The rout was complete, the retreat disorderly. President Obama got his tax hikes —
naked of spending cuts — passed by the ostensibly Republican House of
Representatives. After which, you might expect him to pivot to his
self-proclaimed “principle” of fiscal “balance” by taking the lead on
reducing spending. “Why,” asked The Post
on the eve of the final fiscal-cliff agreement, “is the nation’s leader
not embracing and then explaining the balanced reforms the nation
needs?”
Because he has no interest in them. He’s a visionary, not an
accountant. Sure, he’ll pretend to care about deficits, especially while
running for reelection. But now that he’s past the post, he’s free to
be himself — a committed big-government social democrat.
As he showed in his two speeches this week.
After perfunctory nods to debt and spending reduction, he waxed
enthusiastic about continued “investments” — i.e., spending — on
education, research, roads and bridges, green energy, etc.
Having
promised more government, he then promised more taxes — on
“millionaires” and “companies with a lot of lobbyists,” of course. It
was a bold affirmation of pre-Clintonian tax-and-spend liberalism.
Why
not? He had just won Round 1: raising rates.Round 2 is to raise yet
more tax revenue by eliminating deductions. After all, didn’t John
Boehner offer him $800 billion of such loophole-closing revenuejust a few weeks ago?
To
paraphrase Churchill on the British Empire, Barack Obama did not become
president of the United States to preside over the liquidation of the
welfare state. On the contrary, he is dedicated to its expansion. He’s
already created the largest new entitlement in half a century
(Obamacare). And he has increased federal spending to an astronomical
24.4 percent of GDP (the postwar norm is about 20 percent), a level not
seen since World War II.
But this level of spending requires a
significantly higher level of taxation. Hence his hardball fiscal-cliff
strategy of issuing an ultimatum to Republicans to raise tax rates — or be blamed for a massive across-the-board tax increase and a subsequent recession.
I’ll get you the money by eliminating deductions, offered Boehner. No, sir, replied the president. Rates it must be.
Why the insistence?
(1) Partisan Advantage As I wrote last month,
the ultimatum was designed to exploit and exacerbate internal
Republican divisions. It worked perfectly. Boehner’s attempted finesse (Plan B), which would have raised rates but only for those making more than $1 million, collapsed amid an open rebellion from a good quarter of the Republican caucus.
At which point, power passed from the House to the Senate, where a deal was brokered.
By the time the Senate bill reached the House, there was no time or
room for maneuver. Checkmate. Obama neutralized the one body that had
stymied him during the past two years.
(2) Ideological Breakthrough
Obama’s ultimate ambition is to break the nation’s 30-year thrall
of low taxes — so powerful that those who defied the Reaganite norm
paid heavily for it.
Walter Mondale’s acceptance speech at the 1984
Democratic convention, promising to raise taxes, ended his campaign
before it began.
President George H.W. Bush’s no-new-taxes reversal cost
him a second term.
On this, too, Obama is succeeding. He not only got his tax increase passed.
He did it with public opinion behind him.
Why are higher taxes so important to him?
First,
as a means:
A high-tax economy is liberalism’s only hope for sustaining
and enlarging the entitlement state. It provides the funds for
enlightened adventures in everything from algae to Obamacare.
Second,
as an end in itself.
Fundamentally, Obama is a leveler. The community
organizer seeks, above all, to reverse the growing inequality that he
dates and attributes to ruthless Reaganism. Now, however, clothed in the
immense powers of the presidency, he can actually engage in unadorned re-distribution-ism. As in Tuesday night’s $620 billion wealth transfer.
Upon
losing the House in 2010, the leveler took cover for the next two
years. He wasn’t going to advance his real agenda through the Republican
House anyway, and he needed to win reelection.
Now he’s won. The
old Obama is back. He must not be underestimated.
He has deftly
leveraged his class-war-themed election victory
(a) to secure a source
of funding (albeit still small) for the bloated welfare state,
(b) to
carry out an admirably candid bit of income redistribution and
(c) to
fracture the one remaining institutional obstacle to the rest of his
ideological agenda.
Big policy losers in tax deal: deficit reduction and 'certainty'
By Tom Curry, NBC News national affairs writer
Congress
has avoided going over the so-called fiscal cliff for now -- but the
solution comes at a cost of nearly $4 trillion in foregone revenue over
the next 10 years.
NBC's
Domenico Montanaro reports that while some are reading into the House
Speaker John Boehner-Majority Leader Eric Cantor vote split, there isn't
likely a Machiavellian undermining of Boehner at play by Cantor.
In Tuesday’s climactic late-night vote, the overwhelming House majority made some clear policy choices: against income tax increases for most people, against fundamental changes in the major drivers of federal spending (entitlement programs), and against cuts – at least immediate cuts – in non-entitlement spending.
So what policies and interests were the winners and losers? Here’s an assessment:
Loser: The
power of “leverage.” Since they took over the House in the 2010
election, Republicans haven’t figured out a way to use their political
clout to persuade or nudge Obama into what they say they most want:
changes in entitlement programs and therefore a slower increase in
spending.
Confrontation tactics and threats to not raise the federal
borrowing limit led to the Budget Control Act of 2011, but then some
Republicans, joined by almost all Democrats, voted Tuesday to not allow
that law to start biting.
Conversely, even with his re-election on a platform of raising taxes
on single earners over $200,000 and married couples with incomes over
$250,000, Obama was unable to use his leverage to get what he really
wanted and ended up settling for a partial victory.
Tuesday’s
final vote that had just 85 Republicans in support, including House
Speaker John Boehner but not some of his top lieutenants, also unveiled
something of a split within the party that could hamper GOP success in
negotiations in the next few months on the debt ceiling.
Rep.
Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., joins Morning Joe to discuss the last-minute
agreement reached by the House on New Year's Day. The New Yorker's John
Cassidy also joins the conversation.
Loser:Deficit reduction. If deficit reduction is what voters want, the bill passed by the House and Senate will disappoint them. It
will cause a loss of nearly $4 trillion in tax revenues over 10 years–
compared to the projected revenues if Congress had simply done nothing
and allowed the law on the books in 2012 to expire.
That $4
trillion will need to be found somewhere if Congress wants to reduce
budget deficits in future years and hold down the debt-to-national
income ratio.
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the heads of
President Barack Obama’s commission on fiscal policy and now the heads
of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, said after the House vote that
“Washington missed this magic moment to do something big to reduce the
deficit, reform our tax code, and fix our entitlement programs…. Yet
even after taking the country to the brink of economic disaster,
Washington still could not forge a common-sense bipartisan consensus on a
plan that stabilizes the debt.”
Winner:The Washington, D.C. culture of tax breaks for special interests.
Despite
much rhetoric from Obama, Boehner, Bowles and Simpson, and others about
abolishing tax preferences and simplifying the tax code, the bill
passed by the House and Senate preserves and extends 60 specific
credits, preferences and other benefits for targeted groups and
industries.
In one sense, this is a tribute to the interests and
lobbyists who have worked diligently to advocate for these provisions;
in another sense it reflects the desire of members of Congress to use
their power to shape the tax code for the benefit of favored groups.
Some
of the tax breaks are minuscule in budget terms: a one-year extension
of an economic development tax credit for American Samoa will cost only
$62 million in lost revenue, according to the official scorekeepers for
tax legislation, the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.
President
Obama will sign the "fiscal cliff" legislation approved by a divided
House of Representatives, preventing middle class tax hikes and huge
spending cuts that many feared could have pushed the economy into a new
recession. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.
But some of the provisions are especially significant for particular
industries: a two-year extension of tax credits for blenders of
biodiesel and renewable diesel is worth $2 billion.
Anne Steckel,
vice president of federal affairs at the National Biodiesel Board, said,
“Because of this decision, we'll begin to see real economic impacts
with companies expanding production and hiring new employees."
A
study conducted for the National Biodiesel Board by economics consulting
firm Cardno ENTRIX found that the biodiesel industry would support more
than 112,000 jobs with the tax credit in place compared to 82,000
without it.
Due to another provision of the bill, taxpayers in
states with sales taxes get a one-year extension of their ability to
deduct their state tax payments on their federal tax return. That’s
worth more than $5 billion to them – and a loss of the same amount to
the Treasury. This is especially valuable to people in states with no
state income tax, such as Nevada and Florida, where much of the state
revenue comes from relatively high state sales taxes.
NBC's Domenico Montanaro reviews the fiscal cliff deal and analyzes what it means for the future.
As
bargaining between Obama and GOP congressional leaders plodded on into
December, it seemed that there was never any real likelihood that the
year-ending legislation was the moment for fundamental tax reform. That
fundamental reform is supposed to come later this year, according to the
chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees. But the
ability of special tax preferences to survive year after year indicates
that old tax-favoritism habits will die hard, even if Congress embarks
on tax reform.
Loser: “Certainty.” A favorite theme of
members of Congress on both sides of the aisle was the need to end the
uncertainty over fiscal policy so that business owners and investors
could make decisions about hiring and deploying their capital.
Both
Obama and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich.
used the word “permanent” to describe the income tax provisions in the
bill.
Obama said on New Year’s Eve that Republicans vowed they
“would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.” But
he said the bill “would raise those rates and raise them permanently.”
And
Camp said after Tuesday’s vote that “We have acted to make those (2001
and 2003) tax cuts permanent – protecting middle-class Americans from
the higher tax rates that were in place when President Bill Clinton
occupied the White House.”
Former Rep. Jim McCrery, a tax lobbyist with Capitol Counsel in
Washington and former Republican member of the House Ways and Means
Committee, said “’permanent’ simply means that there’s no sunset
provision… It does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that those
provisions will be in the tax code forever. In fact, most people
anticipate a very aggressive effort to reform the tax code in an
overarching way” in the new Congress that convenes Thursday.
History
argues against anything being permanent in the tax
code. The top
personal income tax rate has changed seven times in the past 30 years
and other tax provisions have changed even more frequently.
Winners:Taxpayers earning less than $250,000, and joint filers earning less than $300,000.
Most
workers won’t be paying higher income taxes. For workers in the $50,000
to $75,000 range, the bill represents roughly a $1,500 income tax cut –
compared to what their tax liability would have been if Congress had
allowed Clinton-era tax policies to return as they were scheduled to do
on Jan. 1.
While tax rates will not go up for most, people making
more than $250,000 will face a reduction in the amount they can deduct
and in the value of their personal exemption. And those above $400,000
income face higher income tax rates, with the top marginal rate
increasing from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.
And upper-income
investors are already facing an increase in the tax on capital gains
enacted in the Affordable Care Act. The top capital gains tax rate will
go from 15 percent to 23.8 percent.
But overall, 92 percent of the
tax increase will fall on tax filers with incomes over $1 million,
according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Contrary to rhetoric
from some members of Congress, it’s not only the middle class who are
being shielded from paying more for their government – it’s upper-income
people as well. (Median annual U.S. household income is about $51,000.)
Winner:
Traditional Social Security funding. There was bipartisan agreement to
restore the 6.2 percent payroll tax which – in a bid to stimulate the
economy – had been cut to 4.2 percent in 2011.
Going back to a 6.2
percent rate reverts to longstanding policy of having a dedicated
source of tax funding for Social Security.For a worker making $60,000 a
year, this decision will mean $23 a week or $1,200 a year in higher
taxes. But it also means Social Security will not be borrowing general
tax revenues to make up its shortfall as it had been doing in 2011 and
2012.
The original version of this story incorrectly said the extension
of the biodiesel tax credit is for one year. It is extended for two
years.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Joint Session of Congress Formally Certifies Pres. Obama's Re-Election
Washington, DC Friday, January 4, 2013
On Friday, a
Joint Session of Congress convened to count the electoral votes.
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden each received 332 electoral
votes and were officially re-elected to office.
Republicans Mitt
Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan each received 206 votes. A
majority of 270 electoral votes are required to elect a President and
Vice President.
Federal Law mandates that this be done on Jan. 6,
following an election, but Congress passed a law allowing it to happen
on Jan. 4 this year, since the 6th is a Sunday.
Vice President Joe
Biden presided over the counting, which took place in the House
chamber. The ballots from the electoral college were sealed until they
were officially counted today.
Updated:
Saturday at 9:59am (ET)
Fiscal cliff deal includes at least $67.9 billion for special interests
Getty Images for NASCAR, file
The fiscal cliff compromise includes tax breaks worth $70 million over two years for the owners of race tracks like Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.
By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News
Taxpayers aren't the only ones who won't be flying off the fiscal cliff— this year, at least. Add race cars, movies and asparagus to the list.
As part of their last-second deal to slam the brakes on an economy racing toward the so-called fiscal cliff, lawmakers gave the green light this week to extending dozens of business and industry tax breaks, like a cost-recovery program that will save the owners of "motorsports entertainment complexes" (that is, racetracks) about $70 million over the next two years.
Much of thecompromise agreement that President Barack Obama's autopen signed into law Thursday was targeted at individuals and families,notably preserving most of the tax cuts that passed under President George W. Bush, which were set to expire Monday. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, told MSNBC that the deal was "a big gift-wrapped present of certainty to the middle class."
But the agreement also came loaded with extensions of separate existing tax breaks for businesses and industries, many of which had expired in the past year — about $67.9 billion in all in 2013, as tabulated by Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.
(The extensions will actually cost much more: Not only were they made retroactive to cover 2012, but some of the breaks and credits would be in effect for 10 years if left in place. Many cover only one or two years, however.)
WHAT THE HELL? I believe a lot of Americans would have told there congress person to veto the bill if they had known of all the little perks in it.
In addition to extending tax breaks for racing moguls, the legislation also extended:
• A tax credit for construction of renewable energy projects, like wind turbines and biomass, geothermal and hydropower generation, for one year. It's projected to cost about $116 million, the committee said.
That may seem like a drop in the bucket, but here's the kicker: While the extension to qualify for new projects covers only 2013, the actual tax credit itself is good for 10 years. That means new projects that break ground in 2013 will be able to claim the credit for the next decade, at an overall price tag the committee put at slightly less than $12.2 billion. I thought we got rid of pork belly add-ons. OUTRAGEOUS.........
• An arcane provision of corporate tax law, called active financing income, that lets U.S. corporations defer taxes on some income they earn from their overseas subsidiaries. That provision will cost the U.S. Treasury more than $9 billion this year and $1.8 billion next year.
• Tax breaks for Hollywood producers who shoot their movies and TV shows in the U.S., at a cost of about $430 million through 2014.
• A program that sends most federal taxes collected on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands back to those territories to subsidize domestic production. Bar tab: $222 million over two years.
• A tax break worth about $15 million a year for asparagus growers hit hard by cheap asparagus imported from Peru.
• $4 million in tax breaks over the next two years for people who buy "2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicles" — in other words, electric scooters, Segways and the like.
The purpose of the deal was to prevent a series of steep spending cuts and tax increases on the middle class from automatically taking effect in the new year. But "we're not making it (the tax system) better or fairer," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said on the House floor Tuesday in explaining why he was voting against the measure.
Big policy losers in tax deal: deficit reduction and 'certainty'
"We're not getting rid of the NASCAR loophole. We're not getting rid of the electric motor scooter low-speed loophole. We're not getting rid of a whole lot of tax things that are here," Issa said.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., tells Ed Schultz how the Democrats and the White House plan to move forward, with or without House Speaker John Boehner, pictured, as a larger fight over the deficit looms. Neither new nor secret Although many of the provisions are being characterized as new pork barrel programs that sneaked their way into the bill under cover of darkness, there's nothing new or secret about any of them.
Most of the tax breaks had been scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, 2011, and as long ago as February, lawmakers were seeking a way to revive them.
Eventually, they were packaged together as the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012. It was so titled because "people need certainty to plan their finances, and businesses need certainty to hire, invest and grow," as Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Finance Committee, said when the committee passed the package in August.
Once it was out of committee, the measure went nowhere. That is, until this week, when — with a lame-duck Congress just hours away from going home without having addressed the fiscal cliff — it was substituted almost word for word into the deal brokered by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
It makes up Titles III and IV of the final bill, with many of the alterations reading like this:
Paragraph (1) of section 7652(f) is amended by striking "January 1, 2012" and inserting "January 1, 2014".
Former Sens. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., left, and Erskine Bowles, D-N.C., co-chairman of President Barack Obama's 2010 deficit commission, said Congress missed a 'magic moment' to reform the tax code.
By taking the clock down to 00:00 and backing itself into a corner, Congress "missed this magic moment to do something big to reduce the deficit, reform our tax code and fix our entitlement programs," said former Sens. Erskine Bowles, D-N.C., and Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., the co-chairmen of Obama's 2010 commission responsible for finding a way out of the country's economic morass.
"We have all known for over a year that this fiscal cliff was coming," they said in a joint statement Tuesday, adding: "Yet even after taking the country to the brink of economic disaster, Washington still could not forge a common sense bipartisan consensus on a plan that stabilizes the debt."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was less diplomatic.
"It's so incredibly disappointing that members of Congress saw fit to add hundreds of millions of dollars in special-interest handouts to the recently passed 'fiscal cliff' bill, which had the simple purpose of avoiding massive tax rate increases on average Americans," McCain said Thursday.
"It's hard to think of anything that could feed the cynicism of the American people more than larding up must-pass emergency legislation with giveaways to special interests and campaign contributors," he said. "And this growing cynicism — largely justified in my view — will make it harder for us to deliver the tough medicine needed to address our crushing national debt."
Pharmacy blames cleaners in fungal meningitis outbreak
By JoNel Aleccia, NBC News
The
compounding pharmacy at the center of an ongoing outbreak of fungal
meningitis and other infections says the cleaning company it hired is
also at fault for unsanitary conditions linked to more than 650
infections and 39 deaths in the U.S.
The New England
Compounding Center sent a letter Dec. 31 to UniFirst Corp., asking
UniFirst officials to indemnify NECC against claims stemming from the
compounding and sale of tainted steroid injection drugs, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“This
demand relates to the limited, once-a-month cleaning services the
Company provided to portions of NECC’s cleanroom facilities,” UniFirst,
of Wilmington, Mass., explained in required filings.
“Based on its preliminary review of this matter, the Company believed that NECC’s claims are without merit.”
Federal
health regulators found fungi in three lots of tainted steroids linked
to infections and deaths and more fungi and bacteria in other drugs made
by NECC.
In addition, Food and Drug Administration
inspectors found evidence of contamination documented throughout the
NECC facility and dating from January 2012 through September. In some
cases, surfaces were overgrown with visible mold, inspectors said.
UniFirst
provided services through its UniClean business as specified by NECC
and using NECC’s own “defined cleansing solutions,” UniFirst spokesman
Adam Soreff told NBC News in a statement. UniClean technicians cleaned
approximately 1½ hours each month.
“UniClean was not
in any way responsible for NECC’s day-to-day operations, its overall
facility cleanliness, or the integrity of the products they produced,”
Soreff said.
NECC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection on Dec. 21, with officials pledging to establish a fund for
victims. NECC faces more than 400 lawsuits from patients who received
epidural steroid injections later found to be contaminated with fungus
linked to the serious and deadly infections. Some 14,000 people in 23
states received the injections before the problem was discovered in
September.
US President Barack Obama meets with Israel's Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.
(photo by REUTERS/Jason Reed)
Almost four years ago, Benjamin Netanyahu made his first visit to Washington as the newly-elected prime minister. It was his second term in office. His first term ended badly, leaving him detested by the Israeli public, shunned from politics and an outcast in the American capital. The headlines in Israel that accompanied his trip proclaimed that Netanyahu was facing a direct threat from the American administration. “Bushehr or Yitzhar,” screamed one such headline, referencing the option of support against the Iranian nuclear program or keeping a settlement in the heart of the West Bank. Political pundits with White House connections gave a stunning description of how Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and his colleagues in President Obama’s inner circle were plotting to “school” Netanyahu and bring him to his knees. Want help against Iran? Sure, just evacuate settlements, freeze construction and get on board the peace process. “The party is over,” said the Americans. If Netanyahu wants the same attitude from us that Israel has grown accustomed to receive for at least a generation, he will have to work up a sweat.
Sitting aboard his flight to Washington, Netanyahu seemed pensive and worried. “What do they want?” he asked privately. “To bring me down?” No one knew what to tell him. By the time Bibi arrived in the American capital, he was scared and apprehensive. The fallout from that first meeting with President Barack Obama was harsh. There was no chemistry worth mentioning. There was, however, mutual distrust and quite a bit of tension. It looked like the beginning of a beautiful rivalry. Then came a freeze on construction in the territories. And then it all fell apart. The Americans made every imaginable error. They perched Abu Mazen too high up the tree, took away the ladder and left.
There was a time when every Israeli prime minister knew that in order for them to keep their job, they first needed to earn Washington’s support. The Israeli public considered the strategic relationship with the US to be a vital asset of the highest magnitude, much more important than the futility of this place, than the outposts and the settlers. Failure to bring Washington on board was a sure sign that they would not remain in power. Period. In 1991 it was President George Bush the Elder who denied these guarantees to then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and showed him the door. In 1992 Shamir lost the elections to Yitzhak Rabin. In 1999 it was President Bill Clinton who gave Netanyahu — the very same Netanyahu — the cold shoulder, and this led to his defeat by Ehud Barak in the next elections. Israelis learned to recognize the value of America, and they learned to appreciate it. Anyone who posed a threat to this relationship was putting himself at risk.
And today? The situation has been turned completely upside down. Israel is well in the midst of an election campaign. It is a very sensitive period. In times like these, the ruling prime minister is generally accustomed to heaping flattery and praises on the American administration. He tries to arrange a highly publicized trip to Washington, and he boasts of the special relationship he has forged with the sitting President. Not this time. Netanyahu and Avigdor Liberman are doing the exact opposite. Instead, they launch a provocative statement about construction in Jerusalem or the territories — whichever comes first — just about every week. Obama has become the punching bag of the “Likud-Beiteinu” party, and the mob cheers on. Meanwhile, the Israeli public is indifferent and shows no signs of concern. Bibi can continue pummeling the Americans as far as we’re concerned, as long as the ship keeps sailing forward and the band plays happily on deck.
And Netanyahu is doing the pummeling. He is no longer afraid. He has lost the inherent, natural respect that every Israeli leader has had for the country’s greatest ally. It’s more important for him to plug the leakage of parliamentary seats to Naftali Bennett on the right. The most important thing of all to him is that those seats don’t trickle away. And Washington? We don’t care about them right now. Besides, in our last term in office, we taught our friends in the White House a lesson that they won’t soon forget, didn’t we? The timid, nondescript, and intensely uneasy Netanyahu of his previous term has long disappeared. He has since boosted his confidence and spread his wings, so that he can now hover high above on the fumes of euphoria. What will he do if they evaporate? Après lui le deluge.
What has changed? A few things. First of all, there’s the collapse of the peace process, the eruption of the Arab Spring, and the sense that a storm is brewing all around. There is no one and nothing to talk about, so all that is left is to trust in ourselves, or in our Father Who Art in Heaven. Then there are Obama’s mistakes: his visit to Cairo, his inclination to ignore Netanyahu and the Israeli public. Unlike Clinton or Bush the Younger, Obama hasn’t learned to build a relationship of trust with the Israeli public, and that Israeli public is starved for affection. A president who looks them squarely in the eye when he speaks, who pours his heart out to them, who drops by for a visit… now that’s a winning president. Israel doesn’t see Obama as a true friend, even though he provides the goods that Israel needs most, and he does it even more than most of his predecessors. Nevertheless, Israelis remain suspicious of him. What ever happened to those unforgettable days of “Shalom, Haver” [Goodbye, Friend], as Clinton said over Yitzhak Rabin’s open grave? By the way, had Clinton run for prime minister of Israel back then, he would have won an absolute majority. If Obama ran now, Shaul Mofaz of the Kadima party would get more votes than him.
What we’re talking about is a missed opportunity of historic proportions. Never has Israel found a friendlier administration in Washington, when it comes to all the security issues that really matter. The Israeli public isn’t aware of these details, or perhaps it doesn’t want to be aware of them. In everything to do with the sharing of intelligence, special means, operational and strategic cooperation, the supply of arms, and even international backing (American continues to isolate itself by supporting Israel in all votes in the United Nations’ General Assembly and its Security Council), no administration was ever better than Obama’s. Americans are making the investment but foregoing the returns. Obama is left to feed off spoiled scraps and expelled from the city. There are many he can blame for that, including himself.
At the same time, there have been changes in Israel too. Demography has played its part, and the public has moved to the right. The natural rate of increase among the settlers and the ultra-Orthodox is significantly higher than it is on the other side of the spectrum. This all comes to a climax when Netanyahu and Liberman allow themselves to pummel Abu Mazen too, on an almost daily basis, and no one dares to open their mouths in protest. Would they prefer to see Hamas in Ramallah? Whatever. What difference does it make? They are all Arabs in the end, aren’t they? And so, the celebration continues. The ship sails on, the band remains on deck playing and the iceberg is still shrouded by thick mist (even though it’s looming closer now). Bon voyage.
The new Sandy Hook Elementary is seen
on the Jan. 3 on the first day of school for students and teacher who
survived the Dec. 14 shooting. The school, formerly known as Chalk Hill,
was overhauled especially for the students in the neighboring town of
Monroe, Conn.
Students
return to class for the first time since a gunman killed 26 people at
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. They are attending a
neighboring school that has been filled with items from the original
building. NBC’s Rehema Ellis reports.
A parent greets her child as she gets off a school bus returning from
the first day of classes at the new Sandy Hook School on Jan. 3.
Families from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. are on the field before the game between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles at MetLife Stadium on Dec. 30, in East Rutherford, N.J.
A school bus stops in front of 26
angels along the roadside as it travels from
Newtown, Conn., to Monroe
on the first day of classes for Sandy Hook Elementary School students
since the Dec. 14 shooting. Chalk Hill School in Monroe was overhauled
especially for the students from the Sandy Hook School shooting.
Greg Gnandt and Guy Veneruso work on the installation of 26 stars on the
roof of the Sandy Hook fire station on Jan. 1 in Newtown, Conn. The
stars were made and installed by a group of local contractors, led by
Gnandt, to honor the memory of the victims of the Sandy Hook school
shooting.
Fliers can expect higher airfares, fewer airlines, more fees, experts say
10 hrs.
A. Pawlowski, NBC News contributor
Well, that didn't take long. Just four days into the new year,
United Airlines and its Star Alliance partner Air Canada have launched
the first attempted airfare increase of 2013.
As
of Friday afternoon, Delta matched United's fares, and "there has been
minimal matching by American Airlines and US Airways," according to
FareCompare.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
A
US Airways plane and an American Airlines plane share a terminal at
Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington in this file photo taken
last April. The carriers could announce its plans to merge as soon as
next week.
Uncertainty often looms large when
air travelers turn their calendars to January. Will airfares keep
climbing? What new fees will airlines come up with? Is merger mania
about to engulf more carriers?
Seaney and other air travel experts weighed in on the developments that may shape your flying experience in 2013.
Airfare trends
There
were seven attempted domestic airfare hikes in 2012 and that number
will likely grow slightly this year, which should raise ticket prices
about 7 percent or so, Seaney said.
But some
routes may see bargains. Expect Southwest Airlines to try to expand over
water, with Hawaii on the carrier’s radar, Seaney added. It may even
try to fly to parts of Canada, he predicted.
“As Southwest tries
to become more like a legacy airline, the legacy airlines are trying to
become more like Southwest. So it’s sort of a strange thing that’s going
on,” Seaney said.
International fares will still be expensive
because of fuel surcharges, but globetrotters may see some price breaks
if they depart from U.S. cities where foreign carriers are expanding
their service, said George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com.
Turkish Airlines is starting to fly from Houston this spring and that’s
putting downward pressure on international airfares in that region,
Hobica said.
Possible merger between American Airlines and US Airways
All
of the travel experts who talked with NBC News said the merger – which
would reduce the number of U.S. legacy carriers to three – would likely
lead to higher airfares and cuts in capacity.
“It’s a bad
thing for travelers. Any time that competition is eroded, consumers
lose,” said Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance.
Still,
an announcement appears imminent. The board of directors of American's
parent company, AMR Corp., could vote on a merger with US Airways as
soon as next week, NBCDFW.com reported.
The carrier declined to confirm whether a decision on the merger would be made then.
“We
can’t comment on the timeline or our board meeting, but we remain
committed in our efforts to secure the best outcome for our financial
stakeholders, our people and our customers,” American Airlines said in a
statement to NBC News.
If
American does merge with US Airways, expect fewer flights on
overlapping routes and be prepared for some computer hiccups – similar
to the glitches that plagued United Airlines last year after its merger with Continental – when the carriers try to combine their systems.
But
travelers accruing frequent flier miles with either airline or those
who have earned elite status have nothing to worry about, said
FareCompare.com's Seaney.
“Typically, you see newly merged
airlines bending over backwards to make sure all their loyal customers
are taken care of,” Seaney said. “The last thing you want to do as a
merged airline is alienate your best customers. I would expect them to
offer more things than they normally would as opposed to cutting back.”
The next generation of fees
With
carriers demanding extra money for everything from early boarding to
on-board snacks, what else can they possibly charge for? Don’t
worry – the number crunchers are still coming up with new ideas.
“Every time we think that the airlines can’t think up a new fee, they surprise us,” Leocha said.
Travelers
will likely see a further push to self-service at the airport, so they
may be asked to check themselves in for their flight and if they don’t,
they’ll pay a fee, said Hobica.
Airlines could also introduce “disincentives” to talk with airline personnel at the airport, he added.
Another
trend is airlines offering fees in bundles – so you have the option of
buying a package deal of extra services rather than purchasing them
individually, Leocha said.
For example, American Airlines last month introduced “choice” fares
that bundle extras such as early boarding, one checked bag and the
ability to change flights for flat fees that range from $68-$88.
The next step? Carriers will be taking those bundles and discounting them, Seaney said.
New round of passenger protections
Under
the latest proposal, the government would require that airline fees be
displayed through “all sale channels,” but last month, the Department of
Transportation delayed action on addressing the issue from January to May.
“The
real battle now is about comparison shopping. Consumers love to
comparison shop, airlines hate it and they don’t want to give the
comparison shopping sites their bundles of fees,” Seaney said.
The
goal is to get the carriers to release their fees so that third-party
websites, such as Priceline and Travelocity, can display them in real
time and dynamically as they change, Leocha said. The debate over the
issue will take place this year, but he doesn’t expect any changes to be
implemented until 2014.
“Nothing moves quickly in Washington,”
Leocha said. “(Still,) this has been by far the most consumer friendly
Department of Transportation that we’ve ever had.”
A better flying experience Can
it be true? Will you actually enjoy flying this year? Perhaps enjoy is a
strong word, but chances are you will see some improvements.
Airlines
are going to take delivery of a “boatload of new aircraft” and those
planes will have mood lighting, better breathing air, more legroom and
other creature comforts, Seaney noted.
“I think people will finally, for the first time in over a decade, have a little bit better flying experience,” he said.
Wi-Fi
will become prevalent on most flights, for a fee, Lisa Gill, senior
editor at Conde Nast Traveler, told TODAY. Also expect to see more
lie-flat beds in business class on long domestic flights, she said.
This week, I was proud to join the board and help launch the Freedom of the Press Foundation,
a new organization which plans on crowd-funding for a variety of
independent journalism outlets whose prime mission is to seek
transparency and accountability in government. You can read about the
first group of four organizations -- which includes the National
Security Archive, MuckRock News, and The UpTake and WikiLeaks -- here.
Recently, I sat down with George Washington Law School professor and
constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley and my close friend Kevin McCabe
to discuss WikiLeaks' impact on transparency, the government's response,
and the comparison to the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
(also a co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation). (And see a
previous conversation with Jonathan Turley here.)
WikiLeaks was extralegally cut off from funding after two Congressmen
successfully pressured Visa, Mastercard and PayPal into refusing to do
business with the journalism organization in late 2010. We hope that the
Freedom of the Press Foundation will become a bulwark against these types of unofficial censorship tactics in the future.
This is the first part of our conversation.
*****
John Cusack: Did you guys see this piece by Ellsberg before the Election?
Kevin McCabe: No.
Jonathan Turley: No.
John Cusack: Was really meaningful, I think about what it meant to vote for Obama -- Ellsberg's is a principled stand -- but had taken the Chomsky position to stop the Republicans in swing states. But do it with no illusions.
Jonathan Turley: Right.
John Cusack: Anyway, I thought the Ellsberg thing was fascinating. And I spoke to -- Jon, you know Michael Ratner? He said he knew you --
Jonathan Turley: Yeah.
John Cusack: I spoke to him about this request to
see Julian Assange in London. I was just thinking Assange, and as
Hedges and Ellsberg sue over NDAA, we have a situation where, if things
are as they appear to be, Assange is locked up for basically exposing
war crimes.
Jonathan Turley: Yeah. I think the fascinating
thing about Assange is that the very same act of disclosure, if he were
recognized as a journalist, might have brought him the Pulitzer Prize.
Assange holds this curious status. The media doesn't quite know how to
handle him. They can't decide whether he is a villain or a hero, or
some type of villainous hero. And many people are ignoring the content
of a lot of what he disclosed.
You and I have talked about this in the past, John, that the material
released by WikiLeaks ticked off the US government, primarily because
it showed that the government had been routinely lying to the American
people. That produced tremendous anger from government officials who
are not used to be exposed in this way, including members of Congress.
These are people who tightly control what the public knows and what
information is allowed out of the government.
Frankly, most governments are used to lying to each other - to a
degree that most people would find shocking. Part of diplomacy is the
art of strategic lying. These cables show the level of deceit shown by
government not only to other governments but to their own citizens,
including our own. And so it was a tremendously embarrassing
disclosure.
Some of these disclosures were quite startling and far more important
than the media suggestion in the coverage. For example, we've talked
about the cable showing the Obama Administration threatening Spain if
Spain carried out its right under treaty to investigate the American
torture program, in light of Obama's refusal to do so.
John Cusack: Yeah, it doesn't seem like this guy is being hunted around the world because he embarrassed some diplomats.
Jonathan Turley: Right, it is more than that.
John Cusack: I would love to discuss what these
underlying legal principles are. Do you think he feels he's doing
something that should be done by journalists and publishers -- do you
think he's filling a gap in journalism, or is this a new sort of
journalism? Perhaps he doesn't care about those distinctions, but
should we?
Jonathan Turley: Well, the response to Assange is
remarkable -- it was something of a paradigm shift. The media's used to
insular disclosures that are controlled and focused on subjects like
the secret prisons in Europe, or the torture program. What Assange did
was a massive release of material that showed the breathtaking
dishonesty by the US government and governments around the world . . .
it showed how much of our domestic and international politics are just a
type of kabuki, that--
John Cusack: In that way, it's adequately analogous
to the Pentagon Papers. In the same way - say Eric Holder signing
statements saying you can kill American citizens is the same kind of
bullshit legal patina akin to John Yoo's torture document. What are the
important difference or parallels, between the Ellsberg releases of the
Pentagon Papers and WikiLeaks' release of the exposure of war crimes and
state lies?
Jonathan Turley: I think you make the right analogy.
In one sense, the Pentagon Papers were so powerful because they were
focused on the issue of deception with regard to the Vietnam War.
Assange is almost hurt by the fact that his disclosures were 100 times
broader than the Pentagon Papers. Ironically, if he had simply taken parts of those disclosures and
released them in isolation, he might have had a greater level of
support. Instead, he released this comprehensive record of deceit by
the US government and other governments. And frankly, I think the
mainstream media had difficulty in covering it and describing it and
processing it.
The result is that this guy is isolated, both in a legal and physical
sense. He's being basically held captive in this embassy, unless he's
willing to leave and be subject to arrest. He has good reason to
suspect that the United States government is planning to deport him as
soon as any government can get -- any friendly government -- can get
their hands on him.
John Cusack: Yeah -- I have no idea what the truth
is in the matter. But I know that you haven't seen too many governments
taking such active interest and getting so actively involved in Swedish
rape cases.
Jonathan Turley: Well, there's a lot of skepticism
with regard to the timing. The fact is the United States did need some
government to grab Assange on the basis of some criminal allegation.
Yet, we do not know fully the underlying facts.
Assange may indeed be a highly imperfect individual - even a rapist
if these allegations were ever proven. As I've mentioned before, I tell
my students all the time that our causes are often better than our
clients. It's just a reality of pro bono or public interest work. It
is not uncommon to have people who raise important public interest
issues, but may have committed great wrongs.
Frankly, I don't know what the truth of the matter is. I know that
Assange has offered to meet with investigators in the embassy, and
that's been refused. I'm a little uncertain of why it has been refused.
But in terms of the importance of WikiLeaks, I don't think anyone can
really question that there is considerable importance to those
disclosures.
John Cusack: Yes, in many ways, it's world-changing.
Are Assange and Wiki leaks basically saying there's no one who'll do
this journalism anymore, so we are compelled to do it? Or is he filling
some other space, or trying to trump journalistic space. Legally,
whats the difference? Why is he punished but the New York Times is not?
They published his material.
I think you're saying it's such a vaster terrain than the Pentagon
Papers that it may explain the frenzy -- when the publisher for the New
York Times and reporters around Ellsberg release had to just say to
themselves -- vietnam lies --all right, these guys are going to come
after us -- Maybe we'll go to jail, maybe we won't. But they made the
call, and they published it.
Wikileaks is going after all governments
all over the world. Jonathan Turley: I think what Assange showed, more than
any journalist or activist perhaps in history, is the sheer degree of
duplicity and deception by this government and governments around the
world.
John Cusack: You think the primary crux of it is the
thing as a whole, not just the Bradley Manning case, or any specific
revelation? Manning is just the fulcrom point to stop it and destroy
them.
Jonathan Turley: Yeah, I think it's fascinating when
you look at the reaction to Bradley Manning and Assange. The
government really went to DEFCON 4 in dealing with these guys. And the
question is why. I think the answer to that is they want to hoist the
wretch. They want everyone to see these guys twisting in the wind, so
no one will do this again.
And what is it that they did? They released --
John Cusack: They were whistleblowers.
Jonathan Turley: Right, they released information
embarrassing to the government. But when you look at the media
coverage, they clearly are unwilling to treat Assange as a
whistleblower, and they are particularly unwilling to treat him as a
journalist.
And so this sort of goes to this longstanding question of what constitutes a journalist in the age of blogs and Internet sites?
John Cusack: I guess that's probably the question I
was stumbling towards -- what do you believe that difference is, from
the constitutional perspective of freedom of speech, or its protection?
Jonathan Turley: Journalists have been adopting a
very narrow definition because they have a legitimate concern that, with
the ability to create a blog in a matter of minutes, everyone can claim
to be a journalist. If everyone is a journalist, then no one will
likely have journalistic privileges. Journalists survive on these
privileges and those privileges will evaporate if everyone can claim
them.
And so if you look at things like the National Press Club, they long
have had a definition of a journalist that deals with how much the
person gets paid to do journalism, excluding people who are legitimate
journalists but are not receiving a full-time, or even a significant
part-time, salary. Those definitions are highly artificial today. Most
people are now getting their news from the Internet and from blogs.
Kevin McCabe: -- in a reference in a Times story,
the reporter referred to Chris Matthews and Katie Couric as journalists,
who would be attending the Al Smith dinner. And I was going to send a
note saying Chris Matthews is no journalist. At one time he was a
columnist. But he's a cable TV opinion guy now. I think that what you
say just brings a striking relief to all of that. It's just so obvious.
Jonathan Turley: It also creates this awkward
position, where if Adam Liptak at the New York Times releases material
from Assange, it's a journalistic act. When Assange releases this
information in bulk, it's considered a terrorist act. And nobody seems
comfortable with trying to explain that distinction. And I'm not too
sure that they can.
There's two ways to look at whether someone's a journalist -- their
function and their motivation. And usually, we look at both. Well,
what was the motivation of Assange? Assange's motivation, it seems to
me, was clearly to be a whistleblower and to release this information.
But he was also doing an act which is identical to what journalists do.
And yet, if you look at how he's treated in the newspapers, they're
not treating him as either whistleblower or journalist; they're treating
him somehow as sui generis, something unique. He's an Assange.
John Cusack: Yes. What is the difference between him
raising money, and putting up a website, WikiLeaks, and having his own
investigative reporting team gather information and aggregating content;
and the Huffington Post hiring folks doing the same-- I watch her put
her thing together and become the online newspaper... many of the people
who were bloggers and are now journalists - great guys like Sam Stein
-- and they do a great job -- now they have titles -they get accredited
and go to the White House, and they are journalists, but primarily, they
write online...
Jonathan Turley: Yeah, I think that's true. The
distinction I think you could draw between these acts -- and I think
you're absolutely right in that concern. I think that part of the
distinction is if the government was arguing that Assange is an actual
hacker -- if they're saying that he broke into a computer system and
removed this material--
John Cusack: -they're basically saying that Assange is Anonymous.
Jonathan Turley: Right.
John Cusack: So their argument is if Assange is Anonymous; he's a cyber-terrorist?
Jonathan Turley: Right. And if he's a hacker, I think that does -- John Cusack: Does that hold up?
Jonathan Turley: Well, no -- if he's a hacker, it does put him in a different category, in the sense that he's committing a crime --
John Cusack: Is he a hacker? Do we know that?
Jonathan Turley: Well, no, we don't know that. In
fact, many people insist that it's clear he's not a hacker, that he
somehow got this material from a third party. But I don't know the
truth either way. But I think the one distinction we can draw, and the
distinction that's existed -
John Cusack: -- Like the New York Times got from Ellsberg -he was the third party
Jonathan Turley: Right.
Kevin McCabe: But I think it's important to re-frame this discussion
here and look at this problem from a broader perspective than just
Julian Assange. Because I am not interested in individuals.
I am interested in movements. We need a movement protecting the 1st
Amendment and its broadest reach. I don't care about Assange other than
he is an individual whose rights are being violated. And that means my
rights are being violated. The reason we should care about what happens
to Assange in the United States is because what happens to him, happens
to the First Amendment."
Airline Humiliated Double-Amputee Marine to the Point of Tears
There is no apology that could make up for the way this Marine was treated. He served our country with honor and distinction, he gave his all, including his legs. I will boycott Delta Airlines, and I think all Americans should do the same. Lets show a corporation, that they can not get away with treating people this way......
Posted by Lindsay Manneringon December 16, 2012 at 10:00 AM
Last year, Marine Lance Cpl. Christian Brown lost both his legs while fighting in Afghanistan. Last week, he lost his dignity while flying on Delta. According to reports, Brown, 29, was humiliated by the airline staff
who clumsily wheeled him to the back of the plane, bumping into seated
passengers along the way, and refused to let him change seats with
fellow ticket-holders who offered him their seats in first class. Army
Lt. Col. Keith Gafford was also on that flight from Atlanta to D.C. and
saw the whole shameful scene go down. He says Brown, who was also
battling a fever of 104, was in tears.
Gafford explained:
I have been flying with Delta for a gazillion years and this crew treated Chris worse than you’d treat any thing, not even any body.
I did 27 years in the military. I have seen a lot of things and have
seen a lot of guys die, but I have never seen a Marine cry.
They sat on the tarmac for more than 45 minutes and Gafford said
still, the flight attendants wouldn't move Brown to a better seat. He
blasted the staff for being "hard as woodpecker lips." What was going through the minds of the flight attendants who, from what it sounds like, went out of their way to be some of the least accommodating people on Earth? The man's got no legs,
for crying out loud, he's sick as a dog, he's visibly humiliated, and
he's a veteran who served our country proudly -- is it too much to ask
to treat him like a human being?
Delta has issued an apology, but I can understand where Gafford and
retired Army Col. Nickey Knighton, another service-member on the flight,
are coming from when they speak with such disgust and disdain for the
treatment Brown received.
You'd think around the holidays people would have lighter, kinder hearts, especially for those who served, and for those with their whole lives ahead of them. I guess not. Can you believe how Brown was treated?
John Cusack