GOP compromise on debt: Cut military spending?

By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane, Published: June 26

As President Obama prepares to meet Monday with Senate leaders to try to restart talks about the swollen national debt, some Republicans see a potential path to compromise: significant cuts in military spending.
Senior GOP lawmakers and leadership aides said it would be far easier to build support for a debt-reduction package that cuts the Pentagon budget — a key Democratic demand — than one that raises revenue by tinkering with the tax code. Last week, Republicans walked out of talks led by Vice President Biden, insisting that the White House take tax increases off the table.
In listening sessions with their rank and file, House Republican leaders said they have found a surprising willingness to consider defense cuts that would have been unthinkable five years ago, when they last controlled the House. While the sessions have sparked heated debate on many issues, Rep. Peter Roskam (Ill.), the deputy GOP whip, said there are few lawmakers left who view the Pentagon budget as sacrosanct.
“When we say everything is on the table, that’s what we mean,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the No. 3 leader who has been hosting the listening sessions in his Capitol offices.
Freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) could serve as a poster boy for the new breed of conservatives who are eager to wipe out government waste and inefficiency, no matter where they find it. Kinzinger, an active-duty Air National Guardsman who flew missions in Iraq, fought successfully last month to cut a request for $100 million to buy new flight suits for Air Force pilots. The old ones, he argued, are good enough.
Defense spending is “a pillar of Republican strength. It’s a pillar of national strength. Look, I know there are sacred cows,” Kinzinger said in an interview. “But we cannot afford them anymore.”
With the clock ticking toward an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the legal limit on federal borrowing, defense spending has been a major stumbling block in negotiations between the two parties. While both sides view the tax issue as the biggest hurdle, negotiators spent much of their final three-hour session arguing over agency spending before Republicans declared an impasse last Thursday, according to people familiar with the talks.
The White House has offered nearly $1 trillion in cuts to domestic agencies over the next decade and $300 billion more from security agencies. But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pressed for as much as $1.7 trillion in cuts. And he wanted an overall cap on spending that would leave the door open to slashing the entire sum from domestic programs — such as education, food safety, health research and criminal justice — when lawmakers draft spending bills next spring.
“Everything is on the table,” Cantor said in an interview afterward. But the decision on how much to cut defense “belongs in the appropriations process.”
White House budget director Jack Lew objected, and the meeting grew heated. Democrats said they could never support a package that targets only social programs and extracts no pain from the military, big business or the wealthy.
“To get anything through the House, you’re going to need some Democratic votes. This isn’t a one-way street here,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door sessions. “It’s clear that any package is going to have to have significant spending reductions, including in Pentagon spending.”
The official said the package must also “have some of these tax deductions closed,” referring to perks in the tax code that benefit the oil and gas industry, hedge fund managers and jet-setting corporate executives. But if Republicans agree to significant Pentagon cuts, the White House may find it easier to accept a deal that includes less in new revenue, people familiar with the talks said.
The GOP has not been entirely closed to tax changes, according to people in both parties. They mentioned a proposal to adjust the way business inventory is taxed, which could generate as much as $70 billion over the next decade, as one potential area of compromise. An additional $6 billion a year could be generated by wiping out subsidies for ethanol blenders. A similar proposal passed the Senate two weeks ago with overwhelming Republican support.
The White House may be more interested in such a deal than congressional Democrats, who have been adamant about raising taxes on the wealthy. “Make no mistake, there needs to be revenues in any deal,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a conference call with reporters Friday. “Republicans cannot insist on protecting tax breaks for millionaires at the expense of our economy.”
Still, some Democrats said they place a higher priority on defense cuts.
“Defense spending is damaging spending. Many of us believe it does more harm than good to our people and to our reputation in the world,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). “If we can get $100 billion from reducing unneeded military spending, that’s better than $100 billion in taxation.”
Getting to an agreement to cut defense spending may not be easy, however. Many Republicans are still hawkish and want to fully support U.S. troops abroad. Rank-and-file lawmakers said they specifically oppose any across-the-board reductions to the Pentagon budget, preferring that incoming Defense Secretary Leon Panetta present Congress with a detailed plan of programs to be slashed.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has advocated for some cuts, especially related to costly new military hardware, but has warned of the consequences of deep or across-the-board reductions that could jeopardize U.S. military strength in the future.
“Our caucus would come in and say, ‘This is a reasonable place for defense,’ as long it wasn’t arbitrary and capricious. If the secretary reworked the numbers, our guys would go, okay,” said a senior GOP aide, who said the White House has so far refused to offer a detailed annual spending plan for the Pentagon. Without official guidance, the aide said, “it’s kind of like: Pick the defense number. And we can’t do that.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a critical player in the talks, has taken the same position as Cantor — that congressional appropriators should decide where to cut spending. McConnell, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee who touted his ability to deliver defense dollars to his state in his 2008 reelection campaign, is part of a powerful Republican old guard that has fought for years to expand military spending, as much to benefit constituents as for reasons of political principle.
Today, however, the old GOP hawks are finding that their tea-party-influenced troops are more interested in saving money than protecting turf at the Pentagon. Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), a leader among the 87 House Republican freshmen, said the military budget is widely viewed as loaded with pork that has little bearing on the day-to-day battles in Afghanistan and other hot spots.
“If there are sacred cows, we ought to find them and get rid of them,” said Scott, who represents a district where more than a third of voters hail from military families.
“I would never support anything that would reduce the safety of the troops on the ground,” said Rep. Robert Hurt (R-Va.), a freshman whose district runs south from Charlottesville. “But bureaucracy is bureaucracy, and there are ways to get at it, even in the Pentagon.”

'If You Say You Want to Create Jobs, Don't Stop Job Creation'

Monday, June 27, 2011

Isakson Blasts Administration Over Recent Actions 
to Implement Job-killing Labor Policies

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., strongly criticized the Obama Administration over three recent decisions by its federal labor boards to impose job-killing labor policies. Isakson is the ranking Republican on the Senate Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee that has jurisdiction over labor issues.

Isakson spoke on the Senate floor in response to three recent decisions by the federal labor boards, including the National Mediation Board’s recent decision to investigate what it claims are unfair labor practices at Delta Air Lines. The National Mediation Board took this step after the unions lost another election among Delta employees, despite the Board changing the rules last year to make it easier for unions to win a majority vote. Isakson has fought against the National Mediation’s Board’s rule change for more than a year.

Isakson also used his floor speech to criticize two recent actions by the National Labor Relations Board – the Board’s decision to file suit against The Boeing Company because the company wanted to create 1,000 jobs in a right-to-work state, and the Board’s decision to allow for quicker union elections.

“I learned from my father that we should all be judged by our actions, not just our words. I am very disappointed in what this administration is doing now. On the one hand, they are talking about jobs being the most important thing America needs. Yet, they continue to implement job-killing policies such as the ones being pushed through the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board,”said Isakson. “If you say you want to create jobs, don’t stop job creation. If you say you want the economy to recover, do those things necessary to empower business.”

In its suit against Boeing, the National Labor Relations Board claims that Boeing was seeking to punish unions for previous labor strikes at the original 787 plant in Washington state by opening a second 787 plant in South Carolina, which is a right-to-work state. Despite this frivolous complaint, Boeing has moved forward with plans to create over 1,000 new private sector jobs at its new facility in South Carolina all while creating an additional 2,000 union represented jobs in Washington state since 2009.  Isakson has cosponsored legislation, S.964, theJob Protection Act, to prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from dictating where private companies may do business.

Isakson also criticized the National Labor Relations Board for proposing a rule change last week to remove some of the procedures necessary to hold a union election so that union elections can be held faster. Currently, it typically takes 38 to 42 days between the day an election petition is filed and the day the election is held. Under the proposed rule change, that time period could be shortened to as little as 10 to 12 days, making it more difficult for management to fairly educate and inform their employees about issues related to unionization. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also opposed this rule calling it a “disguised effort to restrict the ability of employers to express their views during an election campaign.”

When did Republicans become such big Obama fans?

Posted at 05:02 PM ET, 06/27/2011

By Ezra Klein

(OLIVIER DOULIERY VIA BLOOMBERG)Perhaps the Republican leadership really enjoys President Obama’s company. That’s about the most satisfying explanation I’ve found for their oft-repeated demand that he take a more direct role in the negotiations.

But it’s very peculiar. The talks broke down because Republicans, having negotiated $2 trillion in spending cuts, refused to negotiate any tax increases. Fair enough. But the coordinated message emerging from the Republican leadership emphasized something different: They missed the president. “I believe it is time for the President to speak clearly and resolve the tax issue,” said Eric Cantor in his prepared statement. Mitch McConnell’s floor remarks were titled, “Where’s the President?” Even Chris Christie is getting into the act. “If you’re the executive you’ve got to be the guy who’s out there pushing and leading,” he said on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”

Interestingly, plenty of liberals would agree with the Republicans on this one. They hate the White House’s tendency to keep Obama on the sidelines until late in the fourth quarter. Obama is more popular than any of the Republicans and many of his supporters believe that he’d be able to negotiate a better deal if he took his case directly to the public. That’s not, presumably, an analysis the GOP agrees with, which means one side or the other has this wrong.

I’ve not yet gotten a fully persuasive explanation for the GOP’s desperation to see the president negotiate directly and speak publicly. But here are a couple of the ideas that are floating around:

1) Deflect blame. Republicans blew up the negotiations. Eric Cantor left the table and Jon Kyl followed him. They needed some way to pin the breakdown on the White House, but after Democrats had agreed to $2 trillion in spending cuts, they didn’t have much to work with. So they came up with this: “Where’s the president” line, hoping that his absence would make it look like he wasn’t taking deficit reduction seriously.

2) Drag him down. The White House, looking toward 2012, is determined to keep Obama above the political fray. Republicans, looking toward 2012, are determined to drag him into it. If Washington is going to be bitter and divisive and unable to do the country’s work, the GOP wants that to be part of Obama’s brand, not just an anchor around the necks of incumbent legislators.

3) It’s personal. The most human explanation is that the Republicans simply find Obama’s distance personally offensive. They’re tired of the guy basing his political persona around being better than they are.

But the incentives here are tough. From the GOP’s point of view, the worst possible outcome is for the president to swoop in and negotiate a bipartisan deal. That’s exactly the kind of leadership that the country really likes. But nor is it an obvious political plus to beg the president to meet with them and then refuse to actually negotiate. The analysis I’m tempted toward right now is that the Republican Party doesn’t have much of an endgame here and the congressional leaders are simply trying to buy time to figure out how they can either come to a deal without their party blasting them for selling out or resist a deal without the country turning on them for wrecking the economy. But perhaps I’m missing something.

Abortion Foes' Latest Backdoor Ban

peace chicken/Flickr

States advance laws singling out abortion providers for strict regulations.

— By Kate Sheppard

Mon Jun. 27, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

Kansas has long been a frontline in the abortion wars, so it isn't much of a surprise that anti-abortion crusaders there have pioneered one of the newest tactics for limiting access to legal abortion procedures: developing onerous regulations that specifically target clinics. And this strategy—which could lead to shutting down all of the state's abortion clinics by the end of this month—is being embraced by abortion foes in other states as a way to end abortion in practice if not in law.

This is how it works: anti-abortion legislators pass what are often called "TRAP" laws, or "targeted regulation of abortion providers." That is, regulations that only apply to abortion clinics, setting compulsory standards that are often difficult to meet, like mandated sizes for waiting and recovery rooms, reconfiguring of exits and entrances to facilities, and additional bathrooms. In Kansas, abortion providers last week were handed a long list of new regulations and told they must comply by July 1. Virginia and Utah have signed similar measures into law this year, joining states like South Carolina and Indiana that have previously targeted providers with stricter regulations, and a number of other states have been considering bills like these.

Americans United for Life, one of the largest national anti-abortion groups, has been urging its supporters to pass similar measures in their own states. When the Arkansas state Senate advanced such legislation this year, AUL praised the measure for its "unique pro-life protections."

Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, notes that though TRAP laws aren't new, they are now being used to place increasingly more strict and disruptive regulations upon abortion clinics. "There is quite a bit of momentum behind restricting access to abortion," says Nash. Sharon Levin, vice president and general counsel at the National Abortion Federation, a group that represents abortion providers around the country, notes that they have seen a lot more of this type of legislation advanced this year. "These are really politically motivated laws," says Levin. "These laws have nothing to do with patient safety."

In Kansas, the state legislature passed its TRAP law in April, which created a new licensing category for abortion providers. But the state didn't issue the final regulations until June 17, and then gave the clinics just two weeks to comply with the new rules or potentially be denied a license to operate. A staffer at one of the three remaining abortion clinics in the state told Mother Jones that the new rules would require it to dramatically expand the size of its waiting and recovery rooms, as well as the janitor's closet, and would be impossible for the clinic to comply in its current office. (As we've reported before, it can be very difficult for abortion providers to find new offices—especially in Kansas.)

The Kansas TRAP law also requires all doctors working at the clinics to have admitting privileges (or standing approval from a hospital to directly admit patients) at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. Obtaining that permission is a process that typically takes 90 to 120 days—a barrier impossible to surmount before the state's July 1 deadline. Abortion providers question the need for this regulation, since less than 0.3 percent of abortion patients have a complication that requires hospitalization, and clinics can still refer women to a hospital for care without the doctor at the clinic possessing admitting privileges.

Peter Brownlie, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said he believes that its clinic in Overland Park, Kansas, should be able to pass inspection—but not without much scrambling to meet what he calls "ludicrous" new regulations. Inspectors arrived at the clinic's door less than 48 hours after it had received the newest version of the rules. The clinic, which conducts 5,000 abortions a year, is already licensed as an ambulatory surgical facility and subject to many of the same requirements, and it has a doctor on staff with hospital admitting privileges. But now the clinic is required to maintain supplies for dealing with infants—newborn-sized blood-pressure cuffs and defibrillators, for example—even though a baby would never be delivered in the facility. (The clinic only offers abortions up to 21 weeks of gestation—well before a fetus is viable.) The new rules also dictate the exact temperature of the procedure room (68 to 73 degrees) and the recovery area (70 to 75 degrees), require women to wait two hours in the facility after the procedure, and mandate that the clinic retains an image of the woman's ultrasound on file.

"Even for Kansas, this is an extraordinarily clumsy, disruptive, disorganized kind of process," said Brownlie.

In Virginia, the state legislature passed a bill in February that would classify a facility that offers abortion services as a type of hospital, which are subject to the more stringent requirements. The law directed the board of health to issue new rules for the clinics quickly because the measure was passed as an "emergency" provision. The regulations are due by September 15. The state Board of Health, the attorney general, the commissioner of health, and the governor would get some say in whether the regulations are approved, but the emergency status leaves little room for comment from affected clinics and the general public, according to Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Virginia, a abortion rights advocacy group.

The Virginia Coalition for Life has urged the state health department to model its rules on those adopted in 2003 by South Carolina, which went so far as to dictate proper procedures for mowing the lawn at facilities that provide abortions. South Carolina's rules have already sustained a court challenge, which has buoyed hopes among anti-abortion activists that these laws can withstand judicial scrutiny. But, says Keene, many of these rules serve "just to make life extremely difficult, if not impossible, for these facilities."

Some anti-abortion activists claim that the TRAP laws are not a backdoor way to ban abortions. But groups like Operation Rescue cheer the Kansas law for potentially making Kansas "the first abortion-free state." Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, which pushed for the Kansas law (which also passed in 2003 and 2005 but was vetoed both times by then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius), insists that the new regulations are just intended to ensure that abortions are provided in "safe" places. "As far as good health oversight of a medical procedure, these regulations are necessary and long overdue," she says. But the group's ultimate goal is to end abortion in the state. "I wouldn't be unhappy if abortion... if there were no more babies being aborted in Kansas." She continued: "However, working through the system as we do, we're working in increments."

Michele Bachmann Said What!?

Your guide to the Minnesota firebrand's most outrageous, outlandish, and out-there remarks.

By Tim Murphy | Mon Jun. 6, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

---

EDITOR'S NOTE: Over the weekend, Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann if she was a flake. Below is a compendium of some of her more outlandish remarks. Judge for yourself.
Sometime this month, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is expected to travel to Waterloo, Iowa to officially announce her presidential candidacy. Her odds, while firmly in Hail Mary territory, are still better than you might think: With Republicans less than thrilled with the primary field, Bachmann stands at least a fighter's chance in socially conservative states like Iowa and South Carolina.
Now in just her third term in Congress, Bachmann, the leader of the House tea party caucus, has earned a reputation as one of the lower chamber's leading bomb-throwers, lobbing overheated rhetoric at Democrats and needling establishment Republicans. Her Minnesota colleague, Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison once accused her of "psycho talk [1]"; in an interview with Politico, a Pawlenty aide was just as blunt: "She's a real pain in the ass [2]." Former state senator Dean Johnson, who was the Republican minority leader during Bachmann's stint in St. Paul, has said [3], "I don't think I ever served with anybody who I mistrusted more, from either side of the aisle."
Ouch. Bachmann also has a tendency to stretch the truth, or simply sidestep it altogether. Bill Adair, editor of PolitiFact [4], recently told Minnesota Public Radio [5] that he has never researched a Bachmann quote and found it to be true (the only major politician for which that's the case).
Here's an incomplete guide to Bachmann's greatest hits:

2001: In a letter [6] she co-wrote for the Minnesota-based Maple River Education Coalition, Bachmann warns that President Bush's education policies are leading the nation down the path to communism: "Government is implementing policies that will lead to poverty, not prosperity, by adopting the failed ideas of a state-planned and managed economy similar to that of the former Soviet Union."
2003: Bachmann, then a state senator, explains [7] why she doesn't agree with the theory of evolution: "Where do we say that a cell became a blade of grass, which became a starfish, which became a cat, which became a donkey, which became a human being? There’s a real lack of evidence from change from actual species to a different type of species. That's where it's difficult to prove." Don't even get her started on how a bill becomes a law.
2003: Bachmann sends out a Christmas Card [8] advertising the availability of her youngest son, Lucas: "Chick magnate [sic] needs wife to put him through med school, clean house, pay bills and run his life. Must be willing to gamble against onslaught of socialized medicine diminishing return on investment."
2004: With the country locked in a heated debate over gay marriage, Bachmann finds parallels in the Old Testament: "We're in a state of crisis where our nation is literally ripping apart at the seams right now, and lawlessness is occurring from one ocean to the other. And we're seeing the fulfillment of the Book of Judges here in our own time, where every man doing that which is right in his own eyes—in other words, anarchy."
2004: Songwriter Melissa Etheridge has breast cancer. That's bad news. But there's good news too, Bachmann tells [9] the conservative education group EdWatch: maybe the cancer will give her time to reflect on her sinful lifestyle: "Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers. This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian." In the same speech, she alleges that "almost all, if not all, individuals who have gone into the lifestyle have been abused at one time in their life, either by a male or by a female."
2005: Bachmann explains [10] her opposition to the state's minimum wage as a form of job creation: "Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."
2006: Campaigning for a seat in the House, Bachmann delivers a five-minute prayer [11] for You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, an anti-gay heavy metal ministry that promotes the gospel to public school students: "I thank you for how you are going to advance them from 260 schools a year, Lord, to 2,600 schools a year. Lord, we ask by faith that you would expand this ministry beyond anything the originators of this ministry could begin to think or imagine."
2007: In an interview with the St. Cloud Times, Bachmann drops a bombshell [12]: Iran is planning on turning all of Northwest Iraq into a secret terrorist training camp: "Iran is the troublemaker trying to tip over apple carts all over Baghdad right now because they want America to pull out. And you know why? It's because they've already decided, that they're going to territory, they're- they're going to partition Iraq and half of Iraq, the western northern portion of Iraq is going to be called, the United, uh, the, the uh, -oh, I'm sorry, I can't remember the actual name of it now, but it's going to be called, um, uh, the, the, uh, uh the Iraq State of Islam, something like that."
2008: Just two weeks before election day, Bachmann calls for an investigation [13] into the anti-American ambitions of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats: "What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out if they are pro-America or anti-America."
2008: Redundant Redundancies, vol. I [14]: "The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It's all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax."

2009: Explaining her opposition to a bill that expands the scope of AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps' domestic equivalent, Bachmann warned [15] Minnesota's KTLK that it could be the gateway to a mandatory brainwashing program: "I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."
2009: Picking up on Sarah Palin's debunked warning abut "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act, Bachmann declares [16]: "If you are a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy, watch out."
2009: Bachmann goes on Glenn Beck's Fox program to discuss [17] the specter of "One World currency" and delivers what historians may later dub her "I am not a kook!" speech. "Glenn, I have experienced that throughout my political career being labeled a kook. It just happened again in a big story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. But all we have to do is point to the treasury secretary on tape, on camera. This is not Michele Bachmann being a kook. This is our treasury secretary on tape and on camera." A visibly confused Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had told Bachmann he was not aware of any plan to replace the dollar.
2009: As the nation (aided, perhaps, by Vice President Joe Biden [18]) freaks out over Swine Flu, Bachmann implies [19]—while stressing that she isn't—that this whole thing might have been Obama's doing: "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."
2009: Bachmann warns [20] the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. health care reform) would include a loophole permitting grade-schoolers to go on abortion field trips: "Does that mean that someone's 13-year old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back, and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser. They don't know any different."
2009: Bachmann frets that Democrats' cap-and-trade legislation, which proposed using the powers of the free market to create carbon exchanges, posed an existential threat [21] to all Americans: "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people—we the people—are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States."
2009: With health care reform coming ever closer to becoming a reality, Bachmann sounds [22] the Horn of Gondor: "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass."
2009: In an interview on Fox News [23], Bachmann warns that the Obama administration could potentially use Census data to round up Americans and put them in camps: "Between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into internment camps. I'm not saying that that's what the administration is planning to do. But I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against them to round them up in violation of their constitutional rights."
2009: Bachmann argues that abnormally large emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide can't be regulated [24] because if we did, birds would lose their natural habitat—air: "Life on planet Earth can't even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that—that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth."

2010: After former President Bill Clinton tells reporters Bachmann's "armed and dangerous" remarks could send the wrong message to fringe groups, Bachmann accuses [25] Clinton of celebrating the Oklahoma City Bombings—by speaking at an event honoring those who died in the attack. "He gave a speech, and he called me out in his speech, and he was talking about the anniversary—now, only Democrats would do this. The anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing by Tim McVeigh. I mean, we don’t celebrate these things. This is not what we celebrate."

 2010: Bachmann warns [26] that critics of the Affordable Care Act will be denied coverage, based on their political beliefs. As evidence, she cites a conversation with a Japanese man who told her that in Japan, health care reform opponents are afraid to speak up: "'Well why is that,' I asked. [He said], 'Because they know that would get on a list and they wouldn’t get health care. They wouldn't get in. They wouldn't get seen. And so people are afraid. They're afraid to speak back to government. They're afraid to say anything.' Is that what we want for our future? That takes us to gangster government at that point!"
2010: After House Democrats propose using a relatively standard parliamentary procedures to pass the Affordable Care Act, Bachmann calls for an investigation [27]: "Well, yeah, and the other thing is treason media. Where is the mainstream media in all of this not telling this story? This is a compelling story. That the Speaker of the House would even consider having us pass a bill that no one votes on. That should laugh her out of the House and there should be people that are calling for impeachment off of something like this."
2010: Ever vigilant of bureaucratic waste, Bachmann alleges [28] that President Obama's trip to India will be more expensive than the entire war in Afghanistan: "The president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He's taking 2,000 people with him. He will be renting out over 870 rooms in India. And these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending." An exasperated White House spokesman later said the charges, which stemmed from an anonymous official in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, had "no basis in reality."
2010: Remember that whole bit about Obama being "anti-American" back in 2008? Yeah, forget that [29]. Bachmann tells Bill O'Reilly: "Candidate Obama was a very reasonable fellow."
2010: Redundant Redundancies, vol. II [30]: "That's what the Bill of Rights is all about—to secure our individual liberties from an overweening huge bureaucratic large big government."
2011: In a speech to New Hampshire tea partiers, Bachmann crafts an alternative history [31] of the American Revolution: "What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty. You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."
2011: As the House GOP prepares to vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government, Bachmann urges her colleagues to hold the line [32]: "This is our mice or men moment. We need to show whether we are mice or men." The bill passes; we're mice, apparently.
2011: Bachmann suggests an unlikely fix [33] to the nation's long-term deficit: "I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this."
2011: On Twitter, Bachmann says the President's proposal to make government-subsidized lunches more nutritional violates the will [34] of the Founders: "Where in the #Constitution does it say the fed. government should regulate potatoes in school lunches? It doesn't." Which is true. Technically.
2011: In an address to the group Iowans for Tax Relief, Bachmann praises [35] the Founding Fathers for their commitment to…diversity: "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status, it didn't matter whether they descended from known royalty or whether they were of a higher class or a lower class, it made no difference. Once you got here [to the United States] you were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?"
In the same interview, she praises the Founders for working so hard to abolish slavery: "We know there was slavery that was still tolerated when the nation began. We know that was an evil and it was scourge and a blot and a stain upon our history. But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."
2011: Seizing on an administration directive to promote energy-efficient light bulbs, Bachmann accuses [36] the administration of banning light bulbs altogether: "I think Thomas Edison did a pretty patriotic thing for this country by inventing the light bulb and I think darn well you New Hampshirites, if you want to want to buy Thomas Edison's wonderful invention you should be able to!"
2011: Michele Obama promotes breast-feeding as a means of reducing child obesity. Bachmann senses more sinister motives [37]: "This is very consistent with where the hard left is coming from. For them, government is the answer to every problem. I've given birth to five babies and I breast fed every single one of these babies. To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies? You wanna talk about the nanny state, I think you just got a new definition."

29 Miners and Massey's Coal Crimes

Katrina vanden Heuvel

June 26, 2011 

It was Easter Weekend 2010 when 33-year-old Gary Quarles—a skilled miner with 14 years experience and a father of two— and an “up and coming” miner, Nicolas McCroskey, 26, were having dinner with a friend. They said that “something bad was going to happen” at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine where they worked.

That Sunday, Quarles also confided in a close friend he’d known since childhood.

“I’m just scared to go back to work,” he said. “Man, they got us up there mining and we ain’t got no air. You can’t see nothing. I’m just scared to death something bad is going to happen.”

The next day, a powerful explosion tore through two and one-half miles of the mine, killing Quarles, McCroskey, and 27 of their fellow miners. Men like Carl Acord, 52, who had worked the mines for 34 years and was a proud member of the “Old Man Crew”; Jason Adkins, 25, who had won all-state honors in football and basketball in high school; Cory Davis, 20, who had followed his family into the mines; US army veteran Steven Harrah, 40, devoted to his wife and six-year old son; Dean Jones, 50, leaving behind his wife and a son with cystic fibrosis; Roosevelt Lynch, 59, a miner for over 30 years and a substitute teacher, as well as a basketball, football, and track coach; Vietnam vet Benny Willingham, 61, a coal miner for 30 years who was five weeks away from retirement; and so many more.

Of the 29 men killed, 19 died as a result of carbon monoxide intoxication and 10 as a result of injuries suffered in the explosion.

One week later, former Governor Joe Manchin asked J. Davitt McAteer, an Assistant Secretary of Labor in charge of mine safety in the Clinton Administration, to conduct an independent investigation into the causes of the disaster and issue recommendations to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

McAteer and his colleagues—experts in coal mining, mining law, mining communities, and occupational safety and public health—released their report last month after conducting underground investigations for over six months and conducting more than 300 interviews. Eighteen corporate officials from Massey Energy and its subsidiary Performance Coal—which ran the UBB mine—invoked the Fifth, declining to be interviewed in order to protect from self-incrimination.

Although it received insufficient media attention, the 126-page Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel (GIIP) report released last month is damning in its conclusion: “Ultimately, the responsibility for the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine lies with the management of Massey Energy. The company broke faith with its workers by frequently and knowingly violating the law and blatantly disregarding known safety practices.”

The investigation concludes that the explosion occurred when a spark—which occurs frequently when cutting coal due to friction—ignited an explosive accumulation of methane, causing a fireball. The fireball in turn ignited coal dust that had been allowed to build up, and the coal dust carried the explosion throughout more than two miles of the mine.

Massey’s blatant disregard for safety had created a perfect storm.

The methane and coal dust accumulated because of an inadequate ventilation system—the same one Quarles and so many of his co-workers had complained resulted in “no air” circulating where they were mining. The coal dust remained hazardous due to inadequate “rock dusting” which is used to render coal dust inert—Massey only had two men responsible for dusting the entire mine on a part-time basis, when the size justified a two-man crew assigned solely to rock dusting on at least two shifts every day. Finally, the fire spread due to Massey’s failure to maintain vital safety equipment—missing or clogged water sprays could have doused the fire at the point of ignition.

And Massey had ample warnings about these safety problems.

“Pre-shift examinations” between January and April 2010 identified 1,834 instances when rock dusting was needed, and only 302 times when it was performed—in fact, fireboss Michael Elswick, who was killed after just 4 days on the job, reported that the conveyor belts needed to be cleaned and dusted just one-half hour before the explosion. Also, in fourteen out of fifteen months preceding the disaster, UBB received citations from federal or state inspectors regarding rock dust issues, and nearly half of the forty federal citations were classified as “significant and substantial.” In the months leading up to the explosion, one Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) inspector pulled workers from a section due to inadequate airflow, a MSHA ventilation specialist warned Massey of “a dangerous situation,” and a foreman was told by management to “ignore a citation” the mine received for faulty ventilation. Finally, a foreman who stopped his crew from working for one hour while trying to address ventilation problems was suspended for three days due to “poor work performance” (the executive who suspended him, Jason Whitehead, refused to cooperate with the investigation and was promoted to Massey’s vice president of Underground Operations several months after the disaster).

Even the autopsy reports were stunning in terms of what they revealed about Massey’s reckless disregard for dust control—24 victims were tested for black lung disease caused by coal mine dust, and 17 came back positive. The national prevalence rate in the US among active underground miners is 3.2 percent, and the rate in West Virginia is 7.6 percent.

Inadequate ventilation, poor rock dusting, shoddy maintenance—29 miners dead.

Where is the justice? Where are the jail terms?

So far, just Massey’s chief of security has been indicted—and that was for lying to the FBI and obstructing the criminal investigation. What about the top brass who insisted that the miners keep running coal even as they rightly feared that basic safety standards were being ignored?

This month, Massey was sold to Alpha Natural Resources for $7.1 billion, creating the nation’s second largest coal company. Alpha CEO Kevin Crutchfield named Massey’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Adkins as one of two people charged with spearheading Alpha’s main safety program. Adkins took the Fifth during the independent investigation, and during the disaster reportedly told trained rescuers who were following critical safety protocols to disregard them, that they weren’t “playing mine rescue.”

MSHA mine rescue team member Jerry Cook would later testify, “You know, it’s bad enough trying to find 29 people, you don’t need to have 40 more to look for…They just had a major explosion. They could’ve killed every one of us … We were expendable that night, that’s my opinion … they didn’t care what they did with us.”

And yet Crutchfield described the pairing of Adkins and another executive to lead Alpha’s safety program this way: “Can’t think of two better individuals to lead this effort.”

Fortunately, two public interest groups are leading a very different effort—one that says no more business as usual; no more treating workers as disposable and then taking profits and promotions.

Appalachian Voices and Free Speech for People have petitioned Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden to investigate Massey Energy and revoke its corporate charter (which is in Delaware, as is Alpha’s charter). According to the petitioners, the move would allow the state to appoint a Receiver who would be empowered to replace executives responsible for mismanagement and legal violations, and ensure that better, more responsible managers comply with the law and protect employees.

“It is well established that the corporate charter is a privilege, not a right,” says Jeff Clements, co-founder and general counsel for Free Speech For People. “Delaware, as with other states, reserves the right to revoke or forfeit state corporate charters when they are abused or misused, as in cases of repeated unlawful conduct. The Massey Energy Company presents a classic case of a corporation whose charter should be revoked.”

“Massey Energy has demonstrated a gross disregard for workers and communities in Central Appalachia by systemically ignoring mine safety regulations as well as basic clean air and clean water laws,” says Willa Coffey Mays, executive director of Appalachian Voices. “Bad actors like Massey should not be afforded the same privileges as businesses that play by the rules.”

In Delaware, according to legal precedent, revocation of a corporate charter is appropriate in cases of “a sustained course of fraud, immorality, or violations of statutory law.”

That certainly seems to be Massey’s way of doing business. In their letter to Attorney General Biden, Clements and Mays note the GIIP report’s description of a “shocking corporate culture of illegality, [including an] ‘enemies lists’, ‘codes of silence’, and a ‘too big to be regulated’ attitude.”

Indeed the report describes a “normalization of deviance” at Massey, where “wrongdoing became acceptable, where deviation became the norm. It was acceptable to mine coal with insufficient air; with buildups of coal dust; with inadequate rock dust. The same culture allowed Massey Energy to use its resources to create a false public image to mislead the public, community leaders and investors – the perception that the company exceeded industry safety standards. And it became acceptable to cast agencies designed to protect miners as enemies and to make life difficult for miners who tried to address safety. It is only in the context of a culture bent on production at the expense of safety that these obvious deviations from decades of known safety practices make sense.”

Towards the end of the investigative report there is a description of retired miner Leo Long, testifying at a Congressional field hearing one month after the explosion.

“It just tore us apart, broke our hearts,” the elderly man said of the death of his grandson, 31-year old Ronald Lee Maynor, a father of two . “I cry every day and every night. I can’t help it.” He then pleaded with the Representatives. “I beg you. Please do something.”

Postscript: Read the report to learn what happened on April 5, 2010 and what can be done to avert future disasters; and join the effort to end business as usual—revoke Massey Energy’s corporate charter.

The Coalfield Uprising

Harlan County Blues

Who Killed the Miners?

Thousands Pay Tribute to Judy Bonds

Fighting Back for Workers' Rights

Michele Bachmann says Barack Obama has "released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve"

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

"The president released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve."

Michele Bachmann on Sunday, June 26th, 2011 in an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation"

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Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., appeared on the CBS program "Face the Nation" on June 26, 2011. We checked a few of her claims.

During a June 26, 2011, interview on CBS’Face the Nation, Rep. Michele Bachmann -- a Minnesota Republican who was one day away from officially announcing a bid for the presidency -- criticized President Barack Obama’s recent decision to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The reserve is a complex of four sites near the Gulf Coast that holds "emergency supplies of crude oil" owned by the U.S. government. On June 23, the Obama administration announced that it would release 30 million barrels of oil from the reserve, to "offset the disruption in the oil supply caused by unrest in the Middle East," according to the Energy Department. U.S. allies promised similar actions.

On Face the Nation, Bachmann took aim at this policy. Her comment came as she responded to host Bob Schieffer’s question about the accuracy of some of her past statementsas judged by PolitiFact. Schieffer specifically referenced a Truth-O-Meter item in which we gave Bachmann a Pants on Fire rating for saying that there had been only one offshore oil drilling permit during the Obama administration.

Here’s a portion of the exchange between Schieffer and Bachmann:

Bachmann: "It’s ironic and sad that the president released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve because the president doesn’t have an energy policy."

Schieffer (overlapping): "Do you think that was a good move?"

Bachmann: "He has a politically correct environmental policy."

Schieffer (overlapping): "Was that a good thing?"

Bachmann: "It was a very bad move. It pu t-- it has made the United States more vulnerable. There’s only a limited amount of oil that we have in the Strategic Oil Reserve. It’s there for emergencies. We do not -- the emergency that we have is the fact that ... the president of the United States has failed to give the American people an energy policy. Here’s the good news that a lot of Americans don’t even realize. We are the No. 1 energy resource-rich nation in the world according to the Congressional Research Service. But the president of the United States has unfortunately put American energy resources off limits."

Several readers asked us to check Bachmann’s statement that "the president released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve," suggesting that Bachmann was incorrect in using the word "all" to describe the release. So we decided to look into it.

We turned to the administration’s official announcement. Here’s an excerpt:

"U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the U.S. and its partners in the International Energy Agency have decided to release a total of 60 million barrels of oil onto the world market over the next 30 days to offset the disruption in the oil supply caused by unrest in the Middle East. As part of this effort, the U.S. will release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is currently at a historically high level with 727 million barrels."

So the release of 30 million barrels accounts for just over 4 percent of the current holdings in the reserve -- nowhere near "all" of it.

It's possible Bachmann meant to say, "the president released oil" or "some oil" from the reserve, in which case she would have been accurate. (We reached out to Bachmann’s staff, but they did not respond to our inquiry by publication time.)

However, we saw no effort by Bachmann to correct any misimpression from her comment, either in the Face the Nation interview or elsewhere. In any event, we give significant weight to the actual words a speaker says -- and viewers watching the interview would have been led to believe that Obama had released all the oil in the reserve. We rate Bachmann’s statement False.