Capitol Idea: April's Fool: Will it be John Boehner, or the Tea Party?

By Scott Nance

You can always count on Sen. Chuck Schumer to get to the heart of a matter with a good quote.

"So Speaker Boehner is caught between a shutdown and a hard place," the voluble New Yorker says. "He has caught a tiger by the tail in the form of the Tea Party."

With just a little more than a week left to settle on a federal budget to avoid a government shutdown, congressional Democrats and Republicans actually seemed like they might be close to a deal.

But, suddenly, the House Republicans did a strange thing. They pulled back from the talks. They changed their minds about what level of spending cuts they could accept.

"We were right on the verge of a breakthrough, and they suddenly moved the goalposts. We felt a little bit like we were left at the altar," Schumer adds.

What happened? In a word or two, the answer is, "tea party." Hard-line conservatives got cold feet, fearing too much of a compromise of the deep, deep budget cuts they passed last month in the form of H.R. 1, the spending bill opposed by President Obama and Senate Democrats.

Boehner ultimately came back to the bargaining table, and the word now is that Boehner's office has at least agreed with Democrats on a target level of cuts: $33 billion. Although that certainly counts as progress, now comes the hard part: what, specifically, to cut to get to that $33 billion.

Conservatives, no doubt, will continue to want to slash things like public broadcasting and environmental protection funding. Democrats would rather cut things like programs already identified as waste or redundancy, as well as federal tax subsidies to big oil companies that already are posting record profits.

But a question just as large for Speaker Boehner is whether his tea party colleagues will go along with whatever compromise he and his team hammer out. Already, more than 50 House conservatives walked away from him on an earlier budget vote that he supported. It was Democrats who had to step in to save that vote earlier this month in order to avert a government shutdown. The consensus is that debacle has already weakened Boehner's position.

As I write this, tea party activists are rallying at the Capitol against compromise, to press for a continued hard line for the budget. The question is, if that is true and Boehner already is weakened, what happens if tea party lawmakers abandon him a second time? Most immediately, of course, the speaker can, and will, turn once more to Democrats to save the day.

There's already word that he is laying the groundwork to do so.

That would be good policy, and avoid a government shutdown looming for April 9.

The politics are a different matter, however. Democrats aren’t the ones who voted Boehner in as speaker. Republicans did, including scores of tea party-aligned conservatives who will have been scorned if Boehner turns to Democrats to pass a compromise budget.

If Boehner relies on Democrats for a compromise, tea party lawmakers could well become enraged and Boehner could find his speakership in jeopardy. Conservative lawmakers could well launch a plan to depose Boehner as speaker, and replace him with a leader who they find to be a more reliable ally.

Indeed, tea party lawmakers almost certainly would have to do so. If they oppose a final budget, Boehner passes it with Democrats and survives as speaker, it will be the tea party and the members it helped elect who will have been so marginalized as to become nearly irrelevant in the debate.

Either way, someone will start April finding that the joke in Washington will be on them.

Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington. This article was first published as April's Fool: Will it be John Boehner, or the Tea Party? on Blogcritics.

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Coal-Fired Power Plants Deliver on Only Fraction of Promised Jobs, New Report Finds

The Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies released a new report Thursday showing for the first time the number of jobs created by large, new coal-fired power plants falls far below the amount promised before the plants were approved.

The report found that job creation in the host counties for five of the six plants analyzed fell woefully short of initial job estimates. Overall, of the six plants studied in five counties around the country, only 56 percent of every 1,000 jobs promised actually materialized. In four of the five counties, coal plant construction delivered only 27 percent of the jobs projected, according to the report.

"Our study demonstrated that new coal-powered plants simply don't deliver on their promise of new jobs for host communities, in fact, they don't even come close," says David Eichenthal, president and CEO of The Ochs Center, which describes itself as a non-profit organization which conducts independent data analysis and policy research to improve the quality of life in Chattanooga, Tenn., and metropolitan areas nationally. "The fact that only one of the large plants built in the past five years appears to have provided the number of jobs it promised shows that communities being asked to take on the burden of hosting new coal plants need to take promises of new jobs with more than a grain of salt."

The issue particularly is salient as the Senate is poised soon to act on amendments to small business legislation which would limit the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate the carbon emissions which cause global climate change.

Coal-fired power plants are a major cause of such emissions. A key lobbying group for coal-fired plants, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, has bought radio airtime to run political advertising urging listeners to contact senators to support the amendment introduced by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The McConnell amendment would permanently prohibit the EPA from regulating carbon emissions. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has his own, separate, amendment which would force the agency to delay its emissions regulating activities for two years.

The Ochs Center report, which reviewed figures publicly promised by companies constructing coal plants and compared them to actual construction job creation in the county, is the first effort to measure one of the most important figures that communities rely on when deciding whether to approve new plants, the organization says in a statement.

The Ochs Center says that it analyzed the six largest new plants that became operational between 2005 and 2009. Researchers examined public data for each plant including employment data and labor retention rates for the periods before, during and after construction. Local job retention rates in each of the six counties actually declined during construction of the coal plants, suggesting that many new jobs went to workers coming from outside of the host county.

Pottawattamie County, Iowa –- home of the Walter Scott 4 plant -- was the only host county that experienced an increase in construction employment that matched the predicted levels. The other plants studied, which failed to meet their predicted job creation levels, were: Oak Grove 1 and Oak Grove 2 in Robertson County, Texas, Nebraska City 2 in Otoe County, Neb., Cross 3 and Cross 4 in Berkeley County, S.C., Weston 4 in Marathon County, Wis., and Sandow 5 in Milam County, Texas.

There are currently 37 proposed new coal-fired power plants that are under development. Coal plant proponents frequently suggest that counties where they are built will reap an economic windfall through construction and permanent jobs. The Ochs Center report shows those promises of new construction jobs are frequently overstated. Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:

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Obama Approval Ratings on the Rise Among Millennials, Especially on College Campuses, Harvard Poll Finds

A new national poll of America's 18 to 29 year olds by Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, now finds a majority of Millennials (55 percent) approve of the job performance of President Obama, a rise of six percentage points from IOP polling conducted last October.

The president's job approval rating among students on four-year college campuses – now 60 percent – increased even more (nine percentage points) over the same period.

In addition to finding continued growth for Facebook among Millennials in the last year (80 percent of all 18-29 year olds and 90 percent of four-year college students now have a Facebook account), the poll also reveals a plurality (27%) of Millennials believe online tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube make more of an impact than in-person advocacy (16%) when advocating for a political position.

A detailed report on the poll's findings is available on the Institute's homepage.

"As the 2012 presidential primary and caucus season draws closer, young people will again have the opportunity to greatly impact the race for the White House," says Harvard's Institute of Politics Director Trey Grayson. "Political campaigns which incorporate an effective youth outreach strategy will have a strong advantage in the 2012 cycle."

The results are based on a web-enabled survey of 3,018 18-29 year-old U.S. citizens with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points (95 percent confidence level) conducted with research partner Knowledge Networks for the IOP between February 11 and March 2, the IOP says.

"What's been proven in 2008 and in the events in the Middle East of late, is that young adults can make the difference when inspired," says John Della Volpe, director of polling for the Institute of Politics. "And before inspiration happens, it's important to understand how Millennials communicate -– providing this perspective is what we aim to do every semester with our national research project."

Other findings from the poll include:

•Job approval ratings have risen for President Obama, especially among college youth. America's 18 to 29 year olds believe the overall job performance of Obama has improved since the IOP's October 2010 poll. After three consecutive Institute polls showing falling approval ratings among all Millennials, the President's job approval now stands at 55 percent, 6 percentage points higher than it was in the Fall of 2010 (49 percent) and close to the level of February 2010 polling (56 percent). Obama's job performance increased even more (60 percent: Feb. 2011; 51 percent: Oct. 2010) over the past five months among four-year college students.

•Economy remains the top national issue of concern and source of anxiety among 18 to 29 year olds. The overall personal financial situation for Millennials has not improved over the past year. In February 2010 IOP polling, when asked to rate their personal financial situation, 45 percent of Millennials believed their situation was "very" or "fairly bad." Asked the same question in February 2011, 43 percent said the same with 55 percent describing theirs as "very or fairly good." Currently, 56 percent of Millennials report they are working as a paid employee, 4 percent are self employed and 22 percent are looking for work. When four-year college students were asked how easy or difficult it would be for members of their class to find permanent jobs after graduation, only 17 percent said it would be "easy" with 82 percent indicating it would be "difficult," similar to February 2010 IOP polling findings. As seen in October 2010 IOP polling, a majority (57 percent: Feb. 2011; 53 percent: Oct. 2010) said economic issues are their top concern, far outpacing the next highest issue (health care: 10 percent).

•Facebook adoption continues to rise, outpaces Twitter by more than three-to-one. Over the past year, Millennial Facebook adoption has grown significantly from 64% to 80 percent (90 percent adoption among four-year college students), while MySpace has shed six percentage points over the same period. Although Twitter is clearly a less relevant tool for young adults than Facebook, Twitter accounts among young adults also rose over the past year from 15 percent to 24 percent.

•Social media tools viewed as having a greater political impact than in-person advocacy. Among all Millennials, 27 percent percent reported that compared to in-person advocacy, they believe that "advocating for a political position by using online tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and YouTube" makes more of an impact – while only 16 percent said it made less of an impact. Approximately one-quarter (24 percent) believe the impact is about the same and one-third (33 percent) either did not know or did not answer the question.

•Nearly twice as many Millennials view community service as "honorable" compared to running for office. While nearly seven-in-ten (69 percent) young adults view community service as an "honorable thing to do," only about half that number (36 percent) believe the same about running for office. These findings have not changed significantly in the last year, when 70 percent found community service honorable and 35 percent viewed running for office the same in February 2010 IOP polling.

•Millennials are not optimistic about the United States' role in the world. America's young adults are fairly pessimistic over the U.S.' place in the world in the next 10 years, with 31 percent saying they believe it will be "worse" and only 23 percent saying it will be better than it is today. More Millennials believe the U.S.' diplomatic standing (17 percent, "will be better;" 24 percent, "will be worse") and economic standing (29 percent, "will be better;" 30 percent, "will be worse") will be worse than the proportion saying they will improve. However, nearly one-quarter of Millennials (24 percent) believe the U.S. military's standing in the world will improve over the same period with only 15% saying it will get worse.

•America's 18 to 29 year olds look first to major national newspapers -– followed by "Facebook Friend" statuses –- to track 2012 presidential campaign. Major national newspapers, by far, were considered the most preferred sources for political news and information, with 49 percent of 18 to 29 year olds and 60% of four-year college students reporting that they are interested in receiving information from this source. Regarding various new technologies and social media channels, interest was next greatest in friends who share using Facebook (36 percent), official campaign Facebook feeds (29 percent), partisan, political blogging websites (22 percent), text or mobile alerts (19 percent), friends who share using Twitter (16 percent) and official campaign Twitter feeds (16 percent).

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Report: U.S. Auto Industry Would Boost Profits With Higher Mileage Standards

As the United States ramps up its vehicle fuel efficiency standards, two new reports from Citi Investment Research, Ceres and longtime independent industry experts conclude that U.S. automakers will be more profitable at a fleetwide 42 mile per gallon (MPG) average in 2020 –- the strictest standard now proposed for that year and one seen as eminently achievable –- and that by 2015 more than one in 20 cars sold in the United States will be hybrid, plug-in or full electric vehicles (EVs).

The two new reports, available online here and here, were produced by Citi and Ceres' Investor Network on Climate Risk in conjunction with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, Baum and Associates and Meszler Engineering Services.

The fuel economy analysis evaluates the potential impact that changes to the U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards may have on the auto industry in 2020. Federal and California state agencies tasked with developing these standards are expected to send their recommendations to the White House as early as May.

The second Citi report is an overview of the current state of the dynamic electric vehicle industry, with a focus on individual company product plans, key technological issues, and the latest industry initiatives and government policies that may influence further development of electric vehicles.

Higher vehicle fuel-economy standards both would reduce the emissions which cause climate change, as well as lessen U.S. demand for foreign-imported oil.

Key findings of the two reports include:

Stronger mileage and GHG standards will boost variable profits and sales in 2020 for the auto industry worldwide, with the Detroit 3 seeing the biggest financial benefits. The Detroit 3's variable profit gains would garner more than half of all increased profits.

U.S.-based suppliers of key fuel-saving technologies –- from turbochargers to direct injection, dual-clutch transmissions and more –- will benefit.

The U.S. electric vehicle industry is already robust and viable, and will grow further under strong standards and other government policies that will boost demand for electric and plug-in-electric cars.

The 42 mpg standard by 2020 is consistent with a 6-percent annual mileage improvement, starting in 2017, that would boost fleet mileage to 62 mpg by 2025. In addition to increasing profits, these goals are eminently achievable technologically and cost-effective, according to the study authors.

"This analysis demonstrates that it's both feasible and profitable for U.S. automakers to meet the strictest standards under consideration," says Ceres Senior Manager of Transportation Programs Carol Lee Rawn. "Strict fuel economy standards will not only reduce our dependence on oil and cut pollution; they'll help a major driver of our economy –- U.S. auto companies and their suppliers -– to compete successfully in the 21st century."

Ceres is a national coalition of major investors, businesses and public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as climate change and water scarcity. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a North American network of institutional investors focused on addressing the financial risks and investment opportunities posed by climate change.

In May 2010, President Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to work with California to develop the next phase of the nationwide CAFE mileage standards and GHG emissions limits, for model years 2017-2025. The agencies are considering a range of standards representing an annual decrease in carbon dioxide emissions of 3 to 6 percent, which translates to a range of 47 MPG to 62 MPG in 2025. The agencies' recommendation appears headed for the White House in May. Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:

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U.S.‘s Shifting Stance on Arming Rebels: Once ‘Illegal,’ But What Now?

by Marian Wang, ProPublica

As the Obama administration grapples with whether to arm the Libyan rebels, it has several things to consider—not least of which is the question of whether doing so would be legal.

The State Department had been pretty clear about the matter earlier this month, with then-spokesman PJ Crowley telling reporters that the United Nations' arms embargo on Libya makes it “a violation for any country to provide arms to anyone in Libya.” Here’s what Crowley said on March 7:

MR. CROWLEY: It would be illegal for the United States to do that.

QUESTION: So that you’re eliminating that as an option?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, it’s not a legal option.

Asked about the issue again the next day, Crowley qualified his previous remarks: “There’s always the option to go before the sanctions committee and ask for a waiver,” he said. “We have a number of options available to us, but as a practical matter, as of this moment, we could not arm anyone within Libya today.”

The White House and the Secretary of State have since said that arming the rebels would be legal, arguing that the UN resolution authorizing military intervention in Libya “amended or overrode” the earlier arms embargo.

Some experts in international law are disputing the administration’s interpretation. Here’s one of several cited by the UK’s Guardian:

Professor Nicholas Grief, director of legal studies at the University of Kent, said that to him the 17 March resolution in fact appeared to strengthen the arms embargo by calling for its "strict implementation" by member states.

"I don't see how they can say that reading them together means they can circumvent the arms embargo," he said. "The resolution makes clear it is for the security council to decide whether to strengthen, suspend or lift the arms embargo, not for member states to act unilaterally."

The New York Times also reported this week that “any outside supply of arms to the opposition would have to be covert” because of the arms embargo.

Britain and France have both said they’re open to arming the rebels, but NATO—which the U.S. has made a big show of handing over leadership to—stated on Monday, “We are not in Libya to arm people.”

No decision has yet been made, though the Times reports today that it’s still a topic of fierce debate in Washington. On NBC Nightly News last night, President Obama was noncommittal: “I’m not ruling it out,” he said, “But I’m also not ruling it in.”

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Celebrity Chefs Lead Effort To Push EPA To Save Alaska Fishery, Block Mine

A number of high-profile chefs are leading an effort to push the Environmental Protection Agency to block a new open-pit gold and copper mine that could dump toxic waste into an Alaska fishery.

Nearly 200 people –- including chefs Tom Colicchio, Alice Waters, Mark Bittman, Barton Seaver and Nora Pouillon –- sent a letter on Tuesday to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, urging her to use the agency's authority under the Clean Water Act to protect Bristol Bay from large-scale mining and development. More wild salmon come from Bristol Bay than any other place on earth.

At a press conference at Equinox Restaurant on Tuesday, chefs kicked off the week-long Save Bristol Bay Week. More than 20 restaurants will serve Bristol Bay salmon in the Washington area, to demonstrate the culinary value of the sustainable fishery. In addition, Alaska Natives, commercial fishing groups, hunters and anglers are meeting with legislators and agency officials in Washington, to ask for protection of Bristol Bay.

"Bristol Bay is our nation's largest and most valuable wild salmon fishery, making it a critical food and revenue source for the United States," says Todd Gray, chef and co-owner of Equinox Restaurant. "A huge open-pit mine in the Bristol Bay region could eliminate a source of healthy, sustainable fish from our menus."

The EPA has the authority under Section 404(C) of the Clean Water Act to protect public waters from large-scale mining activity, supporters of the fishery say.

The agency took the first step toward protecting the Bristol Bay watershed in southwest Alaska on Feb. 7, when the agency announced plans to initiate a scientific study of the Bristol Bay watershed to better understand how future large-scale development projects could affect Bristol Bay's water quality, fisheries, and communities.

"Alaska residents and salmon fishermen are so grateful for the support from our nation's food and restaurant industries to protect our last great salmon fishery, Bristol Bay's communities, and a way of life that has existed for thousands of years," says Tim Bristol, director of Trout Unlimited's Alaska Program. "We are confident that after the science and other public input are considered, the EPA and the Obama Administration will join Alaska Natives, chefs, restaurant owners, anglers, and hunters to protect the extraordinary region and its fisheries."

Bristol Bay supports a roughly $450 million a year fishing and tourism industry and sustains about 12,000 jobs. Based on preliminary plans, the proposed Pebble Mine would dig an open- pit gold and copper mine up to two miles wide and 1,700 feet deep, opponents of the mine say.

Operated by multi-national mining companies, this mine could dump up to 10 billion tons of toxic waste in the heart of the Bristol Bay watershed, they say. This area is known for frequent earthquakes, which puts the watershed –- and all its fish and wildlife -- at an even greater risk for long-term toxic pollution and catastrophic damage, the mine opponents say.

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Reid: Republicans Can’t Let The Tea Party Call The Shots On Budget Talks

A settlement to the federal budget standoff that threatens to shut down the government is within reach, but is being held hostage by conservative lawmakers aligned with the tea party movement, according to top Senate Democrats.

GOP House Speaker John Boehner has returned to the negotiating table, but he's being hamstrung by House members to his right, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says in remarks Wednesday on the Senate floor.

At issue is at what level to fund federal operations once the current stopgap funding measure expires April 8. If Democrats and Republicans fail to agree to a budget by then, most of the federal government would be forced to close. It would be the first such federal shutdown in 15 years.

House Republicans last month approved a longer term spending bill, H.R. 1, which would continue to fund federal operations. But that bill would cut billions more from a swath of domestic programs than what President Obama or congressional Democrats have been willing to accept. The budget gap between Democrats and Republicans is $51 billion, according to Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, a top member of the Senate Democrats' leadership team. Democrats have cited an independent study which says the deep cuts that Republicans are pushing could force hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs. “It’s obvious that he has a difficult situation on his hands. I don’t envy him,” Reid says of Boehner. “He’s getting a lot of pressure from the Tea Party to dig in his heels, even if it hurts the country and shatters our fragile economic recovery.”

Further, tea party members do not speak for a majority of Americans, Reid says.

“What’s worse, the country doesn’t much care for the Tea Party. There’s a new CNN poll out this morning that says as much. Half of the country views their views unfavorably. If the Tea Party isn’t the most unpopular it’s ever been, it’s awfully close,” the majority leader says. “So let me reiterate my hope that the Republican leadership recognizes that they can’t continue to be pulled to the right by a radical, unrealistic, unreasonable and unpopular faction. If they want to move the country forward, they can’t let the Tea Party call the shots.”

Senate Democrats have put together "a serious proposal that cuts $70 billion in government spending while protecting America’s economic recovery," Reid's spokesman says. One news report Wednesday says that Boehner is on the verge of abandoning the tea party in favor of finding Democrats to pass a spending bill.

For his part, Boehner blames Senate Democrats, who he says have "failed to act on any plan that would fund the government through September 30."

That's not true, however.

Reid earlier this month brought both the Republican bill, H.R. 1, and a Democratic alternative to a vote. Both were defeated, which is why Reid and others now are calling for compromise.

"They think 'compromise' is a dirty word," Schumer says of House Republicans. "They think taking any steps to avert a shutdown would mean being the first to blink." Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:

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Appeals Courts Makes it Easier for Gov’t to Hold Gitmo Detainees

by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica

In a decision that will likely make it more difficult for Guantanamo prisoners to win release, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today reversed a lower court’s ruling in the pivotal case of a Yemeni detainee.

In a 14-page decision, the appeals court rejected the lower court’s ruling to release Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, who has been held at Guantanamo without charge since 2002. Uthman’s case and the government’s attempts to classify the legal opinions it generated were the subject of a ProPublica story.

The appeals court standard for detention has been laid out over the last year in a number of significant cases, and as with today’s case, each time in the government’s favor. The results have been a boon for the Obama administration’s efforts to keep certain Guantanamo detainees in custody.

Today’s decision further clarifies that standard by declaring that the government doesn’t need direct evidence that a detainee fought for or was a member of al-Qaeda in order to justify a detention.

Much was riding on the Uthman case because he is among several dozen prisoners the Obama administration plans to hold indefinitely without charge. For other detainees, it will likely alter the way they can present their cases for release.

In 2008, Guantanamo detainees won the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in court. The first challenges were largely successful for detainees, but a number of significant cases have been pushed back at the circuit court.

Uthman filed a challenge, and in February 2010, District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. ruled that he was being improperly held and that the United States had failed to demonstrate that he was a member of al-Qaeda. As ProPublica detailed, the government censored Kennedy’s decision and quickly appealed the case to a court that was already lowering the government’s burden for proving a prisoner’s detainability.

In another case last year, known as Salahi, the appeals court rejected a lower court’s standard that the government show direct evidence the detainee was a member of al-Qaeda. In that case, the court sent the detainee back to the district court to have his habeas corpus petition reheard.

In today’s opinion, written by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the appeals court went further by reversing the habeas win outright. In doing so, the court determined that circumstantial evidence, such as a detainee being in the same location as other al-Qaeda members, is enough to meet the standard to hold a prisoner without charge.

That standard, the court wrote in its decision today, “along with uncontested facts in the record, demonstrate that Uthman more likely than not was part of al Qaeda.”

Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution and the national security blog Lawfare attended Uthman’s appeals hearing in February and predicted that the government would prevail. Noting the circuit court’s emerging standards, Wittes wrote that if the appeals court ordered an outright reversal of the Uthman decision “a lot of other Guantanamo detainees are going to share his pain. His case could end up lowering the substantive bar for the government to prevail in these habeas cases.”

Jonathan Hafetz, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who has represented a number of Guantanamo detainees including Salahi, said today’s opinion significantly favors the government in ways the Supreme Court did not intend when it granted detainees the right to challenge detentions.

“The Uthman case cements the trend in the D.C. Circuit's decisions toward a broad and malleable definition of who can be considered ‘part of’ al Qaeda, combined with a highly deferential view of the government's interpretation of the facts,” Hafetz said, “In many cases, the result is indefinite detention based on suspicion or assumptions about a detainee's behavior.”

Hafetz argued that today’s decision conflicts not only with the approach taken by the district courts but also with the Supreme Court. Hafetz said the Supreme Court “mandated a meaningful judicial process in which the government would be called to account; Uthman says judges should not require much in the way of an answer.”

Wittes embraced today’s opinion, writing on his blog that the court’s opinion reflects the complex reality of Guantanamo Bay. Today’s case asks “whether a relatively spare string of incriminating facts can get the government over the hump. The answer now is clear: It can,” Wittes wrote.

“Many fewer detainees will prevail under this understanding of the government’s evidentiary burden than would prevail under one less tolerant of a mosaic of incriminating facts,” he wrote.

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After Obama's Libya Speech, It's 'Eerie' Not To See End Of Action In Sight, Sestak Says

President Obama "spoke well" in addressing the nation Monday night regarding his decision to order military strikes in Libya, but Obama would have done well to give the speech much sooner, according to the highest ranking U.S. military officer to have served in Congress.

Also, the United States now is now "bit hostage to what the rebels do" in their campaign to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, says former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), a former vice admiral in the U.S. Navy.

Obama spoke to the nation from National Defense University in Washington about the action he ordered in Libya more than a week after combat operations began.

Obama says he launched action in concert with NATO allies to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, the city in eastern Libya which has been a stronghold of anti-Gaddafi rebels. "Well, I thought he provided good clarification of what America has accomplished this evening," says Sestak, the highest-ranking military officer to have served in Congress.

"I also thought he spoke with great precision about why we did it. But I do think that having provided that nine days ago would have stood him with his most important constituency, Americans, much better earlier on."

Sestak, who lost a bid for a Senate seat last year, provided his thoughts on Obama's speech Monday night during a segment of The Ed Show program on MSNBC.

Obama should have made his case for action in Libya sooner, given the years of U.S.-led war which preceded it elsewhere in the Middle East, Sestak says.

"But I would argue that, again, I come from a temporal moment now where out there as I ran around Pennsylvania everywhere in this last election ... they‘ve watched and they are weary after 10 years of two wars," he says. "One that was such a gross misadventure that I just thought that early on would it help that constituency better and it would have helped me a lot better."

Sestak says he is not clear on an endgame for U.S. involvement in Libya, despite Obama's assurances.

"The key here is, Ed, that we have a lot of heft still going in there from as he well said, the president, intelligence, refuelers, and things like that. We are now in the hands a bit and bit hostage to what the rebels do," Sestak says. "And that‘s the eerie part where I‘m not quite sure we have the end of the campaign in sight."

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The Consequences of Conservatism: Loss of Wealth Stunning During Great Recession

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Christian E. Weller

The 2012 presidential primary season is already upon us and the Grand Old Party is, not surprisingly, engaged in a grand old opportunity to rewrite history about the causes and consequences of the Great Recession. So it’s time, once again, to set the record straight.

The Great Recession was so great not just because of very sharp unemployment increases but also due to an unprecedented decline in wealth—as the Federal Reserve detailed in a report released this week. That wealth destruction is key to understanding the Great Recession since massive house price drops led to a foreclosure crisis that then fueled massive layoffs. Much of the unprecedented wealth destruction in 2007 and 2008 can be traced back to failed economic policies under President George W. Bush, when opportunities to put the economy and the labor market on the right track were ignored.

Incoming President Barack Obama’s hand was thus forced to first pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to save the economy from sliding deeper into an economic hole amid rising job losses, and to then tackle the problems that had been ailing the economy and American families—low incomes and rapidly rising prices for health care and energy—for the previous eight years.

Wealth destruction probably doesn’t adequately capture what happened in the early stages of the crisis. Wealth was vaporized at a breathtaking, eye-popping speed. American families lost a total of $19.4 trillion (in 2010 dollars) in household wealth from June 2007 to March 2009, when the stimulus started to take hold. First it was the housing market, and then it was the housing and the stock market together that tanked. American families lost $6.4 trillion in home value during this period.

Trillions of dollars are sometimes hard to grasp, so think of it this way: One complete house (at 2008 prices) was lost every 1.7 seconds during the Great Wealth Destruction. And this doesn’t even count what happened to American families’ rainy day funds and retirement savings.

The story of the Great Recession unfolded very quickly after that. The drop in home values meant that fewer people wanted to build and buy new homes, putting a lot of construction workers out of work. And the drop in home values put many borrowers underwater, meaning they owed more on their mortgage than their house was worth, precipitating a massive wave in foreclosures. This ultimately threatened to bring down the entire U.S. financial system but it also tightened credit such that businesses couldn’t expand, even if they wanted to. Jobs disappeared across all industries, not just in construction, leading to the highest unemployment rate in almost 30 years.

This crisis did not fall from the sky. We saw it coming. My colleague Scott Lilly and I pointed out in 2004 that the economic trends that ailed the economy and led to the sharp rise in household debt were unsustainable. American workers lived through the weakest labor market since the Great Depression after the previous recession ended in November 2001. Yet prices for key household items such as health care, energy, transportation, food, and housing rose, often at runaway speed. American families only managed to pay their bills by borrowing on their credit cards, for large consumer items and on their homes. The massive debt boom was a reflection of the economic squeeze American families were in during the 2000s.

The sad part is that the Great Recession could have been prevented. The George W. Bush administration had several opportunities to seriously address the unfolding crisis.

There were several chances to promote faster growth. The first opportunity came early in 2001 when Congress negotiated a tax bill pushed for by the newly inaugurated president. Rather than shovel enormous amounts of money to the top income earners with a tax bill that cost well more than $1 trillion in the first 10 years, the money could have been used to stimulate economic growth by giving middle-class families a boost and by investing in needed infrastructure such as new energy sources.

OK, so policymakers missed the boat on this one. But Congress had another chance to address the looming crisis when President Bush pushed for another tax bill in 2003. This one was intended to stimulate growth through cuts in taxes for dividends and capital gains, among other things. The bill was derided by many economists as a woefully ineffective way to turn the economy around and to bring stronger job growth to American families. And true to this prediction, the years after the bill’s passage were marked with job growth that was about one-third below its long-term average.

And there were opportunities to start to tackle high costs, particularly in health care and energy. The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, a key piece of the Bush policy agenda, which added prescription drug benefits to Medicare, explicitly excluded two mechanisms that could have helped lower costs—allowing drug reimportation from other, cheaper countries such as Canada, and permitting Medicare to use its market power to negotiate lower drug prices.

In addition, several versions of an energy bill that would have brought more alternative fuels and promoted greater energy efficiency were negotiated but never passed—in large measure because President Bush either did not make energy reform his priority or because he directly opposed the upfront costs necessary to invest in the country’s energy future.

We are now climbing out of the hole that the failed economic policies of the Bush administration created. That’s why the more proper name for the Great Recession should be the Bush Recession.

Indeed, President Obama took office and led the economy out of recession in June 2009, though much more remains to be done. Household wealth has been growing, at least outside of housing wealth, because the stock market has been doing OK. American families are now down only $12.8 trillion from where they were in June 2007. Job growth has come back for more than a year but we still have more than 7 million fewer jobs than at the start of the recession in December 2007. And the unemployment rate has been gradually declining from a high of 10 percent at the end of 2009.

Wealth would be much lower and unemployment much higher without the constant policy attention of the Obama administration. The administration took massive quick steps necessary to prevent another Great Depression with the passage of the stimulus packet in early 2009. It also paid constant attention to economic growth and the labor market with support for small businesses that couldn’t get credit; with a health insurance bill that promises to lower health care inflation; with a financial regulatory reform bill that will shine some lights on the shadier players in the financial market; with a push for an energy bill that would have promoted alternative fuels and increased energy savings; and with extended unemployment benefits for those caught in the mess due to no fault of their own.

As bad as the Great Recession was, it could have been much worse, even though that seems hard to believe. Remember that when conservatives try to run from the record of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies while also trying to reintroduce the very same failed policies. The consequences of conservatism were dire then and would be again.

Christian E. Weller is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and associate professor, Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston

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Sens. Rally Against GOP Social Security Plan

Several senators rallied Monday with more than 300 supporters against Republican plans to reform Social Security.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) appeared at the event alongside Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), telling Republicans to “Back Off Social Security.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the powerful chairman of the House Budget Committee, has introduced a Social Security plan which would begin to privatize the safety-net program upon which millions of American senior citizens rely.

An independent expert warned Congress earlier this month that "privatization — in whole or in part — is likely to increase costs, not reduce them."

“Seventy-five years ago, our nation made the promise that if you work hard and contribute, America will make sure you can retire in dignity. That promise is called Social Security, and it’s a promise that must never be broken,” Reid says. “But Republicans have shown they couldn’t care less about those who have the least. Their plan on Social Security is simple, and it’s this: end it. They use words like ‘privatize’ and ‘personalize.’ But they’re all code words for the same thing: ending Social Security as we know it.”

Sanders earlier this month introduced legislation that he says would safeguard the existing Social Security program.

Sanders’ bill would require extraordinary majorities in Congress to approve any reduction in benefits. Congress should not be able to cut the hard-earned Social Security benefits of current or future eligible recipients without a two-thirds vote by the Senate and the House, he says. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) has introduced the same measure in the House.

“Social Security is the most successful federal program in our nation’s history and we cannot allow it to be dismantled by Wall Street and those in the Republican Party who want to take us back to the 1920s when half of our nation’s seniors were living in abject poverty,” Sanders says.

Although conservatives assert that Social Security must be reformed to deal with the mounting federal budget deficit, Franken says that that is not true.

“Social Security provides a safety net for Minnesota families torn apart by unspeakable tragedy and allows America’s retirees to age with dignity,” Franken says. “Social Security has nothing to do with reducing the deficit. Social Security benefits should not be cut at all, for anyone, as part of efforts to reduce the deficit.”

The federal debt and deficit should not be tamed by making the nation's most vulnerable suffer, says Blumenthal, who is a co-sponsor of the Sanders bill.

“We’ve heard all the scare tactics before, but people in Connecticut and across the country just aren’t buying it – for decades, Social Security benefits have kept millions of senior and disabled Americans out of poverty,” he says. “Cutting Social Security benefits won’t reduce our deficit or debt, and the American people expect us to make smart, strategic choices about cutting spending – not to do it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.”

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Oil Exec Undercuts Criticism of Slow Approval Process for Deepwater Wells

by Marian Wang, ProPublica

Critics of the Obama administration’s permitting process for offshore drilling have included oil companies, Gulf state lawmakers and even former president Bill Clinton, who earlier this month surprised attendees at an energy conference when he called the delays “ridiculous.”

So far, offshore drilling regulators have approved six permits—three of them last week—to drill in deep water, but the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, isn’t satisfied. According to The Hill, the group is planning to release a graphic alleging that the administration has “taken specific steps to stop or delay the development of domestic oil and natural gas resources,” noting that “it has approved only a handful of deep water permits” since the BP spill last April.

But one oil industry executive has had a slightly different take and says the administration hasn't been a roadblock. In recent comments to the Houston Chronicle’s Tom Fowler, Chevron’s Gary Luquette, president of the company’s North American exploration and production division, said the permitting process for deepwater wells has indeed been slow, but that’s because regulators and industry have both been trying to figure out the new drilling rules issued last year.

”It was not a ‘black hole’ where you were not hearing anything,” Luquette said. “They were genuinely trying to get answers to our questions.”

Chevron was one of the companies that received a permit approval last week. As we’ve noted, Michael Bromwich, head of the revamped offshore drilling agency, had vowed not to approve deepwater drilling permits until oil companies could prove their ability to contain spills in deep water.

Two spill containment systems have been created by competing companies. The agency has since approved permits using both.

Bromwich has said that the pace of permitting won’t return to what it was before the BP spill, which turned attention to a flimsy permitting process that allowed deep water drilling projects to be fast tracked and subjected to less environmental review [7].

“We have a new normal,” he told an oil industry conference last month ($). “It’s going to take more time than in the past.”

Interior Department officials have also blamed the slow pace on lack of funding.

“If we don't get the horsepower to be able to process permits under what is now a greater degree of scrutiny, we may never return to the pre-Macondo rate of permitting,” Reuters reported Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as saying.

Follow on Twitter: @mariancw

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Boxer: Rove Groups Pledge $120 Million Against Democrats In 2012 Election

Organizations associated with prominent Republican strategist Karl Rove plan to spend $120 million to defeat Democrats in the 2012 elections, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer.

A former top aide to President George W. Bush, Rove helped form such groups as American Crossroads and American Crossroads GPS, which spent heavily on negative political attack ads against congressional Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

"Take it from me: I know first-hand the extremes Republicans are willing to go to win," Boxer (D-Calif.) says Monday in a fundraising email for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). "They threw everything but the kitchen sink at me in 2010 – and they will have even more money to fund their attacks this time."

Boxer last year defeated Republican businesswoman Carly Fiorina in what was an expensive, hard-fought re-election race. Boxer is the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The negative attacks helped defeat record numbers of Democrats in 2010, which swung the House of Representatives to GOP control and narrowed the Democrats' majority in the Senate.

The Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision in early 2010 swept away decades of bipartisan limits on election spending by corporations and groups such as Rove's, which Boxer acknowledges. "Because of the Citizens United decision, corporations will again be able to give unlimited secret donations to influence our elections," Boxer says of the 2012 elections which will decide both whether to re-elect President Obama, as well as control of both the House and Senate.

Democrats will rely on donations from grassroots supporters to counter major Republican spending, Boxer says. The DSCC seeks to raise $156,233 by Thursday to fill its coffers ahead of a Federal Elections Commission deadline, Boxer says.

"Every time the right wing came after me during the last election, I knew I could count on the DSCC to help me fight back," Boxer says in her email. "I truly couldn’t have won in November without the DSCC’s support."

Senate Democrats must defend 23 seats in 2012, compared to just 10 for Republicans, Boxer notes. If Republicans pick up four of those, Democrats will lose their Senate majority. Senate Democrats now refer to their majority as a "firewall" against policies approved by the GOP-held House.



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Fukushima-Related FOIA Request: Full Data Sought on Radiation Levels That Led To Call for 50-Mile Evacuation Radius for Americans in Japan

Three groups – Friends of the Earth, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Physicians for Social Responsibility – announced Friday that they have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get to the bottom of what led the U.S. government to call for a 50-mile evacuation radius for Americans near the Japanese reactor crisis in Fukushima.

The nuclear plant at Fukushima has been the sight of a tense radiological crisis since the reactor was crippled as a result of the massive earthquake and tsunami which struck Japan.

On March 16, Gregory Jazcko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) told Congress that he was recommending the 50-mile evacuation radius.

The scope of the recommended evacuation is highly unusual and suggestive of extraordinarily high radiation levels in excess of those reported to the public in Japan and the United States, the three groups behind the FOIA action say. In the United States, nuclear reactor licensees and local governments are only asked to provide for evacuation out to 10 miles.

As concerns grow about food and water contamination in Japan, the three groups filing the FOIA request are seeking to determine the answer to this key question: What made Jaczko exceed the limits of his own agency's regulations by five times?

The FOIA requests filed with the NRC and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are available online. The three groups say they are not satisfied that the summary provided so far by the DOE at provides the full picture of the scale of the radiation.

"By recommending a 50-mile evacuation zone for U.S. residents, NRC Chairman Jaczko gave a strong signal that the Fukushima accident was much worse than reported by the Japanese government and the utility," says Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which is located just outside Washington. "We believe that he was getting information about the severity of the accident from airborne radiation measurements taken by U.S. Department of Energy aircraft. But neither DOE nor the NRC has published those measurements in full."

As the FOIA request explains, the three groups "seek expedited release" of the requested information, "so that they may timely inform their members and the general public about the unfolding events at the Fukushima reactors, including the significance of the public health and environmental threat posed by radiation releases from the Fukushima reactors. Requesters believe that requested disclosures will do a great deal to fill currently existing information gaps and resolve inconsistencies in the currently available reports about the severity of the Japanese radiological releases."

The groups also contend that expedited release of the information is justified in order to allow them to participate in and comment on any proceedings the federal government may undertake to evaluate the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident, including the 90-day review of the safety of U.S. reactors recently announced by the NRC. According to the FOIA request letter, a better understanding of the severity of the Fukushima releases is "essential to Requesters' ability to evaluate and participate in any such review."


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As Mideast Lashes Out Against Corruption, Chamber of Commerce Lobbies to Weaken Anti-Corruption Law

by Marian Wang, ProPublica

Even as anger over governmental corruption has exploded into protests across the Middle East, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been working to weaken the law that bans companies from bribing foreign officials.

That effort, which has been going on for months, recently got ratcheted up when the Chamber hired former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to lobby specifically on “possible amendments to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” according to Mukasey’s lobbying registration document. The FCPA, passed in 1977, prohibits U.S. companies and foreign companies whose securities are traded on U.S. exchanges from paying bribes to foreign officials.

The U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, in a report last fall [PDF], said that both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission had become “increasingly aggressive in their reading of the law” within the last decade, bringing more FCPA enforcement actions than ever, netting higher fines and filing more cases against individual company employees.

That’s something the Justice Department has trumpeted as an achievement: “Our FCPA enforcement is stronger than it’s ever been—and getting stronger,” Lanny Breuer of the Justice Department’s criminal division said at a conference in November. In the 2010 fiscal year, half of all penalties won by his division were from foreign bribery cases. (The Washington Post just yesterday published a rundown of some recent actions.)

The Chamber of Commerce argues that aggressive enforcement of the anti-bribery law makes U.S. businesses less competitive than their foreign counterparts, though the law also applies to some foreign companies. The Chamber is pushing for Congress to make changes to the law, such as defining “foreign official” and requiring “willfulness” for corporate criminal liability.

Butler University Assistant Professor of Business Law Mike Koehler used to represent clients facing FCPA charges. He told me he agrees with some of the Chamber’s objections, but doesn’t think it needs a legislative fix.

The law is fine, Koehler told me. But the Justice Department and SEC “are continuing to push the envelope” with enforcement, applying the law in ways that Congress didn’t originally intend. One example of that, he said, is that about 60 percent of current FCPA cases involve payments made to employees of state-owned or state-controlled companies. Those people shouldn’t be considered “foreign officials,” he said.

Koehler said his main issue with FCPA enforcement is that the allegations are almost never subject to judicial scrutiny because these cases always settle. Asked why this is, given that most defendants are giant multinational companies with enough resources to take the corruption charges to court, Koehler said that the “the cost of aggressively mounting a legal defense based upon the statutes, elements, and facts of case are too risky.”

However, a few FCPA challenges are currently making their way to court, some accusing the Justice Department of using too broad a definition for "foreign official."

Mark Mendelsohn—formerly the Justice Department’s chief FCPA enforcer and now in private practice—told the Wall Street Journal last week that he expects current enforcement trends to continue. He cited the Mideast protests as part of a “growing recognition of what people commonly call the corrosive effects of corruption on development and democracy and democratic institutions.”

The U.K. is currently finalizing its own anti-bribery law, which would seem to address the Chamber’s objections about an uneven playing field. The Chamber, however, writes in its report that U.S. authorities may try to apply even more pressure to companies “so as not to be outdone” by Britain in the area of anti-corruption enforcement."




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Democrats Praised For Telling President Obama Of Labor Trouble In Columbia

A prominent labor union is praising a group of House Democrats for writing a letter to President Obama that outlines continuing violence against trade unionists in Colombia and raising concerns about the country's weak labor laws.

At issue is ratification of a trade deal with the Latin American nation negotiated during the Bush administration. President Obama supports the deal, which still must be approved by Congress to become effective.

Six Democratic members of the House, led by Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and George Miller of California issued a detailed memo to the Obama administration outlining several necessary conditions before the president submits the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to the House for consideration.

With their memo, the lawmakers say they included a chart outlining the continuing violence against Colombian trade unionists.

In an accompanying letter to Obama, the lawmakers write, “[a]t a time of economic uncertainty, with millions of families across our country struggling to support themselves, it is our responsibility as Members of Congress to do everything in our power to promote and protect American jobs.

“One of the most important ways we can safeguard the ability of American families to make a living and keep their jobs is by guaranteeing they are not in competition with workers in other countries whose wages are kept low not simply because their countries are poor, but because they lack the essential democratic rights that American workers have to improve their standards of living – the right to speak out, to protest, to organize unions, to bargain collectively and directly with their employers, and to freely support political efforts to improve their economic condition,” the letter says. “Colombia, sadly, stands out as a country where wages are kept low and workers are repressed through widespread violence against employees trying to better their lot.”

Since President George W. Bush signed the Colombia trade deal in 2007, neither the previous nor current Colombian governments have brought the country's labor laws into compliance with International Labor Organization standards, says the the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, which represents 1.4 million men and women throughout the United States and Canada.

Since the deal was signed, nearly 200 trade unionists have been murdered. Further, the rate of prosecution for murders and violence against unionists and other rights defenders remains low, the Teamsters say in a statement praising the Democrats for making the case to Obama.

"This letter should make clear to Republican congressional leaders who are pressuring President Obama for urgent action that there are specific, objective and reasonable standards to measure promised improvements in the conditions for labor and other rights defenders in Colombia," says Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa.


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Radiation In U.S. Food? FDA Urged To Test Japanese Imports

A senior House Democrat is calling for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test food imported from Japan due to the risks posed by the radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactor in that nation.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, ranking Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee's labor, education, health, and human services subcommittee, this week wrote a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg expressing concern about potential health risks associated with food products imported from Japan as a result of the massive radiation that has leaked from the nuclear plant which was damaged as a result of the earthquake and tsunami which struck Japan.

"As you are aware, radiation has been found in spinach and milk at farms in Japan located near the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor," DeLauro told Hamburg. "Because the Food and Drug Administration does not track where food production facilities are located in other countries, I strongly urge the agency to act swiftly to set aside for radiological testing all food imports from Japan.

"The World Health Organization has urged Japan to act quickly to ban food sales from areas surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant if the food is found to contain excessive levels of radiation," DeLauro adds.

Radiation in food can accumulate in the body and pose a greater risk to health than radioactive particles in the air, the lawmaker notes.

"This is why it is critical that the FDA take every precaution necessary to ensure that any contaminated foods reach the U.S.," she says.

In her letter, DeLauro notes that last week the FDA announced that it was working on steps to ensure that imported foods from Japan were safe, and developing a monitoring strategy that may include increased and targeted product sampling at the border.

But DeLauro poses a number of specific questions related to that safety announcement.

Those questions include:

The FDA has announced that the nuclear plant crisis in Japan has so far posed no risk to the U.S. food supply. How is the agency able to make this determination with such certainty? Is it based on radiological testing conducted at ports of entry?

The agency also indicated last week that it is closely monitoring food products from Japan as a precaution. What specific steps were taken to scrutinize the monitoring of these food products?

If radiological testing is being conducted by FDA, how is it being done? Are import inspectors capable of doing this at the ports of entry or are products being sent to FDA laboratories?

The FDA says that all milk and milk products and vegetables and fruits produced or manufactured from the four Japanese prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma will be detained upon entry into the United States. They will not be allowed to enter the U.S. food supply, unless shown to be free from radionuclide contamination, with the exception of the specific products restricted by the government of Japan (spinach and kakina from the four prefectures, and milk from Fukushima only), the agency says. Those products will be refused admission into the United States, the FDA says.

Other food products from this area, including seafood, will be diverted for testing by FDA before they can enter the food supply, the agency says. The FDA will also be monitoring and testing food products, including seafood, "from other areas of Japan as appropriate," the agency says on its website.


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Capitol Idea: War in Libya: Of Principle and Politics

By Scott Nance

After a decade of U.S. war in the Middle East, it is easy to understand the trepidation, skepticism, even outright opposition, with which yet another military adventure in the region could be met.

Indeed, in the days since combat operations began last weekend, voices across the political spectrum have emerged to raise legitimate questions and even objections to the endeavor. These run from Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio on the left, to Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana on the right.

In the midst of such honest debate, however, too many of Barack Obama's political foes have criticized the action simply to take shots at the president in an effort to score points. Most egregious of these has been Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker and potential 2012 presidential candidate. Only weeks ago, Gingrich criticized the president for failing to intervene in Libya, only to flip-flop against the operation and come out attacking Obama for it once it had commenced.

Gingrich isn't alone in the parade of disingenuousness. He's quickly followed by another potential 2012 GOP rival, former Sen. Rick Santorum. The former Pennsylvania senator mocked Obama, saying the president was merely "following the lead" of the French, when the truth was something very different, as progressive commentator and TV host Rachel Maddow correctly pointed out on her program this week, "President Obama wants the narrative to be something different. He very clearly did not want there to be another American military action in the Arab world," Maddow says.

Clearly, opposition to the U.S. action in Libya isn't unanimous, certainly on the left. That's why the head of the prominent progressive group Democracy for America sent an email to supporters on Wednesday titled, "Where do you stand on Libya?" Jim Dean, brother of former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, wrote:

Last weekend, President Obama took decisive action and "authorized armed forces of the United States to begin military action in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians," yet, many Democrats in Congress are expressing reservations or even outright opposing the decision, We'd like to hear from you. What do you think?

He's clearly acknowledging a lack of clear consensus on the issue, even among progressives.

Personally, I'm torn. I see obvious benefit in preventing Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi from mowing down his own population merely for wanting to see him out of power, yet I freely acknowledge the host of issues, and potentially deep pitfalls that come with the endeavor.

Before being accused of hypocrisy myself, let me be clear about one thing: the operation in Libya does not equate to that which went on in Iraq. George W. Bush only retroactively tried to justify the war in Iraq by the brutality of Saddam Hussein. His case for war was built on a web of lies regarding weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be entirely fictitious. When he launched his invasion of Iraq, the United Nations was against it and wanted more time to investigate the WMDs.

The broad international community today is demanding no such delay in acting against Gaddafi. That said though, President Obama has much to answer for in authorizing strikes against Libya. Senior members of his administration ought to be questioned in detail by members of Congress, If Obama's Libya policy turns out to be wrong, so be it.

The honest and principled discussion, debate, even opposition, ought to continue. But it shouldn't be clouded by the abhorent kind of politics practiced by the likes of Gingrich and Santorum.

Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington. This article was first published as War in Libya: Of Principle and Politics on Blogcritics.

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Think Again: Triangle at 100: Back to the Future?

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Eric Alterman

The centennial anniversary of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurs Friday, March 25. It will be marked with forums, plays (musical and dramatic), academic conferences, and art exhibitions in numerous American cities, as well as documentaries airing on both PBS and HBO.

These events recall the day when, just as work was about to let out, a tremendous fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company’s factory in New York City. One of the exit doors remained locked the entire time and the city’s fire department’s ladders only reached up to the building’s sixth floor, which was 30 feet below the burning embers.

The flames only burned about 30 minutes. But they ended 146 lives—mostly immigrant teenage girls, almost all Jewish or Italian. Rather than burn to death, more than a third of them died either jumping or falling out of the windows.

Triangle had only recently been a target of a 20,000-person, 13-week general strike by the city’s garment workers: the so-called “Uprising of the Twenty Thousand.” The workers were demanding higher wages, safer conditions, less brutal hours, and the right to unionize.

The strikers fought off company thugs and corrupt cops with support from fledgling labor organizations, Jewish social service organizations, Lower East Side socialist clubs, women’s groups, and the occasional progressive multimillionaire, like the suffragist socialite Alva Belmont. Some 300 companies agreed to settle but Triangle was not one of them.

The following year, as CUNY’s Josh Freeman recounts, “a cloakmakers strike brought the ‘Protocols of Peace,’ an innovative agreement with the employers that solidified the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and established a Joint Board of Sanitary Control to address the dangerous, unhealthy conditions that permeated the industry.”

The strikes, the fire, and the conditions that inspired them led to a new sort of class consciousness among almost everyone who encountered them.

Around 400,000 people turned out for the funeral procession. Democratic politicians started to change their tune under pressure from the unions, the crusading newspapers of William Randolph Hearst, and more than a few sympathetic members of the ruling establishment, including most particularly Louis Brandeis and Henry Stimson. Even ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, came to recognize, “The old laws, and the old customs ... are no longer sufficient.”

New York Democrats Al Smith and Robert Wagner oversaw a state Factory Investigating Commission. They hired a dedicated staff including the now-famous young labor leader Clara Lemlich. Her beautiful speech, given in Yiddish and taken from the Biblical oath, proclaimed: "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise." It helped set off the original strike and continues to inspire today.

The commission’s report led to countless improvements in New York state fire and factory laws. These were mimicked in many other cities, reducing the level of exploitation and improving the health and safety of the workers who toiled in them.

While the story of the fire and the changes in the city’s laws is reasonably well-known, what is often not nearly so well-understood is the manner in which it led directly to the New Deal. Unions continued to work with state Democrats during the reformist governorships of Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt until the latter’s presidency.

Frances Perkins, FDR’s secretary of labor, was America’s first female cabinet member. She witnessed the fire and the shocking sight of the young flinging themselves to their fiery deaths. She later called March 25, 1911, as the day the New Deal began.

Meanwhile, Robert Wagner became a senator and helped write and pass the famous Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act, which paved the way for unions to organize the workforce without fear of government intervention on behalf of the bosses.

Today, many of those gains have been lost. Freeman notes, “a cult of deregulation, a rabid ethos of unrestricted capitalism and the ability of firms to play workers in one country against those in another have seemingly sent us careening back in time toward a pre-New Deal regime of labor relations.”

And time rushes backward when measured in terms of the health and safety of our workers. Twenty-five workers burned to death in 1991 in a chicken-packing plant in Hamlet, NC. The exit doors were locked, just as at Triangle.

Meanwhile, private-sector unions are weaker than at any time since the Wagner Act was passed. Tom Robbins writes in the Jewish Daily Forward that in 2009, “Figures showed that, for the first time, public sector workers covered by union contracts outnumbered private sector workers.” The latter now make up less than 7 percent of the eligible workforce.

Is it any wonder that conservative politicians, funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, have launched their present assault on public service unions in so many states simultaneously? As the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial writers warned back then, “The agenda for American political reform needs to include the breaking of public unionism’s power to capture an ever-larger share of private income.”

That’s why some conservative legislators want to cut off entire families from food stamp eligibility if one of its members goes on strike. That’s why the governor of Maine wants to cover up a 36-foot-wide mural of the state’s labor history, which includes images of worker strikes and “Rosie the Riveter.” Blaming teachers, caregivers, firefighters, and the like helps keep people’s minds off the folks who really caused the financial crises that left states and localities in their current state of crisis.

“Large moneyed interests control the media,” explains Peter Ward of New York’s Hotel and Motel Trades Council, who has fought to keep a union label on the city’s hotels. “They have the largest megaphone, and organized labor has no way to combat that. ... we had the largest financial crime in history culminate in 2008. We had major mortgage brokers falsifying documents, huge investment firms participating in what can only be described as Ponzi schemes. The entire world knows it. But somehow unions are taking the hit for the resulting fiscal crisis.”

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a columnist for The Nation, Moment, and The Daily Beast. His newest book is Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama.

For more on the Triangle fire and its legacy, go to the Forward’s special supplement here.

The Center for American Progress is hosting a screening for the film, "Triangle: Remembering the Fire," on March 25. For more details and RSVP information, click here.

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