Category: Barack Obama

This is a Big F%$#ing Deal

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Exempt workers are those who are paid by salary, rather than time, and are not paid anything for overtime.

Basically, they have to have “management” duties, and they have to be paid more than, $23,660.00 a year.

That number has been unchanged since 2004, until today:

Barack Obama has launched a push for salaried workers earning nearly US$1,000 a week to receive overtime pay, with the president declaring that too many Americans are working long hours for less than they deserve.

The long-awaited overtime rule from the US labor department would more than double the threshold at which employers can avoid paying overtime, from $455 a week to $970 a week by 2016. That would mean salaried employees earning less than $50,440 a year would be assured overtime if they worked more than 40 hours per week, up from the current $23,660 a year.

“We’ve got to keep making sure hard work is rewarded,” Obama wrote in an article for the Huffington Post. “That’s how America should do business. In this country a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay.”

To keep up with future inflation and wage growth the proposal would peg the salary threshold at the 40th percentile of income, individuals familiar with the plan said. They requested anonymity in return for discussing the proposal ahead of the official announcement. The president has been scheduled to promote the proposal during a visit on Thursday to La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Obama’s proposal aims to narrow a loophole that the president has long said some employers exploit to avoid paying overtime.

Employees who make above the salary threshold can be denied overtime if they are deemed managers. Some work gruelling schedules at fast food chains and retail stores, but with no overtime eligibility their pay may be lower per hour than many workers they supervise.

………

Under the current threshold only about 8% of salaried workers are eligible for 150% of their pay rate when they work overtime. The EPI estimates that doubling the salary level would make up to 40% of salaried workers eligible.

It should be noted that the requirement for a pay level in order to be exempt was established under the Ford Administration, when it was set at 1.57 times the median wage ($250 a week) which, if updated for today, turns out to be about $51K/year.

It’s not as revolutionary as the US Chamber of Commerce says that it is. It’s just basically undoing the damage done by not adjusting this number for inflation.

Also note that Obama chose not to increase the percent of time spent on management duties for exempt status.

It’s a good news for at least 5 million workers who are currently paid slave wages, and are ordered to put in free overtime.

Nope, No Corruption Here………

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It is not surprising that Obama wants to move a portion of military pension to defined contribution (401(k) type) plan, because, after all, Obama has been all about allowing Wall Street to loot, but it is a bit unseemly for the White House to direct most of the business a longtime political supporter, Blackrock:

American service members are confronting a potential haircut. Under a proposal the Pentagon outlined last week, new members of the armed forces would see their guaranteed retirement benefits cut by one-fifth if Congress approves the plan.

But if future veterans are being asked to make do with less, one key constituency stands to capture more: Wall Street.

Under the details of the Pentagon plan, the federal government would divert 3 percent of service members’ pay into a 401(k)-style plan that would be managed largely by BlackRock, a financial firm whose executives helped bankroll President Barack Obama’s election campaigns.

The change could wind up transferring as much as $50 billion from military paychecks to BlackRock, generating tens of millions of dollars in fees for the Wall Street giant. BlackRock employees have donated over $90,000 to Obama’s campaigns directly, and nearly $75,000 to the Democratic National Committee during the course of Obama’s two presidential campaigns, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink was also a prominent supporter of Obama’s election campaigns, and the company in 2013 named Hillary Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff to its board of directors.

Gee, what a surprise.

Well, I guess that funding for the Barack Obama Presidential library, and 6-7 figure speaker fees don’t generate themselves.

Obama’s Lawless Behavior in Support of the Security State

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You may recall that the NSA bulk data collection of phone records were ruled by an Federal appellate court.

It not turns out that the Obama administration tried to get a ruling from the FISA court saying that they could ignore this ruling.

The interesting bit here is that the FISA court is technically a district court, and so is subordinate to an appellate court.

This shows a complete contempt for the rule of law:

The Obama administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months.

The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop.

US officials confirmed last week that they would ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court – better known as the Fisa court, a panel that meets in secret as a step in the surveillance process and thus far has only ever had the government argue before it – to turn the domestic bulk collection spigot back on.

Justice Department national security chief John A Carlin cited a six-month transition period provided in the USA Freedom Act – passed by the Senate last week to ban the bulk collection – as a reason to permit an “orderly transition” of the NSA’s domestic dragnet. Carlin did not address whether the transition clause of the Freedom Act still applies now that a congressional deadlock meant the program shut down on 31 May.

But Carlin asked the Fisa court to set aside a landmark declaration by the second circuit court of appeals. Decided on 7 May, the appeals court ruled that the government had erroneously interpreted the Patriot Act’s authorization of data collection as “relevant” to an ongoing investigation to permit bulk collection.

Carlin, in his filing, wrote that the Patriot Act provision remained “in effect” during the transition period.

“This court may certainly consider ACLU v Clapper as part of its evaluation of the government’s application, but second circuit rulings do not constitute controlling precedent for this court,” Carlin wrote in the 2 June application. Instead, the government asked the court to rely on its own body of once-secret precedent stretching back to 2006, which Carlin called “the better interpretation of the statute”.

While it is true that  the FISA court is not technically under the 2nd court of appeals, which ruled the program illegal, because they are not in the 2nd district, (technically, they are not in any district) but blithely asking the court to overrule an appeals court shows a complete contempt for due process and the rule of law.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever!™

Senate Dems Don Spelunking Helmets

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Senate leaders, after personal intercessions by President Obama, reached an agreement Wednesday on a path to grant the president accelerated power to complete a sweeping trade accord ringing the Pacific Ocean — just a day after fellow Democrats had blocked him.

The larger aim is to secure a 12-nation agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, spanning the Pacific from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia and encompassing 40 percent of the world’s economic output. Mr. Obama sees the pact as a central part of his economic legacy, the largest trade deal in two decades and the realization of his foreign policy pivot toward Asia.

It also means money. Major American business interests, from Nike to Boeing and Hollywood to Silicon Valley, want the deal badly. Labor and environmental groups see it as a threat to American workers at the expense of profits.

A series of trade-related votes will begin Thursday and stretch well into next week. The trade promotion authority would give the president the ability to move more quickly on the deal, leaving Congress with the power to vote up or down on the agreement but with no ability to amend it.

I had hoped that they would have at least made it a full day,

This Sh%$ Just Got Real on Fast Track

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Senate Democrats voted against cloture, 52-47, so the vote failed to reach the 60 vote threshold:

President Obama collided with his own party Tuesday when Senate Democrats stalled consideration of a trade measure that would give the administration greater authority to negotiate more freely with other countries.

The Senate vote was a sharp blow to the president’s efforts to win approval for a new Asia-Pacific trade bill that has emerged as a top agenda item for Obama. Only one Democratic senator, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, voted with the president Tuesday.

Administration officials and Republican leaders immediately said they would bring a measure back to the Senate floor.

But the setback highlighted the president’s failure to convince Democratic lawmakers, labor union leaders and environmental groups that the 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership would help the U.S. economy. Obama has argued that the pact would open markets, promote better labor conditions abroad and protect endangered species and the environment.

I called both of my Senators this morning to ask them to vote now and to vote against cloture.

For the next round, you should do the same.

What didn’t help was Obama’s belittling, and quite frankly chicken sh%$ dismissal of Elizabeth Warren’s concerns:

………

What began with a slight jab at Warren’s trade views — “She’s wrong on this,” Obama told MSNBC three weeks ago — has escalated into a series of daily barbs and retorts carried out on cable TV and Internet interviews, on radio shows and from the official podium at the White House.

Over the weekend, Obama used a rather harsh turn of phrase — “a politician like everybody else” — against Warren, who has carefully constructed an image as a principled voice in the wilderness taking unpopular political stands to help the voiceless working class.

Warren returned fire in interviews and appearances Monday and Tuesday, accusing the president of duplicity because he “won’t actually let people read the agreement” before Tuesday’s procedural vote in the Senate.

………

Allies of Warren were taken aback by the personal nature of the president’s remarks.

“I think the president was disrespectful to her, the way he did that. I think the president has made this more personal than he needed to,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has led opposition to the trade legislation, told reporters after Tuesday’s vote.

Brown said that some of Obama’s comments were perceived as insults directed not only at Warren but also at other Democratic opponents of the trade deal.

I haven’t heard this about Sherrod Brown, or about Bernie Sanders, or other male Senators.

The Obama administration, and Barack Obama, have a long history of being dismissive of women, with one former aide describing his administration as, “This place would be in court for a hostile workplace. … Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women“. (See also “sweetie“)

In addition to allowing his sexism to show, Obama also was stupid about this, because it is precisely the sort of behavior that gets every Senator’s back up.

I’m happy about this development, though I am concerned that I am on the same side of this as the right wing morons at Pajamas Media, who are, “Rooting for the Democrats to Block Obama’s ‘Fast Track’ Deal.”

Truth be told, part of the nearly unanimous opposition of the Democrats for cloture is not as significant as it seems, as some of the Democrats want to attach related provisions to the vote:

According to Democratic leadership aides, Senators Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat, have proposed a compromise to Republican leaders: First, hold a separate vote on legislation aimed at discouraging so-called currency manipulation by American trading partners, which could be vetoed by the president. Then, wrap the fast-track authority he is seeking with a more encompassing bill, including assistance for displaced workers, extension of an African trade accord and other trade enforcement measures.

That offer could be the path forward, given that at least eight Democrats who normally embrace trade deals voted no on Tuesday.

So the votes may shift in the next few days.

A note for Delaware voters, there was only one Democratic Senator who voted for cloture, Delaware’s Tom Carper.

Delaware primary voters, and anyone interested in donating to his campaign, please take note.

Seriously, Nike? I Think That Obama Is Trolling TPP Opponents Now

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Obama spoke at a Nike plant to promote the Trans Pacific Partnershio (TPP).

This is an interesting choice, considering that the show manufacturer is patient zero in shipping jobs overseas to contractors who practice abusive worker policiew.

Bernie Sanders is not unaware of the irony of the choise of venue:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling upon President Obama to cancel his plans to visit Nike’s corporate headquarters this week as part of the White House’s push to drum up support for a major new trade agreement.

Sanders said the shoe giant, which has moved many of its manufacturing jobs to cheaper markets overseas, only epitomizes how previous trade deals “have failed American workers.”

In a letter sent to Obama Wednesday afternoon and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the self-identified socialist, who is now running for president as a Democrat, says the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would only boost Nike’s profits while doing nothing to increase manufacturing jobs here.

“While manufacturing may not be the most glamorous job, I’m sure that there are workers across America, from Baltimore to Los Angeles to Vermont to Ferguson, who would be more than happy to be paid $15-$20 an hour to manufacture the Nike products they buy,” Sanders wrote.

………

Obama plans to visit Nike’s Portland-area headquarters Friday morning as he takes his sales pitch outside Washington for both the 12-nation Pacific trade deal and the so-called “fast track” authority he has said is vital to finalizing negotiations with Japan and other partners.

Obama’s fellow Democrats are proving to be the main obstacle to passing both in Congress, but he has been ramping up his appeals in recent weeks.

………

But Sanders said TPP would “do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country,” and would only boost its executives’ compensation.

He cited a study that Nike employs more than 300,000 workers in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour and labor unions are banned.

Nike has been the subject of protests for its use of foreign sweat shop labor for over a decade, and Obama thinks that it is a good idea to extol the virtues of the TPP there.

I am not sure if Barak is just f%$#ing with us, or if he just believes that no one could possibly have a fulfilling life living on shop floor.

In either case though, his decision to speak there oozes contempt for people on the other side of the issue.

Joan F%$#ing Walsh is Calling Obama a Liar?

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Joan Walsh, former editor-in-chief for Salon magazine, has been a long time, and vehement supporter of Barack Obama.

Well, she just called the President a liar on the Trans Pacific Partnership:

I’m on record declaring that the “split” in the Democratic Party over economic populism has been over-hyped by the media, the GOP and conservative Democrats. Democrats have way more in common, when it comes to addressing growing income inequality and declining social mobility, than differences.

But the divisions over the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) are real, and they’re getting ugly. President Obama has apparently decided reasoning and lobbying isn’t going to be enough to win over skeptics; he’s lately resorted to personal insults. Telling Chris Matthews Tuesday that “I love Elizabeth [Warren]…but she’s wrong on this” was a big wet kiss, compared to what came later.

On Thursday Obama compared critics of the deal to Sarah Palin and other wingnuts who peddled “death panel” lies about the Affordable Care Act, in a speech to supporters at Organizing For America, the offshoot of his campaign juggernaut Obama For America. He escalated his attacks when he jumped on a conference call with reporters on Friday.

“The one that gets on my nerves the most is the notion that this is a ‘secret’ deal,” Obama said. “Every single one of the critics who I hear saying, ‘this is a secret deal,’ or send out emails to their fundraising base saying they’re working to prevent this secret deal, can walk over today and read the text of the agreement. There’s nothing secret about it.” He singled out “unions” among the wrongheaded critics of his TPP plans.

I confess: I haven’t paid close enough attention to the TPP controversy. But when the president started attacking Warren and unions so personally, I got interested. He’s saying they’re either stupid, or lying, or both. It reminded me of the dark days before the 2010 midterm “shellacking,” when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs attacked “the professional left,” and Vice President Joe Biden told progressives to “stop whining.” That didn’t work; the election was a disaster.

The anti-progressive rhetoric is getting uglier – and this time, some of it’s coming from the president. The AFL-CIO’s Thea Lee has worked on global trade issues for 25 years, and “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it quite as bad as this,” she says.

Sure, both sides are using strong rhetoric, but the president’s attack on his critics as “dishonest” would imply that he’s the one telling the truth. In fact, here are three big ways the president is lamentably shading the truth when it comes to TPP.

Secrecy: It’s true that members of Congress can personally “walk over” and “read the text” of the agreement. Alone, without staff, and without taking notes. And they’re prohibited by law from discussing the details with the media or their constituents.  The administration has deemed the negotiations “classified.”

………

So that’s what Warren means by a “secret deal.” She and Sen. Sherrod Brown wrote to the president this weekend asking that he declassify the latest negotiated text and release it, before demanding a “fast track” vote on the agreement.

Marginalizing opposition as Warren and “the unions.” Warren is joined by Democrats ranging from frequent ally Brown to pro-business voices like Sen. Chuck Schumer to moderate Sen. Bob Casey. While the president hoped to win support from the Congressional Black Caucus, skeptics remain. And yes, labor has been a loud voice against the deal – along with the rest of the Democratic base, and then some.

The coalition opposing TPP includes the National Resources Defense Council, Doctors without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation; critics of certain aspects of the likely deal include New York Times food writer Mark Bittman and the AARP. They are concerned about the way TPP could affect not only manufacturing jobs, but drug prices, intellectual property, environmental regulation and food safety. Obama is facing a remarkably broad-based pushback to his plans, and his effort to isolate Warren and unions is disingenuous.

Denying the vast, pro-corporate power of the “Investor State Dispute Settlement” panel. The wrangling between Warren and the White House over TPP isn’t new. Ever since her March 4 op-ed denouncing the “Investor State Dispute Settlement” provisions of the trade deal, frankly, administration officials have been trying to make Warren look a little batty.

………

“I think if you could get my colleagues to be honest, on the Democratic side,” Sen. Sherrod Brown told the Huffington Post, “they will say they’ve been talked to, approached, lobbied and maybe cajoled by more cabinet members on this issue than any issue since Barack Obama’s been president…I wish they put the same effort into minimum wage. I wish they put the same effort into Medicare at 55. I wish they put the same effort into some consumer strengthening on Dodd-Frank.”

So far, though, the pressure hasn’t worked – and now the administration is distorting the truth. The president can do better than this – and he’s likely going to have to. Hillary Clinton shouldn’t take bad advice from the media about arbitrarily “distancing” herself from the Obama administration. But this is a real conflict for the 2016 frontrunner. And on this one, she might have to choose between the president and much of the party base.

The statements are remarkable primarily because of its source.

Joan Walsh is someone I would describe as an Obamabot, and if he’s lost her on this issue, this is an indication of a significant shift in attitude among Obama supporters.

Headline of the Day

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President Obama Declares the Threat to Crappy Sony Movies a National Emergency

—Marcy “Emptywheel” Wheeler

A response to Obama’s new executive order, which is vague enough to allow sanctions against pretty much anyone who publishes the data or provides privacy tools..

It is overarching, irresponsible, and fundamentally anti-democratic, which makes it a typical security policy of Obama and His Evil Minions™.

But it gets worse. The EO targets not just the hackers themselves, but also those who benefit from or materially support hacks. The targeting of those who are “responsible for or complicit in … the receipt or use for commercial or competitive advantage … by a commercial entity, outside the United States of trade secrets misappropriated through cyber-enabled means, … where the misappropriation of such trade secrets is reasonably likely to result in, or has materially contributed to, a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States” could be used to target journalism abroad. Does WikiLeaks’ publication of secret Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations qualify? Does Guardian’s publication of contractors’ involvement in NSA hacking?

 And the EO creates a “material support” category similar to the one that, in the terrorism context, has been ripe for abuse. Its targets include those who have “provided … material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of” such significant hacks. Does that include encryption providers? Does it include other privacy protections?

 Finally, I’m generally concerned about this EO because of the way National Emergencies have served as the justification for a lot of secret spying decisions. Just about every application to the FISC for some crazy interpretation of surveillance laws in the name of counterterrorism founds their justification neither in the September 17, 2001 Finding authorizing covert actions against al Qaeda nor the September 18, 2001 AUMF, but instead in President Bush’s declaration of a National Emergency on September 14, 2001. I’m not sure precisely why, but that’s what the Executive has long used to convince FISC that it should rubber stamp expansive interpretations of surveillance law. So I assume this declaration could be too.

 In other words, the sanctions regime may well be the least of this EO.

Just lovely.

Moar War!!!!

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Remember how Barack Obama was going to pull out Afghanistan?

Not so Much:

The Obama administration is nearing a decision to keep more troops in Afghanistan next year than it had intended, effectively upending its drawdown plans in response to roiling violence in the country and another false start in the effort to open peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

As recently as last month, American officials had hoped that a renewed push to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table would yield the beginnings of a peace process and allow the United States to stick with its plan to drop the number of troops in Afghanistan from just under 10,000 to about 5,600 by the end of the year.

But those hopes have been dashed by signs that the Taliban remain deeply divided over whether to engage in talks, as they have been for years, and that the remaining Qaeda presence in the region is proving more resilient than officials had anticipated.

………

Keeping the number of troops closer to 10,000 would also allow the American-led coalition to maintain two large bases in Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan, and in Jalalabad, the biggest city in the country’s east. The base in Jalalabad is a hub for the collection of intelligence on Qaeda operations; it was, for instance, the base from which American forces launched the raid in 2011 that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Despite the formal end of the American-led combat mission in Afghanistan, coalition forces are still regularly launching airstrikes to support Afghan soldiers and police, and American Special Operations troops are still raiding remote villages and mountainside redoubts that shelter both Taliban fighters and operatives from Al Qaeda and other foreign extremist groups.

The continuity between the Bush and the Obama administration has become more and more striking over the years.

Same as it ever was!

It’s one thing to listen to your generals, who come from a culture that thinks that the problem with the whole Vietnam war wasn’t the 58,000 American dead, or the 1½-3½ million Vietnamese, but instead was that we lacked sufficient will to win, and it’s another to swallow this perverted world view as gospel.

The Pentagon in general, and the uniformed military in particular, is structured with the singular goal of prosecuting a war.  They spectacularly ill-equipped to determine whether and when we should go to war, and only misery and defeat can come from letting them take this roll.

It’s one of the reasons that civilian control of the military is enshrined in the constitution.

Rudolph Giuliani: Making Donald Trump Look Good

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Have you heard Rudy’s latest? He is saying that Barack Obama should be more like Bill Cosby.

He then followed this statement with a noun, a verb, and “9-11”:

Bill Cosby may stand accused of drugging and raping dozens of women, but Rudy Giuliani thinks President Obama could learn a thing or two from the disgraced comedian.

Speaking with talk radio host John Gambling of AM 970 The Answer on Thursday, the former New York City mayor charged that Obama was ignoring “enormous amount of crime” committed by black Americans, citing a recent highly-publicized scuffle at Brooklyn McDonald’s and the shooting of two Ferguson, Missouri police officers early Thursday.

Referring to Cosby’s history of scolding remarks inveighing against black culture, Giuliani said, “I hate to mention it because of what happened afterwards, but [he should be saying] the kinds of stuff Bill Cosby used to say.”

Seriously. This is not The Onion, this is real.

Rudolph Giuliani has based his entire political career on hating on Black people and other minorities.

Can we call him a bigoted nut-job yet?

Today’s Must Read

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Ted Rall’s essay Obama Destroyed Libya. (alternate link here, the first link is twitchy)

He makes a number of points, that Libya under Gaddafi was generally prosperous, at least by the standards of Africa and the Arab world, albeit with a pretty horrific human rights record, and now it is a basket case with a growing lawlessness and it has become a locus for terrorist activity.

I think that the most important part of his essay though, is his conclusion that Barack Obama did not learn the lesson that he should have from this fiasco:

To Obama’s credit, he admits that he screwed up in Libya. Unfortunately, he drew the wrong lesson. In 2014, he told an interviewer that a large ground invasion force might have helped Libya’s post-Gaddafi government succeed. Because that worked so well in Iraq and Afghanistan. But if he really believes that, why doesn’t he order in the troops?

 Obama’s real mistake was to depose a secular socialist autocrat and allow him to be replaced by a bunch of crazy religious fundamentalist militias whose factionalism ensured they’d never be able to govern.

 Bush committed this error in Iraq. Obama made it in Libya. And now he’s doing it again in Syria.

Obama’s already destroyed one country with a “stupid war”, and now he’s trying for a sequel in Syria.

The foreign policy consensus as regards the Arab world is a toxic mixture of hubris, which, when juxtaposed with the incomprehensible need to appease the various Gulf monarchs (UAE in Libya, Saudi Arabia with Syria) has produced nothing but failure and insecurity.

This all looks so much like Athens’ disastrous Sicilian Expedition during the Peloponnesian War.

H/T DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Rachel Maddow is Wrong, and the Senate Republicans are Right

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She ascribes the delays in her nomination purely to animus on the part of Republicans.

While I agree that the bulk of the opposition is driven by hatred and political expedience, but we also need to look at what the Republicans are actually saying, and the history of the Obama administration’s approach to corruption in the finance industry.

The stated reason given by Republicans to oppose Lynch is her role in what is clearly a laughable settlement with HSBC over money laundering and tax evasion, and I would argue that Obama’s selection of Ms. Lynch is likely to have been driven (at least in part) by her cozy relationship with the Banksters.

It is clear that Barack Obama is determined not to have a meaningful accounting of Wall Street criminality:

Senate Republicans are seizing on the global tax scandal engulfing HSBC to delay the confirmation of Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general, the Guardian can reveal.

The Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Chuck Grassley, was on Friday preparing a fresh tranche of questions for Lynch about the huge cache of leaked data showing how HSBC’s subsidiary helped conceal billions of dollars from domestic tax authorities.

Grassley and another Republican senator are planning to investigate whether Lynch could have done more to stand up to the world’s second largest bank.

Lynch negotiated a controversial settlement with HSBC in 2012, after the bank admitted to facilitating money-laundering by Mexican drug cartels and helping clients evade US sanctions.

Now there are questions over why she did not also pursue HSBC over evidence that its Swiss arm helped US taxpayers hide their assets.

The secret bank files – obtained and examined in detail this week in a series of reports by the Guardian, CBS 60 Minutes and other media outlets – reveal that HSBC’s Swiss arm colluded with some high net-worth individuals to hide their assets from tax authorities across the world.

The new data, leaked by a whistleblower, was obtained by French tax authorities and shared with the US government in 2010, raising questions over why the Department of Justice has yet to take action against HSBC in the US.

It’s a legitimate question, particularly since HSBC’s acts have been egregious enough to lead Swiss law enforcement to raid HSBC.

Considering the degree to which secrecy, and tax evasion, have been central to the business of Swiss banking, the fact that they have initiated a criminal investigation, and that the US Department of Justice has not, is telling.

It should be noted that Lynch claimed that she did not have sufficient evidence for criminal prosecutions, but as Empty Wheel notes, “Sure, she and her prosecutors were unable to find the evidence in Carl Levin’s gift-wrapped case. But trust her, she seems to be saying, she might one day see fit to charge some warm bodies with fraud if she’s confirmed.”

Note that there are now allegations that HSBC gave material support to terrorists.

Why do I Think that Obama is Playing to Lose on this Issue?

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Barack Obama is now proposing a tax on foreign profits that are not repatriated:

President Barack Obama will propose that U.S.-based companies pay a minimum 19 percent tax on their future foreign earnings, capturing profits that are now often beyond the government’s reach.

Obama will also seek a 14 percent mandatory tax on about $2 trillion in stockpiled offshore profits, said two people familiar with his budget proposals, declining to be named because the document won’t be made public until Feb. 2. Companies would pay that tax regardless of whether they bring the money back to the U.S., the two said, creating a revenue stream the president would use to pay for roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.

Obama’s latest proposals add new details to the administration’s efforts to revamp the U.S. business tax system. The issue has been stalled in Congress, though lawmakers of both parties say they see potential room for agreement on business taxes.

In one sense, Obama is offering U.S. companies the kind of system they have sought — one with lower corporate marginal tax rates and with future foreign profits subject to little or no extra U.S. tax when brought home.

However, he’s offering to do so on terms that are less favorable than companies would want, with rates that could mean significant tax increases for companies that have been shifting profits to jurisdictions such as Bermuda and Ireland and paying less than 10 percent on their foreign profits.

Do you want me to map out the road map here?

  1. Obama proposes corporate tax reform which includes tax cuts juxtaposed with progressive changes to the tax code.
  2. As would be expected by anyone who can fog a mirror, the Republicans categorically reject the progressive changes to the tax code, and propose elimination of ordinary folks’ tax decuctions along with the tax cuts on businesses.
  3. Obama caves, and the rest of us get f%$#ed.

The trick here is that if you have been listening to Obama over the past few years, this is something that he supported.  He has long been making noises about tax ciode “reforms” that consist largely of eliminating middle class tax cuts (mortgage deduction in particular),

This is not a meaningful tax proposal, this is political atmospherics.

Rahm Emanuel Takes Chicago Corruption to a New Level

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I’m not particularly surprised.

You see hizzoner Rahm Emanuel is declaring that the Chicago pension funds are not a part of city government so that he can ignore pay to play rules:

On its face, Chicago’s municipal pension system is an integral part of the Chicago city government. The system is included in the city’s budget, it is directly funded by the city, and its various boards of trustees include city officials and mayoral appointees. Yet, when it comes to enforcing the city’s anti-corruption laws in advance of the Chicago’s closely watched 2015 municipal election, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is suddenly arguing that the pension funds are not part of the city government at all.

The counterintuitive declaration came last month from the mayor-appointed ethics commission, responding to Chicago aldermen’s request for an investigation of campaign contributions to Emanuel from the financial industry. The request followed disclosures that executives at firms managing Chicago pension money have made more than $600,000 worth of donations to Emanuel. The contributions flowed to the mayor despite a city ordinance — and an executive order by Emanuel himself — restricting mayoral campaign contributions from city contractors.

Brushing off the lawmakers’ complaint about Emanuel’s donations from the financial industry, the mayor’s ethics commission issued a nonbinding legal opinion arguing that Chicago’s pension systems are “not agencies or departments of the city, and thus firms that contract with them are not doing or seeking to do business with the city.” The commission’s interpretation means financial firms’ business with Chicago pension funds should be considered exempt from city ethics laws.

Seriously?

You can take pay to play campaign donations for the pension fund because it isn’t really goverment?

This is pretty damn corrupt.

Technically, the SEC could rule on this:

With the mayor attempting to exempt the pension system from the city’s ethics rules, [Alderman Scott] Waguespack says the lawmakers are counting on the federal government to enforce a 2011 Securities and Exchange Commission rule aiming to restrict contributions to public officials from executives at financial firms that manage public pension money. To that end, Waguespack and two other lawmakers have filed a formal complaint with the SEC, which responded with a letter saying the agency will review their complaint “in connection with our statutory and regulatory responsibilities.”

Yeah, like that is going to happen.

Emanuel is a FOB (Friend of Barack), so nothing is going to happen to him, at least until after 2016.

That Tom Tomorrow Cartoon Is Looking More and More Prescient

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Over at the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza has an analysis of Obama’s coat tails, and it shows that Obama has been the most disastrous 2 term presidential tenure in 60 years:

Everyone knows by now that 2010 and 2014 were very good to the Republican Party. What they don’t understand (or understand well enough) is just how good. Yes, Republicans now control the Senate and have their largest majority in the House since World War II. But it’s downballot (way downballot) where the depth of the Republican victories over the past three elections truly reveal themselves — and where the impact will be felt over the long term.

………

As NCSL notes, Republicans now control more than 4,100 seats — their highest number since 1920. After taking over 11 legislative chambers from Democrats in 2014, Republicans now control 30 state legislatures completely — and have full control of state government (state legislature and governorship) in 23 states. Democrats, by contrast, have full control of 11 state legislatures and total control of state government in just seven states. (Click here for an amazing NCSL chart that details which side controls every state legislature.)

………

st
The Fix
Republicans have gained more than 900 state legislative seats since 2010
By Chris Cillizza January 14 Follow @thefix

Everyone knows by now that 2010 and 2014 were very good to the Republican Party. What they don’t understand (or understand well enough) is just how good. Yes, Republicans now control the Senate and have their largest majority in the House since World War II. But it’s downballot (way downballot) where the depth of the Republican victories over the past three elections truly reveal themselves — and where the impact will be felt over the long term.

In the past three elections, Republicans have gained 913 state legislative seats, according to calculations made by Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia. Here are Sabato’s figures in chart form — and with historical comparisons — via GOP lobbyist Bruce Mehlman.
Now, there are more 7,000 state legislative seats in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which makes that 913 number slightly less eye-popping. Still, the Democratic losses between 2010 and 2014 amount to 12 percent of all state legislative seats nationwide.

As NCSL notes, Republicans now control more than 4,100 seats — their highest number since 1920. After taking over 11 legislative chambers from Democrats in 2014, Republicans now control 30 state legislatures completely — and have full control of state government (state legislature and governorship) in 23 states. Democrats, by contrast, have full control of 11 state legislatures and total control of state government in just seven states. (Click here for an amazing NCSL chart that details which side controls every state legislature.)

Why does the lopsided state of legislative control matter to national politics? For lots of reasons.

1. Policy is made at the state legislative level. That’s policy pertaining to states and policy that gets bumped up to the federal level. With Republicans in control of so many state governments, the policy incubator for their side will be vastly superior to what Democrats can do at the state and local levels.

2. State legislatures and governors redraw congressional lines. In most states, how the nation’s 435 House districts will look after the 2020 Census will be determined by state legislators and governors. And guess what? Republican legislators (and governors) are more likely to draw lines that are friendly to their side. Unless Democrats can reverse their state House and Senate losses before the 2021 redraw, Republicans could control the House for a very, very long time.

3. State legislatures are the minor leagues. Most of the politicians — President Obama included — who have gone on to great things, politically speaking, honed their craft in the state legislature of their home (or adopted home) state. Republicans’ farm system to grow the sort of talent that might one day run for House, Senate or even president is now significantly larger than that of Democrats.

Yes, in the near term, nothing matters more than which party hold the majority in the U.S. House and Senate. But, if you are playing the long game — and both parties have to if they want to stay vibrant and effective — what happens at the state legislative level has huge import. And, in that contest, there is no contest: Republicans are winning in a landslide.

Obama could not have done worse for the party if he had been trying.

This begs the question, how much has he actually concerned himself with the welfare of the party, which is the de-facto head.

Certainly, Obama ran the catastrophic 2010 campaign with the goal of it being a dry run for his 2012 run for reelection, which was precisely the wrong policy for an off-year election, and in 2014, he eschewed taking any policy actions that would have (a) been popular, and (b) would have improved the morale of the base, until after the election.

It does make this Tom Tomorrow cartoon a much more plausible:

H/t Digby.

Obama Wants More Dead Aaron Swartzes

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At the State of the Union address, Obama will announce plans to increase penalties and increase the penalties and broaden the scope of the already over-broad Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFPA):

The Obama administration, currently engaged in a war of words with North Korea over the recent hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is calling on Congress to increase prison sentences for hackers and to expand the definition of hacking.

During next week’s State of the Union address, the president is set to publicly urge increased prison time and other changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—the statute that was used to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz before he committed suicide in 2013.

The Obama administration, currently engaged in a war of words with North Korea over the recent hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is calling on Congress to increase prison sentences for hackers and to expand the definition of hacking.

During next week’s State of the Union address, the president is set to publicly urge increased prison time and other changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—the statute that was used to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz before he committed suicide in 2013.

………

Among other things, penalties under Obama’s plan would increase from a maximum five-year penalty to 10 years for pure hacking acts, like circumventing a technological barrier. What’s more, the law would expand the definition of what “exceeds authorized access” means. A hacker would exceed authorization when accessing information “for a purpose that the accesser knows is not authorized by the computer owner.”

So, under Obama’s proposal, if you browse Facebook on a work computer, that’s 10 years in the slam.

Note that Aaron Swartz was driven to suicide by an abusive prosecution using the current (far less broad and far less punitive) version of the CFPA.

The CFPA is already a petri dish for overzealous prosecution, and Obama wants to make it worse.

Seriously, has there been a single case where Obama has not chosen the most authoritarian option?

As Dime Store Psychoanalysis Goes, This is Pretty Damn Good

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This is a very interesting quote from historian Gary Wills:

I think one of the things that may be hindering him is that he’s so aware that he is the change — that it’s such a break with our history to elect a black President — and that’s such an odd thing to some people and that’s why they’re calling him “not an American” or “socialist” or “fascist” or whatever — that he wants to emphasize continuity almost to a fault. So even though he came to national attention by opposing the Iraq War, he appointed his Secretary of State (someone who voted for the Iraq War), his Vice-President (someone who voted for the Iraq War), his Secretary of Defense (someone who conducted the Iraq War), the two generals in Afghanistan (who conducted the Iraq War). That’s continuity, all right! But is it the continuity that we need?

(emphasis mine)

I don’t know if this is accurate, but this thesis is consistent with what we have observed over the past 6 years.

Barack Obama is Never Going to Say What Hilary Just Said

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Hillary spoke the three words that Barack Obama never will, “Black lives matter.”

Obama’s entire professional life has been about avoiding anything that would make him to appear to be an “angry black man”, so we won’t here this from him:

Clinton also addressed the recent protests that have erupted across the US and drew links between violence at home and abroad.

She declared: “Yes, black lives matter,” a mantra of demonstrators around the country who have been protesting about grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers involved in the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York.

She wondered what Kennedy would say about “the thousands of Americans marching in our streets demanding justice for all” and “the mothers who’ve lost their sons”.

“What would he say to all those who have lost trust in our government and our other intuitions, who shudder at images of excessive force, who read reports about torture done in the name of our country, who see too many representatives in Washington quick to protect a big bank from regulation but slow to take action to help working families facing ever greater pressure?” Clinton said.

Props to Hillary for saying those three words, and shame on Obama for not saying those three words.