
Modiin Illit can't expand to the west, back over the Green Line, he said, because that is a designated Israeli forest area. He said the community should be allowed to spread to the surrounding valley because, in his view, Modiin Illit "will be on the Israeli side" of the border under any final peace deal.
Meanwhile, he said, local families are having dozens of new babies every week, a boom that a construction freeze would "strangle."
"It'd be a death sentence," he said.
MODIIN ILLIT, West Bank, June 29 -- Chaim Hanfling knows a lot about this settlement's population boom. Six of his 11 siblings have moved here from Jerusalem in recent years to take advantage of the lower land prices, and at age 29, he has added four children of his own.
Located just over the Green Line that marks the territory occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the booming ultra-Orthodox community, home to more than 41,000 people, shows why the settlement freeze demanded by the Obama administration is proving controversial for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and also why Palestinian officials are insisting on it.
Amid their gleaming, modern apartment buildings, with Tel Aviv visible on the horizon, residents say they have little in common with the people who have hauled mobile homes to hilltops in hopes of deepening Israel's presence in the occupied West Bank. But they are having lots of babies -- and they expect the bulldozers and cement mixers to keep supplying larger schools and more housing, a typically suburban demand that the country's political leadership is finding hard to refuse.
"We don't feel this is a settlement," said Hanfling. "We're in the middle of the country. It's like Tel Aviv or Ramat Gan," another Israeli city.
Across a nearby valley, residents of the Palestinian village of Bilin have watched in dismay as Modiin Illit has grown toward them and an Israeli barrier has snaked its way across their olive groves and pastureland. Two years ago, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the fence relocated, but nothing has happened. A weekly protest near the fence, joined by sympathetic Israelis and foreigners, has led to a steady stream of injuries, with protesters hit by Israeli fire and Israeli troops struck by rocks. One villager, Bassem Abu Rahmeh, died in April when a tear gas canister hit him in the chest.
"The court said, 'Move the fence,' so why is he dead?" villager Basel Mansour said as he surveyed the valley between Bilin and Modiin Illit from his rooftop. "Why hasn't it been moved?"
Amid a dispute with the Obama administration over the future of West Bank settlements, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak left for the United States on Monday for talks with White House special envoy George J. Mitchell. Local news reports say he may propose a temporary construction freeze of perhaps three months, though Netanyahu's office said it is committed to "normal life" proceeding.
Of the nearly 290,000 Israelis who live in West Bank settlements, nearly 40 percent reside in three areas -- Modiin Illit, Betar Illit and Maale Adumim -- where the impact of a settlement freeze would probably be felt most deeply.
Debate over West Bank settlements is separate from discussion of Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their national capital. The Obama administration has also asked Israel to freeze construction in Jerusalem neighborhoods occupied after the 1967 war.
"The goal is to find common ground with the Americans," said Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev. "Israel is willing to be creative and flexible."
Palestinian officials said Monday that they will not restart peace talks with Israel until a full settlement freeze is declared.
A trip across the valley outside Modiin Illit shows why the settlements remain a central Palestinian concern.
When the Israeli barrier was built around Modiin Illit, it looped into Palestinian territory -- too far, according to the Israeli Supreme Court, whose 2007 decision said that the route went farther than security needs required in order to make room for more building in the settlement.
Planned additions to the community have since been canceled by the Defense Ministry, which is in charge of construction in the West Bank. Israel Defense Forces Central Command spokesman Peter Lerner said the military has designed a new route for the fence that will return land to Bilin, but has not received funding.
The lack of an agreed-upon border, Palestinian officials and human rights groups said, figures into a variety of problems -- such as the violence that flares regularly between Palestinians and settlers, as well as larger policy matters. The rights group B'Tselem said in a recent report that neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority is taking clear responsibility for wastewater treatment in settlements or Palestinian towns and villages -- putting local drinking water at risk.
Facing U.S. demands, Israel has said it will take no more land for settlement and has agreed to remove more than 20 unauthorized outposts. But even that has proved slow going. The government recently proposed dismantling the outpost of Migron, a settlement of about 40 families that is under legal challenge for being built on private Palestinian land, by expanding another settlement nearby.
"The individuals in outposts shouldn't be rewarded" for building illegally, said Michael Sfard, an attorney for the group Peace Now who helped prepare a lawsuit against Migron.
In the City Hall of Modiin Illit, such struggles seem part of a different world. Pointing from a hillside to bulldozers busy in one part of town and graded sites ready for building in another, Mayor Yaakov Guterman said the city has 1,000 apartments under construction but is running out of room.
Modiin Illit can't expand to the west, back over the Green Line, he said, because that is a designated Israeli forest area. He said the community should be allowed to spread to the surrounding valley because, in his view, Modiin Illit "will be on the Israeli side" of the border under any final peace deal.
Meanwhile, he said, local families are having dozens of new babies every week, a boom that a construction freeze would "strangle."
"It'd be a death sentence," he said.
Nigerian Rebels Drive Up Oil Prices - washingtonpost.com
Nigerian Rebels Drive Up Oil Prices - washingtonpost.com
A small group of insurgents in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta helped drive up oil prices around the world yesterday by announcing a strike against one of Royal Dutch Shell's two main export terminals in the West African nation.
Spurning a Nigerian government offer of amnesty, members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have continued a series of attacks on oil installations. The group and its allies have now shut down a total of about 900,000 barrels a day, according to Argus Global Markets, an industry newsletter. In an e-mail yesterday, the insurgents claimed to have set fire to Shell's Forcados terminal with a "massive explosion" and to have sunk a Nigerian military patrol boat with more than 20 soldiers on board.
News of the attack helped prop up oil prices, which rose $2.33 a barrel, or 3.4 percent, to $71.49 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday.
Prices rose despite a new International Energy Agency forecast warning of sluggish increases in world crude oil supplies over the next few years, but adding that demand would be even more sluggish. The group said that supplies through 2014 would rise 1.5 million barrels a day less than previously expected, but that oil consumption would be 3 million barrels a day less than the IEA had previously forecast.
"Whether we end up facing a supply crunch again by mid-decade, or with a more comfortable buffer of supply flexibility, depends largely on the pace of economic recovery and government action on efficiency", said Nobuo Tanaka, IEA executive director.
For now, however, oil supplies are plentiful, many analysts noted. World inventories are high and demand for petroleum products is weak because of the global economic slowdown. As a result of falling oil consumption and new capacity added in Saudi Arabia and Angola, there is about 6 million barrels a day of spare oil production capacity worldwide.
But the Nigerian attacks have eaten up a little bit of that cushion and have damaged the interests of several international oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and the Italian oil giant ENI.
Shell, which operates and owns 55 percent of a joint venture in the marshy Niger Delta region, has suffered a series of attacks that cut output from its Forcados terminal to 25,000 barrels a day from nearly 200,000 barrels a day earlier this year and more than 400,000 barrels a day before attacks in February 2006, according to Argus Global Markets.
The attacks have also cut into the Nigerian government's oil revenues. "With Nigeria's ever increasing budget deficits, the country cannot tolerate this decline in crude production for much longer," Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, said in a report on the region.
Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua recently offered to grant amnesty to insurgents who turned in weapons and renounced "militancy." The offer is open for 60 days.
In an e-mail response to questions yesterday, a MEND spokesman who uses the name Jomo Gbomo said: "We do not need amnesty. What we need is justice." He said that at least one leader of a loosely affiliated group had accepted. He called the person "a political thug."
In an earlier note, he had said that the Nigerian government was offering large sums of money to entice groups into accepting the amnesty offer. "Only those who are willing to sell their birthright for a bowl of porridge will accept while the rest of us will continue the struggle until justice is achieved," he wrote.
Spio-Garbrah said the amnesty would likely fail because the Nigerian government "has a historical credibility problem in the Delta." The oil-rich region has long complained that the federal government does not share enough proceeds from oil.
Shell spokespeople in the United States could not be reached for comment, but Bloomberg News quoted a Nigerian-based Shell spokesman as confirming the attacks.
A small group of insurgents in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta helped drive up oil prices around the world yesterday by announcing a strike against one of Royal Dutch Shell's two main export terminals in the West African nation.
Spurning a Nigerian government offer of amnesty, members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have continued a series of attacks on oil installations. The group and its allies have now shut down a total of about 900,000 barrels a day, according to Argus Global Markets, an industry newsletter. In an e-mail yesterday, the insurgents claimed to have set fire to Shell's Forcados terminal with a "massive explosion" and to have sunk a Nigerian military patrol boat with more than 20 soldiers on board.
News of the attack helped prop up oil prices, which rose $2.33 a barrel, or 3.4 percent, to $71.49 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday.
Prices rose despite a new International Energy Agency forecast warning of sluggish increases in world crude oil supplies over the next few years, but adding that demand would be even more sluggish. The group said that supplies through 2014 would rise 1.5 million barrels a day less than previously expected, but that oil consumption would be 3 million barrels a day less than the IEA had previously forecast.
"Whether we end up facing a supply crunch again by mid-decade, or with a more comfortable buffer of supply flexibility, depends largely on the pace of economic recovery and government action on efficiency", said Nobuo Tanaka, IEA executive director.
For now, however, oil supplies are plentiful, many analysts noted. World inventories are high and demand for petroleum products is weak because of the global economic slowdown. As a result of falling oil consumption and new capacity added in Saudi Arabia and Angola, there is about 6 million barrels a day of spare oil production capacity worldwide.
But the Nigerian attacks have eaten up a little bit of that cushion and have damaged the interests of several international oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and the Italian oil giant ENI.
Shell, which operates and owns 55 percent of a joint venture in the marshy Niger Delta region, has suffered a series of attacks that cut output from its Forcados terminal to 25,000 barrels a day from nearly 200,000 barrels a day earlier this year and more than 400,000 barrels a day before attacks in February 2006, according to Argus Global Markets.
The attacks have also cut into the Nigerian government's oil revenues. "With Nigeria's ever increasing budget deficits, the country cannot tolerate this decline in crude production for much longer," Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, said in a report on the region.
Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua recently offered to grant amnesty to insurgents who turned in weapons and renounced "militancy." The offer is open for 60 days.
In an e-mail response to questions yesterday, a MEND spokesman who uses the name Jomo Gbomo said: "We do not need amnesty. What we need is justice." He said that at least one leader of a loosely affiliated group had accepted. He called the person "a political thug."
In an earlier note, he had said that the Nigerian government was offering large sums of money to entice groups into accepting the amnesty offer. "Only those who are willing to sell their birthright for a bowl of porridge will accept while the rest of us will continue the struggle until justice is achieved," he wrote.
Spio-Garbrah said the amnesty would likely fail because the Nigerian government "has a historical credibility problem in the Delta." The oil-rich region has long complained that the federal government does not share enough proceeds from oil.
Shell spokespeople in the United States could not be reached for comment, but Bloomberg News quoted a Nigerian-based Shell spokesman as confirming the attacks.
New Honduran Leadership Flouts Worldwide Censure - washingtonpost.com
New Honduran Leadership Flouts Worldwide Censure - washingtonpost.com
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, June 29 -- Honduras's new government vowed Monday to remain in power despite growing worldwide condemnation of the military-led coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
As leaders from across Latin America met in Nicaragua to demand that Zelaya be returned to office, hundreds of protesters in the Honduran capital were met with tear gas fired by soldiers surrounding the presidential palace. The new government ordered the streets cleared, and shopkeepers barricaded their doors. Residents rushed home as a 9 p.m. curfew was enforced.
Although the United States and its allies condemned the coup, the most vocal opposition -- along with threats of military intervention -- came from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led a summit of leftist allies in Nicaragua that demanded Zelaya be reinstated. The Venezuelan populist, who led a failed coup in his own country in 1992 and survived one in 2002, said the Honduran people should rebel against the new government.
"We are saying to the coup organizers, we are ready to support a rebellion of the people of Honduras," Chávez said. "This coup will be defeated."
Chávez spent Monday in the meeting in Managua, attended by the leaders of Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries allied with Honduras. "We have to be very firm, very firm. This cannot end until José Manuel Zelaya is returned to power, without condition," he said.
Three of Honduras's neighbors -- Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua -- said Monday that they would suspend overland trade with Honduras for 48 hours. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, reading a statement, said the suspension was a "first step" against the new government.
Chávez also said his country is cutting off oil shipments to Honduras, which has received Venezuelan petroleum under beneficial terms.
Earlier, Chávez had pledged to "overthrow" Roberto Micheletti, a Honduran congressional leader and member of Zelaya's party who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon.
On Monday, Micheletti responded to Chávez's threat on Honduran radio, saying, "Nobody scares us."
Chávez's growing belligerence marks a clear challenge to the Obama administration to reverse the coup or suffer a loss of clout in the region.
Senior Obama officials said an overthrow of the Zelaya government had been brewing for days -- and they worked behind the scenes to stop the military and its conservative, wealthy backers from pushing Zelaya out. That the United States failed to stop the coup gives antagonists such as Chávez room to use events to push their vision for the region.
At dawn on Sunday, heavily armed troops burst into the presidential palace here, broke through the door of Zelaya's bedroom and roused him from bed. He told reporters guns were pointed at him and he was escorted from his official residence in pajamas. Later he was put on a Honduran military plane and flown into exile in Costa Rica.
Honduran leaders who supported his removal say Zelaya had overstepped his presidential powers by calling for a nonbinding referendum on how long a president can serve here. His critics say Zelaya was intent on using his populist rhetoric to maintain power after his term officially was to end in January.
Honduran military helicopters circled the capital all afternoon, as Micheletti met with his supporters and began to make appointments for a new cabinet, a signal that organizers of the military-led ouster of Zelaya were planning to hold firm.
"I am sure that 80 to 90 percent of the Honduran population is happy with what happened," Micheletti said, adding he had not spoken to any other Latin American head of state.
The coup appears to have been well organized. Sunday morning, as Zelaya was being ousted, local TV and radio stations went off the air. Cellphone and land-line communications remain jammed, and many numbers offered only a busy signal.
Zelaya, speaking to reporters in Managua, demanded that he be restored to power but said that violence was not an option.
He also said that many Hondurans had no idea about the worldwide condemnation of the coup because private television stations in his country blacked out coverage, playing cartoons and soap operas.
By early Monday night, another meeting of Latin American nations had begun in Managua, with such heavyweights as Mexico and the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, criticizing Zelaya's opponents.
Across the Americas and Europe, leaders called for Zelaya's reinstatement. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, said his government would not recognize a Honduran administration not headed by Zelaya. "We in Latin America can no longer accept someone trying to resolve his problem through the means of a coup," Lula said.
The United Nations condemned the coup and said Micheletti should make way for Zelaya's return. Zelaya was invited to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Zelaya also said he planned to return to Honduras and reclaim the presidency.
The ouster in the poor, agricultural country of 7 million people revived memories of coup-driven turmoil in Latin America. Zelaya, who has spoken frequently with reporters, has been quick to mention the political chaos that military overthrows have traditionally caused.
"Are we going to go back to the military being outside of the control of the civil state?" Zelaya said. "Everything that is supposed to be an achievement of the 21st century is at risk in Honduras."
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, June 29 -- Honduras's new government vowed Monday to remain in power despite growing worldwide condemnation of the military-led coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
As leaders from across Latin America met in Nicaragua to demand that Zelaya be returned to office, hundreds of protesters in the Honduran capital were met with tear gas fired by soldiers surrounding the presidential palace. The new government ordered the streets cleared, and shopkeepers barricaded their doors. Residents rushed home as a 9 p.m. curfew was enforced.
Although the United States and its allies condemned the coup, the most vocal opposition -- along with threats of military intervention -- came from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led a summit of leftist allies in Nicaragua that demanded Zelaya be reinstated. The Venezuelan populist, who led a failed coup in his own country in 1992 and survived one in 2002, said the Honduran people should rebel against the new government.
"We are saying to the coup organizers, we are ready to support a rebellion of the people of Honduras," Chávez said. "This coup will be defeated."
Chávez spent Monday in the meeting in Managua, attended by the leaders of Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries allied with Honduras. "We have to be very firm, very firm. This cannot end until José Manuel Zelaya is returned to power, without condition," he said.
Three of Honduras's neighbors -- Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua -- said Monday that they would suspend overland trade with Honduras for 48 hours. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, reading a statement, said the suspension was a "first step" against the new government.
Chávez also said his country is cutting off oil shipments to Honduras, which has received Venezuelan petroleum under beneficial terms.
Earlier, Chávez had pledged to "overthrow" Roberto Micheletti, a Honduran congressional leader and member of Zelaya's party who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon.
On Monday, Micheletti responded to Chávez's threat on Honduran radio, saying, "Nobody scares us."
Chávez's growing belligerence marks a clear challenge to the Obama administration to reverse the coup or suffer a loss of clout in the region.
Senior Obama officials said an overthrow of the Zelaya government had been brewing for days -- and they worked behind the scenes to stop the military and its conservative, wealthy backers from pushing Zelaya out. That the United States failed to stop the coup gives antagonists such as Chávez room to use events to push their vision for the region.
At dawn on Sunday, heavily armed troops burst into the presidential palace here, broke through the door of Zelaya's bedroom and roused him from bed. He told reporters guns were pointed at him and he was escorted from his official residence in pajamas. Later he was put on a Honduran military plane and flown into exile in Costa Rica.
Honduran leaders who supported his removal say Zelaya had overstepped his presidential powers by calling for a nonbinding referendum on how long a president can serve here. His critics say Zelaya was intent on using his populist rhetoric to maintain power after his term officially was to end in January.
Honduran military helicopters circled the capital all afternoon, as Micheletti met with his supporters and began to make appointments for a new cabinet, a signal that organizers of the military-led ouster of Zelaya were planning to hold firm.
"I am sure that 80 to 90 percent of the Honduran population is happy with what happened," Micheletti said, adding he had not spoken to any other Latin American head of state.
The coup appears to have been well organized. Sunday morning, as Zelaya was being ousted, local TV and radio stations went off the air. Cellphone and land-line communications remain jammed, and many numbers offered only a busy signal.
Zelaya, speaking to reporters in Managua, demanded that he be restored to power but said that violence was not an option.
He also said that many Hondurans had no idea about the worldwide condemnation of the coup because private television stations in his country blacked out coverage, playing cartoons and soap operas.
By early Monday night, another meeting of Latin American nations had begun in Managua, with such heavyweights as Mexico and the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, criticizing Zelaya's opponents.
Across the Americas and Europe, leaders called for Zelaya's reinstatement. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, said his government would not recognize a Honduran administration not headed by Zelaya. "We in Latin America can no longer accept someone trying to resolve his problem through the means of a coup," Lula said.
The United Nations condemned the coup and said Micheletti should make way for Zelaya's return. Zelaya was invited to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Zelaya also said he planned to return to Honduras and reclaim the presidency.
The ouster in the poor, agricultural country of 7 million people revived memories of coup-driven turmoil in Latin America. Zelaya, who has spoken frequently with reporters, has been quick to mention the political chaos that military overthrows have traditionally caused.
"Are we going to go back to the military being outside of the control of the civil state?" Zelaya said. "Everything that is supposed to be an achievement of the 21st century is at risk in Honduras."
Supreme Court to Review Restrictions on Corporate Spending in Federal Elections - washingtonpost.com
Supreme Court to Review Restrictions on Corporate Spending in Federal Elections - washingtonpost.com
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will consider whether to uphold a ban on corporate spending in federal elections, a move that campaign finance experts said could have a dramatic effect on the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.
In a surprise move, the court said it would delay a decision on whether a conservative group's film criticizing then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran afoul of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act.
Instead, the court scheduled a rare September hearing on whether the law itself raised constitutional questions and it said it would reexamine a 1990 decision that said restricting corporations from spending money from their general treasuries to support or oppose political candidates did not violate constitutional guarantees of free speech.
"This has the potential to be a blockbuster," said Michael E. Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. He said the issues have implications for "the whole architecture of the federal campaign financing system."
The court said it would withhold its decision about "Hillary: The Movie" until it received briefings this summer about the larger issues. It will hear arguments Sept. 9. The court begins its new term Oct. 5.
The court will be without Justice David H. Souter, who has been one of the most consistent supporters of the McCain-Feingold Act, formally called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Its main sponsors were Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).
The White House and supporters of court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said the September hearing should be additional motivation for the Senate to vote on her confirmation before it adjourns for its August recess.
It is unclear whether Sotomayor's replacement of Souter would make a difference in the case's outcome.
At issue in the case is a part of the law that forbids corporations, unions and special interest groups from using money from their general treasuries for "any broadcast, cable or satellite communications" that refer to a candidate for federal office within a certain time frame before an election.
In the past, that has meant 30-second to one-minute campaign ads. But a lower court said the same rule applied to the conservative group Citizens United's production of a scathing 90-minute movie on Clinton as she pursued the Democratic presidential nomination.
The three-judge panel applied a ruling written in 2007 by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that an ad is covered by the law when it is "susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate."
Citizens United's attorney, former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, had told the court that it should use the case to overturn the corporate spending ban the court recognized in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, as well as its decision in 2003 to uphold McCain-Feingold as constitutional.
But the court apparently decided it could not make such decisions without specific briefings on what would be a bold move.
McCain-Feingold's ban on "soft money" contributions is not part of the court's review.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas have said in past decisions that they did not think the restrictions on speech in the Campaign Reform Act could be squared with the First Amendment. But Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., although joining them to chip away at the act, have not indicated they are willing to go that far.
Supporters of campaign finance reform, such as Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, said overruling the court's precedents "would fundamentally undermine our democracy and change the character of federal elections."
"Banks like Citigroup, investment firms like Merrill Lynch, insurance companies like AIG and corporations like General Motors and Chrysler would be free to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of their corporation's wealth" to support some federal officeholders and to oppose others, Wertheimer said.
Others, such as Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, said the court's decision to review its precedents "shows the potential for a disturbing lack of judicial restraint."
But Olson told the court in his brief on behalf of Citizens United that the ban on corporate expenditures is "flatly at odds with the well-established principle that First Amendment protection does not depend upon the identity of the speaker."
The case is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will consider whether to uphold a ban on corporate spending in federal elections, a move that campaign finance experts said could have a dramatic effect on the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.
In a surprise move, the court said it would delay a decision on whether a conservative group's film criticizing then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran afoul of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act.
Instead, the court scheduled a rare September hearing on whether the law itself raised constitutional questions and it said it would reexamine a 1990 decision that said restricting corporations from spending money from their general treasuries to support or oppose political candidates did not violate constitutional guarantees of free speech.
"This has the potential to be a blockbuster," said Michael E. Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. He said the issues have implications for "the whole architecture of the federal campaign financing system."
The court said it would withhold its decision about "Hillary: The Movie" until it received briefings this summer about the larger issues. It will hear arguments Sept. 9. The court begins its new term Oct. 5.
The court will be without Justice David H. Souter, who has been one of the most consistent supporters of the McCain-Feingold Act, formally called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Its main sponsors were Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).
The White House and supporters of court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said the September hearing should be additional motivation for the Senate to vote on her confirmation before it adjourns for its August recess.
It is unclear whether Sotomayor's replacement of Souter would make a difference in the case's outcome.
At issue in the case is a part of the law that forbids corporations, unions and special interest groups from using money from their general treasuries for "any broadcast, cable or satellite communications" that refer to a candidate for federal office within a certain time frame before an election.
In the past, that has meant 30-second to one-minute campaign ads. But a lower court said the same rule applied to the conservative group Citizens United's production of a scathing 90-minute movie on Clinton as she pursued the Democratic presidential nomination.
The three-judge panel applied a ruling written in 2007 by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that an ad is covered by the law when it is "susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate."
Citizens United's attorney, former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, had told the court that it should use the case to overturn the corporate spending ban the court recognized in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, as well as its decision in 2003 to uphold McCain-Feingold as constitutional.
But the court apparently decided it could not make such decisions without specific briefings on what would be a bold move.
McCain-Feingold's ban on "soft money" contributions is not part of the court's review.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas have said in past decisions that they did not think the restrictions on speech in the Campaign Reform Act could be squared with the First Amendment. But Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., although joining them to chip away at the act, have not indicated they are willing to go that far.
Supporters of campaign finance reform, such as Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, said overruling the court's precedents "would fundamentally undermine our democracy and change the character of federal elections."
"Banks like Citigroup, investment firms like Merrill Lynch, insurance companies like AIG and corporations like General Motors and Chrysler would be free to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of their corporation's wealth" to support some federal officeholders and to oppose others, Wertheimer said.
Others, such as Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, said the court's decision to review its precedents "shows the potential for a disturbing lack of judicial restraint."
But Olson told the court in his brief on behalf of Citizens United that the ban on corporate expenditures is "flatly at odds with the well-established principle that First Amendment protection does not depend upon the identity of the speaker."
The case is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Ideological Diversity Among Democrats Means No Free Pass for Obama - washingtonpost.com
Ideological Diversity Among Democrats Means No Free Pass for Obama - washingtonpost.com
After a series of early and relatively easy victories on Capitol Hill, the White House appears certain to face a more difficult road when Congress returns to work next week.
Not content to task lawmakers with passing an ambitious agenda of record new spending, sweeping health-care reform and other major initiatives, President Obama yesterday nudged the Senate to move ahead with its version of a landmark energy bill the House passed on Friday. In recent weeks, he has also revived the idea of pursuing broad changes in immigration law.
Obama and his aides have proved adept at navigating the politics and eccentricities of the legislative branch. But as lawmakers attempt to navigate much trickier and more contentious issues in the second half of the year, the narrow margin of Friday's energy vote served as a warning: The higher the stakes, the tougher the challenge in finding consensus within what has become a diverse Democratic majority.
The legislation represented the first big test for one of Obama's biggest and most controversial domestic priorities, stemming climate change. Democrats who voted against the bill came from all over the map, from coal country to Midwestern factory towns to rural swaths of the Great Plains. Each of the regions helped swell the party's ranks in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and Democrats think they represent the linchpin to an enduring congressional majority.
But an energy bill that to a California Democrat represents a historic first step in slowing climate change appears to a Rust Belt colleague to be a redux of the 1993 energy-consumption tax that the House approved by a nearly identical 219 to 213 vote -- only to be brushed off by the Senate and resurrected by Republican candidates on the 1994 campaign trail.
"It's like you have a big umbrella and you're trying to fit 10 people under it, but if you move it in one direction, you're going to leave some people out," said Rep. Dan Maffei, a member of the class of '08 and the first Democrat to represent his Upstate New York district in nearly 30 years.
The energy bill will face an even stiffer challenge in the Senate, where the Democratic caucus is an array of conservatives, liberals, and just about everything in between, and these lawmakers are making very different calculations about the big items on Obama's legislative wish list.
At its core, Obama's domestic agenda is a liberal wish list of health care for all, tough new environmental regulations and government solutions to crises ranging from failing schools to faltering auto companies. But as the party's ranks expanded in 2006 and 2008, its center of gravity shifted to the middle. And the key to a durable majority, White House officials and party leaders agree, is adapting old policy goals to new political realities.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), a member of the Democratic leadership, said the party is coalescing as an amalgam of "activist centrists" who think government has a role in solving problems but are more pragmatic than ideological. "I think that's where the president is, and that's where we are," he said. "When you win red states, strange things happen."
The battle for energy votes isn't the only sign that despite Democrats' margins in the House and Senate, unity isn't a foregone conclusion. In recent weeks, lawmakers have ignored a veto threat to save a stealth fighter jet, rejected Obama's request to delay action on a costly highway bill and balked at the administration's request for funding to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Hoping to succeed where other presidents have struggled in implementing their agenda, the Obama White House has attempted to work Capitol Hill with a blend of agenda-setting and deference. Obama outlines ambitious objectives, then leaves lawmakers largely in charge of their final shape.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) enlisted two senior committee members to help assemble the House energy bill: liberal Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and conservative Rep. Rick Boucher, from coal-producing southwestern Virginia. The authors' bottom line was a cap that would gradually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately achieving 80 percent reductions from 1990 levels by 2050. Everything else was negotiable. When Obama entered the fray on May 5, summoning all 36 committee Democrats to the White House, he didn't make a single demand. Rather, participants say, he pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and said, "He had a chance to affect history. You, too, have a chance to affect history."
The House bill rejects Obama's proposal to auction 100 percent of emissions allowances, and instead calls for distributing 85 percent of allowances free of charge. The concession effectively defers the additional costs that polluters would incur, but the bill wouldn't have passed the chamber without it.
"We were given broad encouragement to report a bill in a timely manner," Boucher said. But Obama "made it clear he was expecting us to work out the details."
At the same time, Obama and a team of top White House officials -- many of them Hill veterans -- have been extraordinarily attentive to individual lawmakers, showering them with invitations and responding quickly to requests, concerns and criticisms.
"There has been a very, very high level of contact and dialogue. They've covered the ground," said Steve Richetti, who ran the congressional liaison office in the Clinton White House. And he noted the deference paid to the legislative branch, adding that, on health care and climate change, "they have tried to allow the process to work without intervening beyond what would be acceptable on the Hill."
Maintaining a sense of common interest across the party is a paramount goal. Early on, administration officials and Democratic leaders agreed they would steer clear of controversial social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. And to the discontent of many liberal Democrats, Congress intends to remain generally silent on those fronts.
"They know the consequences of '94. It looms," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said of the legislative debacles in President Bill Clinton's early tenure that produced the 1994 Republican landslide. "That division led to failure. . . . Our chances for success only come about by unity. That, as a culture up there, has been enforced by enough people that enough members believe."
For the White House, the trick is to keep a firm grip without appearing overly meddlesome.
Along with House and Senate leaders, Emanuel and his team are sharply focused on new lawmakers most likely to become Republican targets. Rep. Jason Altmire, elected in 2006, was invited to a breakfast in March with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki to discuss issues related to the large population of veterans in Altmire's western Pennsylvania district. Altmire's office and the VA now communicate regularly. Maffei was given a leading role in pressing two popular bills, to curb credit card practices deemed harmful to consumers and to protect auto dealers.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), a member of the class of '06, said he has had extensive discussions with top administration officials on financial regulatory reform, another Obama priority. When he expressed to a White House official his interest in talking with Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan about a piece of legislation, he got a call the next day setting the meeting for three days later. He has met with three other Cabinet officials to discuss bills.
"We're supposed to legislate. They're supposed to execute," he said of the relationship between Congress and the White House. "When you give people a chance to participate, you get people moving in the same direction."
At least some Republicans are also a focus of the outreach effort. Democrats are seeking support on health-care reform from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. But GOP leaders complain that the phone calls and White House invitations have slacked off -- perhaps because Obama's early efforts to woo Republicans yielded few votes.
"I think that in the beginning they seemed a lot more willing to go in and engage with us," said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
So far, the major votes have broken along party lines, forcing Obama to rely almost entirely on his own diverse body of Democrats. Pressure built on them as last week's final energy vote drew near. Even Boucher was targeted when House Republicans circulated a letter from MeadWestvaco, a major employer in western Virginia, warning that 1,500 packaging jobs in Covington, Va., could be at risk.
Boucher, a 14-term incumbent, was unwavering, but others were unmoved. Altmire had bad news for Emanuel when his 2006 campaign mentor called Wednesday about the impending vote.
"I'm a firm no," Altmire replied. "I wouldn't waste any more time talking to me."
After a series of early and relatively easy victories on Capitol Hill, the White House appears certain to face a more difficult road when Congress returns to work next week.
Not content to task lawmakers with passing an ambitious agenda of record new spending, sweeping health-care reform and other major initiatives, President Obama yesterday nudged the Senate to move ahead with its version of a landmark energy bill the House passed on Friday. In recent weeks, he has also revived the idea of pursuing broad changes in immigration law.
Obama and his aides have proved adept at navigating the politics and eccentricities of the legislative branch. But as lawmakers attempt to navigate much trickier and more contentious issues in the second half of the year, the narrow margin of Friday's energy vote served as a warning: The higher the stakes, the tougher the challenge in finding consensus within what has become a diverse Democratic majority.
The legislation represented the first big test for one of Obama's biggest and most controversial domestic priorities, stemming climate change. Democrats who voted against the bill came from all over the map, from coal country to Midwestern factory towns to rural swaths of the Great Plains. Each of the regions helped swell the party's ranks in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and Democrats think they represent the linchpin to an enduring congressional majority.
But an energy bill that to a California Democrat represents a historic first step in slowing climate change appears to a Rust Belt colleague to be a redux of the 1993 energy-consumption tax that the House approved by a nearly identical 219 to 213 vote -- only to be brushed off by the Senate and resurrected by Republican candidates on the 1994 campaign trail.
"It's like you have a big umbrella and you're trying to fit 10 people under it, but if you move it in one direction, you're going to leave some people out," said Rep. Dan Maffei, a member of the class of '08 and the first Democrat to represent his Upstate New York district in nearly 30 years.
The energy bill will face an even stiffer challenge in the Senate, where the Democratic caucus is an array of conservatives, liberals, and just about everything in between, and these lawmakers are making very different calculations about the big items on Obama's legislative wish list.
At its core, Obama's domestic agenda is a liberal wish list of health care for all, tough new environmental regulations and government solutions to crises ranging from failing schools to faltering auto companies. But as the party's ranks expanded in 2006 and 2008, its center of gravity shifted to the middle. And the key to a durable majority, White House officials and party leaders agree, is adapting old policy goals to new political realities.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), a member of the Democratic leadership, said the party is coalescing as an amalgam of "activist centrists" who think government has a role in solving problems but are more pragmatic than ideological. "I think that's where the president is, and that's where we are," he said. "When you win red states, strange things happen."
The battle for energy votes isn't the only sign that despite Democrats' margins in the House and Senate, unity isn't a foregone conclusion. In recent weeks, lawmakers have ignored a veto threat to save a stealth fighter jet, rejected Obama's request to delay action on a costly highway bill and balked at the administration's request for funding to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Hoping to succeed where other presidents have struggled in implementing their agenda, the Obama White House has attempted to work Capitol Hill with a blend of agenda-setting and deference. Obama outlines ambitious objectives, then leaves lawmakers largely in charge of their final shape.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) enlisted two senior committee members to help assemble the House energy bill: liberal Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and conservative Rep. Rick Boucher, from coal-producing southwestern Virginia. The authors' bottom line was a cap that would gradually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately achieving 80 percent reductions from 1990 levels by 2050. Everything else was negotiable. When Obama entered the fray on May 5, summoning all 36 committee Democrats to the White House, he didn't make a single demand. Rather, participants say, he pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and said, "He had a chance to affect history. You, too, have a chance to affect history."
The House bill rejects Obama's proposal to auction 100 percent of emissions allowances, and instead calls for distributing 85 percent of allowances free of charge. The concession effectively defers the additional costs that polluters would incur, but the bill wouldn't have passed the chamber without it.
"We were given broad encouragement to report a bill in a timely manner," Boucher said. But Obama "made it clear he was expecting us to work out the details."
At the same time, Obama and a team of top White House officials -- many of them Hill veterans -- have been extraordinarily attentive to individual lawmakers, showering them with invitations and responding quickly to requests, concerns and criticisms.
"There has been a very, very high level of contact and dialogue. They've covered the ground," said Steve Richetti, who ran the congressional liaison office in the Clinton White House. And he noted the deference paid to the legislative branch, adding that, on health care and climate change, "they have tried to allow the process to work without intervening beyond what would be acceptable on the Hill."
Maintaining a sense of common interest across the party is a paramount goal. Early on, administration officials and Democratic leaders agreed they would steer clear of controversial social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. And to the discontent of many liberal Democrats, Congress intends to remain generally silent on those fronts.
"They know the consequences of '94. It looms," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said of the legislative debacles in President Bill Clinton's early tenure that produced the 1994 Republican landslide. "That division led to failure. . . . Our chances for success only come about by unity. That, as a culture up there, has been enforced by enough people that enough members believe."
For the White House, the trick is to keep a firm grip without appearing overly meddlesome.
Along with House and Senate leaders, Emanuel and his team are sharply focused on new lawmakers most likely to become Republican targets. Rep. Jason Altmire, elected in 2006, was invited to a breakfast in March with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki to discuss issues related to the large population of veterans in Altmire's western Pennsylvania district. Altmire's office and the VA now communicate regularly. Maffei was given a leading role in pressing two popular bills, to curb credit card practices deemed harmful to consumers and to protect auto dealers.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), a member of the class of '06, said he has had extensive discussions with top administration officials on financial regulatory reform, another Obama priority. When he expressed to a White House official his interest in talking with Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan about a piece of legislation, he got a call the next day setting the meeting for three days later. He has met with three other Cabinet officials to discuss bills.
"We're supposed to legislate. They're supposed to execute," he said of the relationship between Congress and the White House. "When you give people a chance to participate, you get people moving in the same direction."
At least some Republicans are also a focus of the outreach effort. Democrats are seeking support on health-care reform from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. But GOP leaders complain that the phone calls and White House invitations have slacked off -- perhaps because Obama's early efforts to woo Republicans yielded few votes.
"I think that in the beginning they seemed a lot more willing to go in and engage with us," said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
So far, the major votes have broken along party lines, forcing Obama to rely almost entirely on his own diverse body of Democrats. Pressure built on them as last week's final energy vote drew near. Even Boucher was targeted when House Republicans circulated a letter from MeadWestvaco, a major employer in western Virginia, warning that 1,500 packaging jobs in Covington, Va., could be at risk.
Boucher, a 14-term incumbent, was unwavering, but others were unmoved. Altmire had bad news for Emanuel when his 2006 campaign mentor called Wednesday about the impending vote.
"I'm a firm no," Altmire replied. "I wouldn't waste any more time talking to me."
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