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  </channel><item rdf:about="https://www.vox.com/2019/3/12/18259816/obama-overtime-rule-trump-labor-department">
    <title>Obama expanded overtime pay to 4 million workers. Now Trump is scaling that back.</title>
    <dc:date>2019-03-13T02:28:42+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.vox.com/2019/3/12/18259816/obama-overtime-rule-trump-labor-department</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[With few exceptions, only workers who earn less than $23,000 a year can currently earn overtime pay under federal law. Overtime wages are defined as 50 percent extra hourly pay for employees who work more than 40 hours in a week.

In 2014, the Obama administration tried to double the threshold to include workers earning up to $47,000, tying future changes to the cost of living. The idea was that a dramatic expansion was needed because the government hasn’t raised the salary limit to keep up with inflation. For example, the $8,060 salary limit set in 1975 was the equivalent of about $50,440 in 2014 — far above the current $23,000 threshold. That means that over the years, more and more Americans have been working extra hours without getting paid for them, which is exactly what federal labor laws meant to prevent.

But Obama’s decision to double the limit created quite an uproar. In brief, here’s what followed: Powerful businesses groups freaked out. Then they joined 21 Republican-controlled states to sue the administration before the rule went into effect in 2016. The rule was put on hold during the legal dispute. A federal judge in Texas invalidated it in 2017, arguing that the Labor Department didn’t have the authority to make such a drastic change.

Companies were relieved, and workers were furious.

And instead of appealing the Texas court’s ruling, Trump’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, said he would create a watered-down version of Obama’s rule. Now the agency is only lifting the salary limit from $23,000 to $35,000 and scrapping the cost-of-living increases; that means about 2.8 million of the 4 million workers who expected to get overtime benefits won’t get them.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, called the new rule “disgraceful.”

“[This] is part of a growing list of policies from the Trump administration aimed at undermining the economic stability of America’s working people,” he tweeted on Friday.

The public can comment on the rule proposal for 60 days before the Department of Labor sends a final version to the White House for review. If the White House approves the new rule, which is likely, it will be the Trump administration’s latest victory in its quest to undo Obama-era regulations meant to benefit workers.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama DonaldTrump regulation government overtime employment legal usa salary wages economics business</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://instapaper.com/</dc:source>
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<item rdf:about="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/arts/obama-presidential-center-library-national-archives-and-records-administration.html">
    <title>The Obama Presidential Library That Isn’t</title>
    <dc:date>2019-02-22T04:26:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/arts/obama-presidential-center-library-national-archives-and-records-administration.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><dc:subject>usa history education research barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-47313607/barack-obama-you-don-t-need-eight-women-around-you-twerking">
    <title>Obama: 'You don't need eight women twerking'</title>
    <dc:date>2019-02-21T03:19:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-47313607/barack-obama-you-don-t-need-eight-women-around-you-twerking</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><dc:subject>barackobama race</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34609583">
    <title>Obama calls on Congress to avoid 'humanitarian crisis' - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-10-26T05:33:59+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34609583</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The Obama administration is urging Congress to devise a plan for Puerto Rico's massive $72 billion (£47 billion) debt in order to avoid a "humanitarian crisis".
The US Treasury Department urged lawmakers on Thursday to make a blueprint that would permit Puerto Rico to restructure its debt.
A plan would include more oversight over Puerto Rico's finances.
It includes Medicaid expansion and an expansion of low-income tax credits.
"Puerto Rico is out of cash and running out of options," said Antonio Weiss, a Treasury Department official, to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which presides over Puerto Rico. "In the very near future, Puerto Rico will face impossible choices among providing essential services, delivering promised pension benefits and paying its debt."
The proposal is unlikely to be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, which has opposed increased spending.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democrat seeking the party's presidential nomination, called for a rescue plan that protects the island with 3.5 million residents and not just investors who purchased government bonds-on which Puerto Rico has defaulted.
"This is a human tragedy, and Wall Street should not be believing that they can get blood from a stone," he said.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama legal deptoftreasury congress government PuertoRico</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34536833#&quot;">
    <title>US troops to stay in Afghanistan in policy shift - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-10-15T17:29:21+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34536833#&quot;</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[President Barack Obama has confirmed plans to extend the US military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2016, in a shift in policy.
Speaking at the White House, he said the US would keep 5,500 troops in the country when he leaves office in 2017.
Originally all but a small embassy-based force were due to leave by the end of next year.
But the US military says more troops will be needed to help Afghan forces counter a growing Taliban threat.
There are currently 9,800 US troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The US forces will be stationed in four locations - Kabul, Bagram, Jalalabad and Kandahar.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama military usa diplomacy government afghanistan legal</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/opinion/is-your-financial-adviser-making-money-off-your-bad-investments.html">
    <title>Is Your Financial Adviser Making Money Off Your Bad Investments?</title>
    <dc:date>2015-09-30T04:27:15+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/opinion/is-your-financial-adviser-making-money-off-your-bad-investments.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[EARLIER this year the Obama administration proposed a “conflict of interest” rule, designed to ensure that when it comes to saving for retirement, financial advisers always put their clients’ interests above their own — instead of, say, nudging their clients into investment products that pay the advisers more for their recommendation, but offer less return for the investors.

The administration’s proposal, to be implemented through the Department of Labor, says that advisers who receive side payments like this have to disclose them to clients, and also commit to an enforceable “fiduciary” standard — meaning they have to put their customers’ best interest before their own profits.

Not surprisingly, some financial services companies don’t like this idea, and have been spending millions of dollars lobbying to block the rule. On Wednesday the House Financial Services Committee is scheduled to vote on a bill that would effectively prevent the administration from moving forward with the proposal until the Securities and Exchange Commission issues its own rule on financial advice.

This might seem reasonable, but it’s a red herring. The S.E.C. has shown little movement toward acting, while the administration’s proposal is making steady progress toward implementation. Moreover, the commission doesn’t have authority over all retirement investments like the Department of Labor does. For example, it can’t protect you if your broker recommends one fixed annuity over a similar but better one because he is receiving a side payment from the first provider.

True, we shouldn’t assume that all advisers who make more from recommending one product over another are providing bad advice. But independent research has carefully compared the returns of retirement savers who receive conflicted advice versus other savers, and found that conflicted advice, on average, shaves about one percentage point per year off a saver’s returns. This may not seem like a lot, but it adds up: Over 35 years, a one percentage point lower annual return can reduce your nest egg by more than 25 percent.]]></description>
<dc:subject>legal ethics government financial investment retirement usa congress barackobama DeptOfLabor</dc:subject>
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    <title>Republicans are blaming Hillary Clinton for the ‘birther’ movement. That’s wishful thinking. - The Washington Post</title>
    <dc:date>2015-09-24T05:54:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/23/republicans-are-blaming-hillary-clinton-for-the-birther-movement-thats-wishful-thinking/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[But the Clinton campaign never pursued the idea that Obama was literally not American, and therefore ineligible for the presidency. A small group of hardcore Clinton supporters did. Specifically, anyone reading the fringe Web in the summer of 2008 could find the now-defunct blog called TexasDarlin, the now-defunct blog PUMAParty, and the now-conservative blog HillBuzz posting updates on the hunt for a birth certificate. It was a thin reed, and they knew it.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics barackobama hillaryclinton republicans DonaldTrump birther</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:793cf6ea990f/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:hillaryclinton"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:republicans"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:birther"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/obama-must-recognize-palestine-independent-state">
    <title>How Obama Can Save The Two-State Solution Before He Leaves Office</title>
    <dc:date>2015-09-16T03:07:22+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/obama-must-recognize-palestine-independent-state</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[There is a window of opportunity for Obama to complete his administration on a high note. If the opportunity for the United States to recognize Palestine is missed, no one should be surprised when the younger generation of Palestinians finally close the door on the two-state solution, once and for all. U.S. inaction now, when needed most, will only feed the breeding ground for regional extremism to continue to grow.]]></description>
<dc:subject>usa diplomacy palestine barackobama government israel</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:0b01f0df5285/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:diplomacy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:palestine"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:government"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:israel"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-and-obama-a-night-to-remember">
    <title>Trump and Obama: A Night to Remember - The New Yorker</title>
    <dc:date>2015-09-14T05:02:21+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-and-obama-a-night-to-remember</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Some day someone may well write a kind of micro-history of that night, as historians now are wont to do, as a pivot in American life, both a triumph of Obama’s own particular and enveloping form of cool and as harbinger of—well, of what exactly? A lot depends on what happens next with the Donald and his followers. Certainly, the notion that Trump’s rise, however long it lasts, is a product of a special skill, or circumstance, or a new national “mood,” is absurd. Trumpism is a permanent part of American life—in one form or another, with one voice or another blaring it out. At any moment in our modern history, some form of populist nationalism has always held some significant share—whether five or ten per cent – of the population. Among embittered white men, Trump’s “base,” it has often held a share much larger than that. Trump is not offering anything that was not offered before him, often in identical language and with a similarly incoherent political program, by Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot, by George Wallace or Barry Goldwater, or way back when by Father Coughlin or Huey Long. Populist nationalism is not an eruptive response to a new condition of 2015—it is a perennial ideological position, deeply rooted in the nature of modernity: a social class sees its perceived displacement as the result of a double conspiracy of outsiders and élitists. The outsiders are swamping us, and the insiders are mocking us—this ideology alters its local color as circumstances change, but the essential core is always there. They look down on us and they have no right to look down on us. Indeed, the politics of Trump, far from being in any way new, are exactly the politics of Huck Finn’s drunken father in “Huckleberry Finn”: “Call this a govment! Just look at it and see what it’s like . . . . A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this.” Widespread dissatisfaction with all professional politicians, a certainty of having been “sold out,” a feeling of complete alienation from both political parties—“Not a dime’s worth of difference between them” was George Wallace’s formulation, a half century ago—these are permanent intuitions of the American aggrieved. The feelings may be somewhat aggravated by bad times, or alleviated by good ones, but at the height of the prosperous fifties a significant proportion of Americans were persuaded that the entire government was in the hands of saboteurs and traitors at the pay of a foreign power, while in the still more prosperous nineties a similar faction was persuaded that the liberal President was actually a coke dealer who had murdered a friend.

Nor is it at all surprising to find a billionaire businessman representing this ideology, because it is not really members of the economic élite who are its villains—it is the educated élite, and the uneducated outsiders, who are. It is, on the historical record, much more a response to the ceaseless anxieties of modern life than to any financial angst of the moment. Probably the best student of this modern ideology is the conservative historian John Lukacs, whose 2005 book “Democracy And Populism: Fear and Hatred” makes clear how different the nationalist formula is from patriotism properly so called: it rests not on a sense of pride in place or background but in an intense sense of victimization. The cry of the genuine patriot is, Leave us alone to be the people we have always been. The populist nationalist cries, We have been cheated of our birthright, and the Leader will give it back.

The ideology is always available; it just changes its agents from time to time.

And this is where memories of the President’s performance come into play and take on a potency that one might not have understood at the time. For the politics of populist nationalism are almost entirely the politics of felt humiliation—the politics of shame. And one can’t help but suspect that, on that night, Trump’s own sense of public humiliation became so overwhelming that he decided, perhaps at first unconsciously, that he would, somehow, get his own back—perhaps even pursue the Presidency after all, no matter how nihilistically or absurdly, and redeem himself. Though he gave up the hunt for office in that campaign, it does not seem too far-fetched to imagine that the rage—Lukacs’s fear and hatred—implanted in him that night has fuelled him ever since. It was already easy to sense at the time that something very strange had happened – that the usual American ritual of the “roast” and the roasted had been weirdly and uniquely disrupted. But the consequences were hard to imagine. The micro-history of that night yet to be written might be devoted largely to the double life of Barack Obama as cool comedian and quiet commander—or it might be devoted to the moment when new life was fed into an old ideology, when Trump’s ambitions suddenly turned over to the potent politics of shame and vengeance. His even partial triumph in the primary still seems unlikely—but stranger jokes have been played on American philosophers over the centuries.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics usa history election DonaldTrump barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:6461bb01c027/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:election"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:DonaldTrump"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/09/obama-negotiator.html">
    <title>Horizons: Obama the Negotiator</title>
    <dc:date>2015-09-14T04:55:56+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/09/obama-negotiator.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[From the first few months of Barack Obama's presidency, a meme developed (mostly among MSM pundits and some on the left) that he was a bad negotiator. With a little over a year to go in his term and the success of his most significant foreign policy achievement to date secured, I think it's time to revisit that assessment.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama politics government diplomacy</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:14807e6a14ba/</dc:identifier>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34191033">
    <title>US backing for Iran nuclear deal grows - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-09-09T01:13:33+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34191033</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Democrats in the US Senate have gained enough votes to block the passing of a resolution against the Iran deal, fighting against Republican opposition.
Four Democrats added their support to the deal on Tuesday, denying the Republicans the 60 votes they need to move forward with a vote against it.
It means President Barack Obama would not have to use his veto.
The deal was reached in July between Iran and six world powers, and is due to be implemented in November.
They want Iran to scale back its sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which gets crippling international sanctions lifted, has always insisted that its nuclear work is peaceful.
Some of those sanctions were enacted by the US Congress, so disapproval by Congress could have made the deal unravel.]]></description>
<dc:subject>democrats republicans iran nuclear barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:149c5ed72b8b/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:nuclear"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/denali-mount-mckinley-gop-republicans/402925/">
    <title>What's Really Behind Objections to Renaming Mount McKinley?</title>
    <dc:date>2015-09-01T03:38:50+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/denali-mount-mckinley-gop-republicans/402925/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[For non-Rovians, what makes Obama’s “Denali” decision sting is the symbolism. One of the key stories of the Obama presidency is the sense among white, conservative Americans that their country is disappearing. Though seldom couched in directly racial terms, the issue of racial identity always lurks beneath the surface. The sense that white America is fading is not irrational, and it’s not just about the black president in the White House. Census projections have Caucasians becoming not a majority, but merely a plurality, of the population within a couple decades.

The reaction to Dylann Roof's massacre in Charleston is an example of how this plays out. Even some people who were horrified by the shooting and supported South Carolina’s decision to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state-capitol grounds felt uncomfortable with the sudden rise of demands to erase other symbols of the Confederacy or of white-supremacist leaders of yore—statues of Jefferson Davis, college buildings named for racists, and the like. These changes are just and overdue, but they’re also understandably disorienting, and for people who already feel their heritage and way of life are under siege, they seem a step (or several) too far. Conservatives complain, using a phrase Obama himself employed in October 2008, that the president is in the process of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Still, much of the reaction to Obama’s decision is almost comic. “Mt. McKinley is still there,” Erick Erickson proclaims, vowing to keep calling it by that name. “I will still call the mountain Mt. McKinley in the same way I will call Turin, Turin, instead of Turino like the idiots at NBC decided to do during that city’s time hosting the Olympics,” he writes.

The “Turin” comparison is instructive—after all, just as with Denali, the people who actually live there call it “Torino.” More generally, the thrust of the reaction seems to be, You can’t rename Mount McKinley! It’s had that name for a very long time. This argument might seem more than a bit ironic to Athabascans, in whose tongue “Denali” means “the Great One,” and who called it by that name for far longer than the “McKinley” label has stuck. Alaska Natives have been pushing to rename the mountain for years, saying that the official name, among other things, conveyed a “fundamental disrespect” for their culture.

Obama’s decision does look like something of a pander—a symbolic move to gain favor with Alaska Natives, acceding to their longstanding request. Ohioans will move on and get angry about something else soon enough (the Browns season begins September 13!), but the gesture will remain meaningful for Alaskans.

But just as the renaming of Confederate monuments has prompted worries that it will distract from the need for material changes to improve the life of black Americans, Obama’s gesture brings concerns that he has prioritized political symbolism over addressing the many challenges facing Alaska Natives. Native villages are on the front lines of climate change, already being forced to relocate as waters rice and permafrost melts. The state government is currently battling with the federal government over the right to take land into trust for native tribes. The state has unique laws for native peoples, including an unusual system of “Alaska native corporations” designed to grant them an advantage in development. But as a Washington Post series several years ago documented, the ANCs have failed to bring much prosperity even as they have enriched non-native government contractors.

These are problems that will remain relevant long after Obama’s three-day trip has concluded. As for President McKinley, he’ll at least have his breathtaking monument in Canton to fall back on.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics usa government republicans culture barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:5bf29e996daf/</dc:identifier>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/12/jeb-bush-is-even-nuttier-than-trump-now.html?via=twitter_page">
    <title>Jeb Bush Is Even Nuttier Than Trump Now - The Daily Beast</title>
    <dc:date>2015-08-13T01:12:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/12/jeb-bush-is-even-nuttier-than-trump-now.html?via=twitter_page</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Al-Baghdadi went on to become the head of ISIS and to announce the creation of a new Islamic State.

We spent billions training Iraqi government troops who fled seemingly whenever they were attacked, leaving behind billions more in U.S. supplied equipment.

None of that was Obama’s creation.

All of it was President Bush’s responsibility.

And now his brother Jeb is trying to pin it on Obama as a way of going after Hillary Clinton. Talk about nutty. Not to mention offensive.

Trump is supposed to be the nutty and offensive one, but when it comes to ISIS he seems mainly to be woefully uninformed.

“Believe it or not, Iran is funneling money to ISIS,” Trump said on CNN.

Jeb could no doubt tell you that Iran is in fact battling ISIS by proxy and, in some instances, directly.

Something other than ignorance is at work when Jeb tries to pin the ISIS mess on Obama and Hillary.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics diplomacy government iran usa barackobama hillaryclinton JebBush georgewbush iraq isis</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:f41df6e203de/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:usa"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:hillaryclinton"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:JebBush"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:iraq"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:isis"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.wsj.com/articles/pell-grants-to-be-restored-for-prisoners-1438029241">
    <title>Pell Grants to Be Restored for Prisoners</title>
    <dc:date>2015-07-29T02:49:59+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.wsj.com/articles/pell-grants-to-be-restored-for-prisoners-1438029241</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The Obama administration plans to restore federal funding for prison inmates to take college courses, a potentially controversial move that comes amid a broader push to overhaul the criminal justice system.

The plan, set to be unveiled Friday by the secretary of education and the attorney general, would allow potentially thousands of inmates in the U.S. to gain access to Pell grants, the main form of federal aid for low-income college students. The grants cover up to $5,775 a year in tuition, fees, books and other education-related expenses.

Prisoners received $34 million in Pell grants in 1993, according to figures the Department of Education provided to Congress at the time. But a year later, Congress prohibited state and federal prison inmates from getting Pell grants as part of broad anticrime legislation, leading to a sharp drop in the number of in-prison college programs. Supporters of the ban contended federal aid should only go to law-abiding citizens.

Between the mid-1990s and 2013, the U.S. prison population doubled to about 1.6 million inmates, many of them repeat offenders, Justice Department figures show. Members of both parties—including President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky—have called for a broad examination of criminal justice, such as rewriting sentencing guidelines.

A 2013 study by the Rand Corp. found that inmates who participated in education programs, including college courses, had significantly lower odds of returning to prison than inmates who didn’t.]]></description>
<dc:subject>legal justice civilrights education politics barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:bb19a0b00100/</dc:identifier>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33515373">
    <title>Obama frees drug offenders whose terms 'didn't fit crimes' - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-07-14T02:40:16+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33515373</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[US President Barack Obama has commuted the prison sentences of 46 drug offenders as part of a renewed effort to reform the criminal justice system.
In a video announcement, he said the prisoners were not "hardened criminals" and had been given sentences that "didn't fit their crimes".
He said it was part of a wider effort to restore the sense of fairness in a "nation of second chances".
Mr Obama is due to unveil plans for criminal justice reforms on Tuesday.
The 46 prisoners, 14 of whom were serving life sentences, are scheduled to be released on 10 November.
Most of them were jailed for crack cocaine offences, which once carried a sentence equivalent to someone caught with 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine.
"These men and women were not hardened criminals. But the overwhelming majority had to be sentenced to at least 20 years," Mr Obama said.
"But I believe that at its heart, America's a nation of second chances. And I believe these folks deserve their second chance."]]></description>
<dc:subject>legal justice crime drugs usa barackobama politics</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:932809f061b0/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:crime"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33253639">
    <title>President Obama tells Hollande US no longer spying on France - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-25T00:52:57+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33253639</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[President Obama has assured his French counterpart Francois Hollande that the US is no longer spying on France.
Mr Obama spoke to Mr Hollande following reports on the Wikileaks website that the US National Security Agency (NSA) spied on successive French presidents.
The White House said after the two leaders' phone call "we are not targeting and will not target" Mr Hollande's communications.
French intelligence officials are due to travel to Washington for more talks.
Wikileaks reported that the NSA had intercepted communications from President Francois Hollande and former leaders Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac between 2006-12.
The allegations prompted a backlash from the French government, with Mr Hollande saying he would "not tolerate" acts that threaten France's security.
He called two emergency meetings, the first with France's top security officials and another with leading legislators.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls urged the US to quickly repair "damage" to its relationship with France.
The US Ambassador Jane Hartley was also summoned to the foreign ministry in Paris to discuss the latest claims, French officials said.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama legal diplomacy france surveillance government wikileaks military nsa</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:7798904b9f29/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:nsa"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.vox.com/2015/6/22/8824113/obama-n-word-maron">
    <title>Obama said the n-word to make a point. The media's reaction proved him right. - Vox</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-22T19:42:06+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.vox.com/2015/6/22/8824113/obama-n-word-maron</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Of course, Obama isn't the first president to use the word. Other presidents have used it, not to criticize racism but to, well, be racist. Only a few years before Lyndon B. Johnson signed the biggest civil rights laws in American history, he routinely described an earlier civil rights bill as "the ni**er bill." Harry Truman referred to pioneering black Congressman Adam Clayton Powell as "that damned ni**er preacher." (This column by Randall Kennedy, who literally wrote the book on the subject, goes into much more detail about the history of the word.)

But because Obama used it after it's become impolite, people are pouncing on it — and doing exactly what Obama said the problem was: focusing on the expressions of racism that aren't considered polite anymore, rather than the ones that are.

It's just plain easier to write about violations of social norms than it is to point out the problems hidden within those norms.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics usa legal race racism language barackobama media journalism</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:7b0b6207d493/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:usa"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:race"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:racism"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:language"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:journalism"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.vox.com/2015/6/21/8820533/judy-mozes-obama-twitter">
    <title>Here's the racial joke the Israeli interior minister's wife tweeted about Obama - Vox</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-21T20:16:08+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.vox.com/2015/6/21/8820533/judy-mozes-obama-twitter</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Murtaza Hussain, a journalist with The Intercept, called it "the polished sophisticate's case that Obama is a crypto-Muslim."

Nir-Mozes was not calling Obama a secret Muslim, of course. But this willingness of a senior Israeli official's wife to publicly denigrate the American president based on his race speaks to how Obama is seen in the Israeli right-wing political class.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics diplomacy israel race racism barackobama usa government</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:748b1b287884/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:israel"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:usa"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33192275">
    <title>Obama's 'fast track' trade plan approved by lawmakers - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-19T03:38:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33192275</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The House of Representatives has approved a controversial trade bill backed by President Obama, just a week after Democrats voted it down.
It gives the president the right to negotiate global trade deals, with Congress only able to approve or reject a deal but not change it.
The 'fast-track' trade bill must now go the Senate for approval, which is by no means assured.
Democrats and unions believe it will lead to the loss of US jobs.
The measure, which was passed by 218 - 208, was amended to strip out a companion bill which aimed to provide support for American workers hurt by imports.
It takes President Obama a step closer to passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - a deal between the US and 11 other nations to remove or reduce barriers to trade and foreign investment.
The deal would include Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru.
Businesses support the TPP because they argue that it would open new markets for them.
Unions, on the other hand, are concerned about the effect on jobs.]]></description>
<dc:subject>usa legal republicans HouseOfRepresentatives government trade diplomacy barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33121051">
    <title>US transfers six detainees from Guantanamo to Oman - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-14T00:42:54+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33121051</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Six Yemeni prisoners held for years at Guantanamo Bay detention centre have been transferred to Oman, the US says.
The departures from the prison in Cuba were the first for six months.
President Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay during his election campaign in 2008. Although he has been unable to do so, he has cut the number of inmates by half.
The latest transfers bring the number of detainees in Guantanamo to 116.
The men had been cleared to leave for years, but could not be sent back to Yemen because of the country's instability.
Congress has barred transfers to the US mainland, so the only option left for the authorities is to send prisoners to third countries.]]></description>
<dc:subject>yemen usa GuantanamoBay barackobama politics diplomacy government cuba</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33106044#&quot;">
    <title>Snowden NSA: Germany drops Merkel phone-tapping probe - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-13T04:52:32+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33106044#&quot;</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Germany has dropped an investigation into alleged tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The office of federal prosecutor Harald Range said the NSA had failed to provide enough evidence to justify legal action.
The allegations of NSA phone-tapping came out in the secrets leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden about large-scale US surveillance in 2013.
German-US ties were severely strained.
When the allegations were made the White House gave no outright denial, but said Mrs Merkel's phone was not being bugged currently and would not be in future.
Mrs Merkel told the US government angrily that "spying between friends just isn't on". And the alleged spying shocked public opinion in Germany.]]></description>
<dc:subject>germany nsa legal government AngelaMerkel barackobama politics diplomacy surveillance</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:69f95d15cb14/</dc:identifier>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32893810">
    <title>US court backs hold on Obama immigration action - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-13T04:23:46+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32893810</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[A US court has backed a temporary hold on President Barack Obama's plans to shield almost five million illegal immigrants from deportation.
The hold was imposed after 26 states launched a legal challenge against the executive action, alleging it was unconstitutional.
An appeals court has now denied a government request to overturn it.
The White House said the action was essential to fix a "broken immigration system".
Under the plans, announced last year, people who entered the US illegally as children and parents of children who are US citizens would be offered temporary protection from deportation.
Aside from arguing President Obama acted outside his authority, the states say the move forces them to invest more in law enforcement, health care and education.
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling keeps the plans on hold while the states' legal challenge proceeds.
It is not clear yet whether the Obama administration will appeal.
The White House said the president acted within his powers to fix a "broken immigration system".
The Justice Department has argued that immigration policy is for the federal government to determine, not the states.
The department is now evaluating its next steps, a US official told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.
The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who has been a persistent critic of the president's immigration policies, tweeted: "The constitution wins".]]></description>
<dc:subject>legal immigration barackobama politics government congress</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:b130342904e9/</dc:identifier>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33083359#&quot;">
    <title>President Obama to boost army advisers in Iraq - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-06-11T17:22:58+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33083359#&quot;</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The US is to send up to 450 military advisers to Iraq to help train local forces fighting Islamic State, the White House says.
President Obama made the decision following a request from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, it said.
The troops will be deployed to the Taqaddum military base in Anbar province. IS seized Ramadi - the capital of Anbar - in May.
It has made gains across the region despite US-led coalition air strikes.
The move is aimed at enabling more Iraqis - mostly Sunni tribal volunteers - to integrate into the Iraq army and reclaim territory from Islamic State.
"These new advisers will work to build capacity of Iraqi forces, including local tribal fighters, to improve their ability to plan, lead, and conduct operations" against IS in Anbar, the White House statement added.]]></description>
<dc:subject>IslamicState isis iraq military usa barackobama politics diplomacy government</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/11/3657393/obama-conditionally-approves-arctic-drilling/">
    <title>BREAKING: Obama Administration Says Yes To Drilling In The Arctic</title>
    <dc:date>2015-05-12T00:05:36+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/11/3657393/obama-conditionally-approves-arctic-drilling/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The Obama administration has given conditional approval to a controversial proposal by Royal Dutch Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean this summer.

On Monday, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approved Shell’s exploration plan for the Chukchi Sea, which entails drilling up to six wells approximately 70 miles northwest of Wainwright, Alaska. The plan is for exploratory drilling, a sort of first step that companies take to determine whether a region is feasible for large-scale production.

In announcing the conditional approval, BOEM cited its recently-issued safety regulations for drilling in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean, including the Chukchi Sea, where big oil companies have long been hoping to lay their claim. Those regulations require companies to have contingency plans for mishaps — companies must be able to “promptly deploy” emergency containment equipment to deal with a spill, and must build a second rig close to their initial operations so a relief well could be drilled in the event of a blowout, among other things.]]></description>
<dc:subject>legal environment regulation oil energy barackobama politics</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:5b2c52e78256/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:regulation"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:oil"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:energy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:politics"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/world/asia/more-aggressive-role-by-us-military-is-seen-in-afghanistan.html">
    <title>Taliban Gains Pull U.S. Units Back Into Fight in Afghanistan</title>
    <dc:date>2015-05-01T01:43:03+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/world/asia/more-aggressive-role-by-us-military-is-seen-in-afghanistan.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Months after President Obama formally declared that the United States’ long war against the Taliban was over in Afghanistan, the American military is regularly conducting airstrikes against low-level insurgent forces and sending Special Operations troops directly into harm’s way under the guise of “training and advising.”

In justifying the continued presence of the American forces in Afghanistan, administration officials have insisted that the troops’ role is relegated to counterterrorism, defined as tracking down the remnants of Al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and training and advising the Afghan security forces who have assumed the bulk of the fight.

In public, officials have emphasized that the Taliban are not being targeted unless it is for “force protection” — where the insurgents were immediately threatening American forces.

But interviews with American and Western officials in Kabul and Washington offer a picture of a more aggressive range of military operations against the Taliban in recent months, as the insurgents have continued to make gains against struggling government forces.]]></description>
<dc:subject>taliban afghanistan military usa barackobama politics government diplomacy</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:999a01c7b8c6/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:afghanistan"/>
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</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.vox.com/2015/4/27/8504863/bush-obama-iraq">
    <title>George W. Bush's advice to Obama on ISIS: &quot;You kill 'em&quot; - Vox</title>
    <dc:date>2015-04-28T01:31:35+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.vox.com/2015/4/27/8504863/bush-obama-iraq</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[George W. Bush hasn't had much to say about Barack Obama's approach to the Middle East. But in comments at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting, first reported by the New York Times, Bush slammed Obama's approach to ISIS — in a way that suggests the bitter fruits of the former president's policies in the region haven't changed his mind one whit.

When asked about how to handle terrorists, Bush said, simply enough, "You kill ‘em." To deal with ISIS, he said, "You call in the military and say, ‘Here's my goal. What's your plan to help me achieve that goal?'"

This is a pretty bizarre criticism of Obama's approach to terrorism on at least two levels. First, Obama has been pretty aggressive about trying to kill people he thinks might end up threatening the US. Think about the targeted killing/drone campaign in Pakistan and Yemen, or the ongoing aerial war against ISIS.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama georgewbush terrorism isis government military</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:35e6d999fcfd/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:georgewbush"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:terrorism"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/obama-has-waited-longer-for-cabinet-confirmations-than-any-other-recent-president/">
    <title>Obama Has Waited Longer For Cabinet Confirmations Than Any Other Recent President | FiveThirtyEight</title>
    <dc:date>2015-04-23T18:53:19+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/obama-has-waited-longer-for-cabinet-confirmations-than-any-other-recent-president/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The Senate voted 56-43 to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general Thursday, 161 days after it received her nomination. Lynch waited longer than any confirmed Cabinet nominee since 1977 (which is as far back as the data from the Office of the Secretary of the Senate goes).1 However, Richard Holbrooke’s 176-day odyssey to confirmation as U.N. ambassador in 1999 still holds the title for the longest confirmation wait for a Cabinet-level position (a broader category than “the Cabinet”).

Obama nominees hold the top three spots on the waiting list. And Obama has had to wait longer, on average, than any other president in the data set for his nominees to join his Cabinet: Confirmed Obama nominees have waited for an average of 35 days. George W. Bush’s waited for an average of 16 days, Bill Clinton’s for 16 days, George H.W. Bush’s for 21 days, Ronald Reagan’s for 13 days and Jimmy Carter’s for six.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics usa government barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:29d0a14738ae/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:usa"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:government"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:barackobama"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32273754">
    <title>Iran nuclear deal: Obama says US partisanship gone too far - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-04-13T03:44:46+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32273754</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[US President Barack Obama has said that partisanship over the Iran nuclear deal has gone too far.
He rebuked the stance of some Republicans in the US Congress.
But one of those criticised by the president - Senator John McCain - said that there were discrepancies between US and Iranian versions of the deal.
An outline agreement on the future shape of Iran's nuclear programme was reached after marathon talks with six major powers earlier in April.
Some Republicans have argued against the deal, saying that Iran has received too many concessions.
Mr McCain suggested last week that Secretary of State John Kerry's explanations of the framework agreement were "somehow less trustworthy" than those of Iran's supreme leader.]]></description>
<dc:subject>iran diplomacy legal usa congress barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:13a9bcca3efa/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:iran"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:diplomacy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/t:legal"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8337123/obama-iran-deal-quote">
    <title>The most important quote from Obama's Iran deal speech</title>
    <dc:date>2015-04-05T22:09:49+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8337123/obama-iran-deal-quote</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[As he said in the speech, Obama thinks there are only two possible alternatives to the deal that’s shaping up if the US wants to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Either America could go to war with Iran, or it could withdraw from negotiations and hope sanctions would force Tehran to give up its hopes for a bomb.

The second option hasn’t worked so far. “Is [a deal] worse than doing what we’ve done for almost two decades with Iran moving with its nuclear program and without robust inspections?” he asked. “I think the answer will be clear.”

That leaves only one real alternative: war. Obama (along with most military experts) believes that war would delay Iran’s nuclear program at best. He believes, deeply and in his bones, that international inspections are a more effective way of stopping Iran from getting nukes — and that the consequences of war would be severe. This is, after all, a president who was elected on the basis of his opposition to the Iraq War.

This argument — that all of the alternatives to the deal are worse — also explains how Obama plans to handle the political challenges to the deal. At home, Republicans will vociferously oppose the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of America’s closest ally in the Middle East, will do the same. Both believe Iran can’t be trusted, and appear to believe that terms of this agreement aren’t enough to ensure Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama diplomacy iran military nuclear israel politics usa</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32151406">
    <title>President Obama creates new cyber sanctions programme - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-04-02T04:21:59+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32151406</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[US President Barack Obama has ordered the creation of a programme that would allow the government to sanction foreign hackers.
The US Treasury will now be able to target those attempting cyber attacks on US assets and infrastructure.
Mr Obama said cyber-threats are "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges" that the US faces.
The White House did not announce any new sanctions, only the authority to impose them when it deems necessary.
In January, the US imposed new sanctions on North Korea in response to a cyber-attack against Sony Pictures.
The new programme is the product of an executive order issued by the president on Wednesday.
The authorisation gives the US Treasury Secretary - in coordination with the Attorney General and Secretary of State - the ability to sanction "individuals or entities" that pose a cyber threat to the "national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States," Mr Obama said in a statement issued by the White House.]]></description>
<dc:subject>usa legal sanctions government hacking barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/23/8273759/obama-administration-passes-goal-lte-for-98-percent-of-americans">
    <title>Obama administration reaches goal to provide LTE to 98 percent of Americans</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-24T01:09:07+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/23/8273759/obama-administration-passes-goal-lte-for-98-percent-of-americans</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Improving the state of broadband internet in the US has been a part of the President Obama’s platform for some time, and now that the presidency is in its later years, the administration wants to take stock of the advancements it has made.

In an announcement today, the administration officially announced that over 98 percent of Americans now have access to LTE service. Verizon Wireless has advertised for over a year that it covers precisely that many Americans with LTE, but now the government officially approves of that figure, according to the latest data from the Commerce Department. Back in 2011, when President Obama first announced that milestone as one of the administration’s goals, the nation’s largest carrier provided LTE to just over half of the US population. 3G service, meanwhile, was available to only 95 percent of the population. The administration provided $7 billion in funding to help bring wireless networks up to speed across the nation, and it credits its high-profile spectrum auctions with helping make nationwide LTE a reality.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama mobile business broadband internet technology</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:f2135b361070/</dc:identifier>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/democratic-booms/">
    <title>Democratic Booms</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-21T22:19:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/democratic-booms/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[I’m old enough to remember the cries of doom when Clinton pushed through an increase in top tax rates. If you were reading the WSJ editorial page, or Forbes, or listening to Newt Gingrich, you knew that it was time to sell all your stocks and wait for the depression.

And Obama, of course, was bringing on hyperinflationary collapse with his health reform and tax hikes at the top.

Needless to say, none of it happened; what the Democratic booms show is that you can strengthen the safety net and raise taxes on the wealthy without causing economic disaster.

But didn’t liberals make similar predictions of Reaganite disaster? Actually, no. As I’ve pointed out in the past, what happened under Reagan — tight money brought on a severe recession, but the economy recovered once money was loosened again, and the intervening period of slack brought inflation down — was exactly what the textbooks predicted.

If politics made any sense, Democrats would be celebrating Clinton in the way Republicans celebrate the blessed Ronald, and they’d be hailing Obama as Saint Bill’s second coming. Meanwhile Republicans would be fairly diffident about a pretty good job but not all that exceptional expansion that was mainly Paul Volcker’s doing, and was a long time ago.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics economics economy ronaldreagan billclinton barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-oreilly-obama-nothing-bin-laden">
    <title>Bill O'Reilly: Obama Had 'Nothing To Do' With Death Of Bin Laden</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-20T03:31:57+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-oreilly-obama-nothing-bin-laden</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on Wednesday night that President Obama had "nothing to do" with the 2011 killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

O'Reilly made the remarks on "The O'Reilly Factor" after daring guest Jessica Ehrlich, a Democratic strategist, to name "one accomplishment" of Obama's "that has made this country better overseas."

"Well, let’s say Osama bin Laden — the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden," Ehrlich replied.

"He had nothing to do with that!" O'Reilly exploded. "That was US intel and the Navy SEALs taking him out. He just said 'Do it.'"

"It happened under his watch," Ehrlich said.

"C’mon. So what?" O'Reilly said. "If that’s what he’s got after six years, that’s dismal."]]></description>
<dc:subject>foxnews barackobama politics government osamabinladen terrorism</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ab029d7c625149348143a51ff61175c6/us-sets-new-record-denying-censoring-government-files">
    <title>US sets new record for denying, censoring government files</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-19T05:24:23+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ab029d7c625149348143a51ff61175c6/us-sets-new-record-denying-censoring-government-files</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

Its backlog of unanswered requests at year's end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.]]></description>
<dc:subject>legal FOIA censorship government politics barackobama statistics</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/13/tom-cotton-picked-apart-by-army-general-over-mutinous-iran-letter/">
    <title>Tom Cotton picked apart by Army general over ‘mutinous’ Iran letter</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-15T04:38:19+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/13/tom-cotton-picked-apart-by-army-general-over-mutinous-iran-letter/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[“What Senator Cotton did is a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, he should know better,” Eaton told me. “I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed.” The consequences of Cotton’s missive were plainly apparent to Eaton. “The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran,” he said.

“I think Senator Cotton recognizes this, and he simply does not care,” Eaton went on to say. “That’s what disappoints me the most.” And that’s what’s so scary about this whole episode. The freshman senator from Arkansas and 46 of his Republican colleagues sought to bigfoot Obama on a deal not yet done whose details are not yet known.]]></description>
<dc:subject>TomCotton politics iran republicans diplomacy usa barackobama government legal</dc:subject>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/3/12/8191209/tom-cotton-treason-logan-act-iran-letter">
    <title>No, Tom Cotton did not commit treason</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-13T03:40:52+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/3/12/8191209/tom-cotton-treason-logan-act-iran-letter</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Sen. Tom Cotton and the 46 other Republican Senators whojoined his open letter to Iran, hinting that they might blow up a nuclear deal that they don’t like, crossed a real line.

They undermined US foreign policy and the president’s constitutionally enshrined authority over it; that’s really serious, and the implications go way beyond just the Iran talks. There is a plausible, if disputed, case that they may have violated the Constitution in doing so, along with an old and little-used law called the Logan Act.

But it’s not treason; they are not traitors. What Cotton and the other Republican senators did was a breach, but it comes nowhere close to treason, or to any other crime that would or could merit actual punishment. Suggesting otherwise isn’t just factually ridiculous — it’s also a repeat of the debate-silencing tactics the Bush administration and its supporters used in W’s first term to shut down criticism of the Iraq invasion. Americans should know better.]]></description>
<dc:subject>senate usa congress politics government republicans TomCotton barackobama diplomacy</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/tpp-at-the-nabe/">
    <title>TPP at the NABE</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-12T05:36:48+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/tpp-at-the-nabe/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[These gains aren’t nothing, but we’re not talking about a world-shaking deal here.

So why do some parties want this deal so much? Because as with many “trade” deals in recent years, the intellectual property aspects are more important than the trade aspects. Leaked documents suggest that the US is trying to get radically enhanced protection for patents and copyrights; this is largely about Hollywood and pharma rather than conventional exporters. What do we think about that (slide 7)?

Well, we should never forget that in a direct sense, protecting intellectual property means creating a monopoly – letting the holders of a patent or copyright charge a price for something (the use of knowledge) that has a zero social marginal cost. In that direct sense this introduces a distortion that makes the world a bit poorer.

There is, of course, an offset in the form of an increased incentive to create knowledge, which is why we have patents and copyright in the first place. But do we really think that inadequate incentive to create new drugs or new movies is a major problem right now?

You might try to argue that there is a US interest in enhancing IP protection even if it’s not good for the world, because in many cases it’s US corporations with the property rights. But are they really US firms in any meaningful sense? If pharma gets to charge more for drugs in developing countries, do the benefits flow back to US workers? Probably not so much.

Which brings me to my last point: Why, exactly, should the Obama administration spend any political capital – alienating labor, disillusioning progressive activists – over such a deal?
]]></description>
<dc:subject>trade economics economy politics patent legal usa government barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/03/09/republicans-are-beginning-to-act-as-though-barack-obama-isnt-even-the-president/">
    <title>Republicans are beginning to act as though Barack Obama isn’t even the president</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-11T01:24:07+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/03/09/republicans-are-beginning-to-act-as-though-barack-obama-isnt-even-the-president/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[But as has happened so many times before, Republicans seem to have concluded that there is one set of rules and norms that apply in ordinary times, and an entirely different set that applies when Barack Obama is the president. You no longer need to show the president even a modicum of respect. You can tell states to ignore the law. You can sabotage delicate negotiations with a hostile foreign power by communicating directly with that power.

I wonder what they’d say if you asked them whether it would be acceptable for Democrats to treat the next Republican president that way. My guess is that the question wouldn’t even make sense to them. After all, that person would be a Republican. So how could anyone even think of such a thing?]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics republicans government HouseOfRepresentatives congress senate usa diplomacy barackobama democracy democrats</dc:subject>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/3/10/8182063/tom-cottons-controversial-letter-to-iran-explained">
    <title>The uproar over Sen. Tom Cotton's letter to Iran, explained</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-11T01:18:18+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/3/10/8182063/tom-cottons-controversial-letter-to-iran-explained</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Oh yes. Much has been made of the tone of Cotton’s letter, which comes across like a super-condescending Schoolhouse Rock rehash. For example, more than a few puzzled observers have pointed out that Cotton’s letter explained term limits to an Iranian president who is himself term-limited.

Critics of the letter have also gleefully shared this blog post, by Harvard constitutional law scholar and former Bush-administration lawyer Jack Goldsmith, pointing out that Cotton’s letter explaining the Constitution actually got part of the Constitution wrong. The error was pretty minor: Cotton said that the Senate ratifies treaties, when technically the Senate votes to “gives its advice and consent, empowering the president to proceed with ratification.” Goldsmith conceded it was a “technical point,” but it’s never ideal to have a Bush administration legal heavyweight write, “in a letter purporting to teach a constitutional lesson, the error is embarrassing.”

And the tone of Zarif’s official response, an act of diplomatic trolling, is, depending on your point of view, either hugely insulting or hilarious (or maybe both). He wrote, for example, “it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy.”]]></description>
<dc:subject>TomCotton legal politics republicans diplomacy iran congress senate usa barackobama</dc:subject>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/3/7/8168347/obama-s-speech-in-selma-was-an-answer-to-those-who-question-his-love">
    <title>Obama’s speech in Selma was an answer to those who question his love for America</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-08T04:12:30+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/3/7/8168347/obama-s-speech-in-selma-was-an-answer-to-those-who-question-his-love</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The first paragraph is Obama’s case for hope: America is improving; it has always been improving, and to deny that improvement is to steal from Americans a belief in their country that they have more than earned. “To deny this progress — our progress — would be to rob us of our own agency,” he said.

The second paragraph is Obama’s case for change: America’s sins are not vanquished; its hatreds remain real; its racism still breathes. “We know the march is not yet over,” Obama said, “the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much.”

Hope and change. These are the two ideas that form the steady core of Obama’s politics. But, more than that, they are the two ideas that define, for Obama, what kind of country America is — and what it means to serve it.

Obama’s critics question his love for the country he governs. “I do not believe — and I know this is a horrible thing to say — but I do not believe that the president loves America,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in February. They look at Obama’s steady belief that America is not yet good enough, not yet pure enough, not yet perfect enough, and they see a skeptic, not a patriot.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics barackobama government usa culture</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://m.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31722493">
    <title>Obama says Netanyahu's Iran speech contains 'nothing new' - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-03-06T02:14:30+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://m.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31722493</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[US President Barack Obama has reacted scathingly to a speech by the Israeli prime minister that castigated his policy towards Iran.
In a speech to the US Congress, Benjamin Netanyahu warned that a deal under discussion on Iran's nuclear programme could "pave Iran's path to the bomb" rather than block it.
But Mr Obama said Mr Netanyahu had offered no viable alternative.
Other senior Democrats - and Iran - also criticised Mr Netanyahu.
The Israeli leader's visit was controversial from the start, because the Republican speaker invited him without consulting the White House.
The US president announced he would not meet Mr Netanyahu, who is fighting in a closely contested national election in just two weeks' time.
Talks on Iran's nuclear programme are nearing a critical late-March deadline for an outline agreement to be reached.]]></description>
<dc:subject>iran nuclear israel BenjaminNetanyahu barackobama politics congress republicans HouseOfRepresentatives</dc:subject>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114291/elizabeth-warren-tpp">
    <title>Elizabeth Warren is furious over Obama’s proposed trade deal</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-27T01:52:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114291/elizabeth-warren-tpp</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Warren goes on to argue that the rules of that arbitration end up favoring corporations both in the complaints that get hard and the decisions that get rendered. Interestingly, this isn’t just a liberal crusade: the libertarian think tank Cato has a lengthy brief slamming the ISDS as “an unnecessary, unreasonable, and unwise provision to include in trade agreements” that, among other sins, “is not even essential to the task of freeing trade.”

This puts Warren on a direct collision course with the Obama administration: passing the TPP deal is one of their top priorities this year.

So can Warren get people to care about ISDS? Maybe! As my colleague Matt Yglesias wrote in his newsletter last night, Warren “has a unique knack among today’s elected officials for seizing on things that are languishing in obscurity and making them blow up. The greatest trick the special interests ever played was getting the world to stop paying attention. Warren makes people pay attention.”]]></description>
<dc:subject>ElizabethWarren politics trade economics legal barackobama</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
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<item rdf:about="http://m.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31646325">
    <title>Boehner stays silent on homeland security funding vote - BBC News</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-27T00:18:26+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://m.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31646325</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[House Speaker John Boehner has refused to say whether the House will vote on a Senate bill funding homeland security before a Friday deadline.
"When I make a decision, I'll let you know," Mr Boehner told reporters.
The Senate is set to pass a bill without blocking immigration policies made by US President Barack Obama by execution action last year.
If the House does not take it up by Friday, a partial government shutdown will follow.
About 200,000 of the agency's 230,000 employees, including airport security agents, would continue to work but would not be paid until the shutdown came to an end.
Some Republicans are seeking to end Mr Obama's immigration policies, which protect more than five million undocumented immigrations from deportation, using the homeland security $40m (£26m) budget as a bargaining chip.
Mr Boehner and others argue the US president has overstepped his powers.]]></description>
<dc:subject>johnboehner politics republicans congress senate homelandsecurity deptofhomelandsecurity usa immigration barackobama democrats</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/obama-derangement-and-bush-hatred/">
    <title>Obama Derangement and Bush Hatred</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-26T05:36:48+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/obama-derangement-and-bush-hatred/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Anyway — I’ve gone on long enough. I think there are somewhat plausible arguments to be made that anti-Obama paranoia has had more direct influence on D.C. policymaking (or the lack thereof) than Bush hatred did, because of when the Tea Party wave happened and how anti-Obama feeling has shaped the internal politics of the House Republican caucus since. And there are larger differences between right and left-wing politics in this country, the nature of the media ecosystems on both sides, etc. that leads to differences in how palpably and politically paranoia manifests itself, how permeable the parties are to these ideas, and so on.

But I also think liberals in the Obama era consistently underestimate the structural similarities between, say, Michael Moore-ism — which, as Moore himself will be happy to tell you, was actively embraced by Democratic politicians in the 2004 period — and Dinesh D’Souza-ism, between Bush hatred and Obama hatred, between their own side’s cultural paranoias and anxieties and the anger and suspicion that’s percolated on the Obama-era right. There are asymmetries and differences, certainly, but the two era’s paranoid styles are going to look more similar in hindsight, or at least more like fascinating funhouse-mirror images, than today’s reasonable liberals want to think.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama politics georgewbush culture usa</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/24/8092515/republicans-king-obamacare">
    <title>If SCOTUS kills Obamacare subsidies, Republicans don’t have an exit strategy</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-25T04:59:07+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/2/24/8092515/republicans-king-obamacare</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Here’s what Ponnuru’s list of options drove home for me: a win for Obamacare challengers is no walk in the park for Republican legislators. A positive outcome would make Congressional Republicans the dog who caught the car: they’ve managed to eliminate a huge part of Obamacare, but don’t have a great exit strategy for what happens afterwards.

None of the options above are especially appealing or easy to pull off — and they suggest that, as much as Republicans will celebrate a win at the Supreme Court, they would also face a huge challenge figuring out how to ultimately use that victory to their advantage.]]></description>
<dc:subject>republicans politics AffordableCareAct government health healthcare insurance barackobama democrats congress</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31596580">
    <title>BBC News - Obama vetoes Keystone oil pipeline bill</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-25T02:41:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31596580</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[US President Barack Obama has vetoed a bill that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The Republican-led Congress sent the bill to the president on Tuesday.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama vetoed the bill "without any drama or fanfare or delay".

The 875-mile (1,400km) pipeline would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the US state of Nebraska where it joins pipes running to Texas.

The project has pitted Republicans and other supporters, who say it will create much needed jobs, against many Democrats and environmentalists, who warn the pipeline will add to carbon emissions and contribute to global warming.

The Keystone bill is Mr Obama's third veto as president and his first since Republicans won full control of Congress in November.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama KeystoneXL environment oil energy politics</dc:subject>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/23/rudy-giuliani-didnt-intend-question-president-patriotism">
    <title>Rudy Giuliani says he 'didn't intend' to question president's patriotism</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-23T23:54:06+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/23/rudy-giuliani-didnt-intend-question-president-patriotism</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[In the op-ed, Giuliani ​distanced himself from his comments about the US president not loving America​.

“My blunt language suggesting that the president doesn’t love America notwithstanding, I didn’t intend to question President Obama’s motives or the content of his heart,” Giuliani wrote in ​the WSJ​ on Sunday. “My intended focus really was the effect his words and his actions have on the morale of the country, and how that effect may damage his performance.”

​Giuliani criticize​d Obama for criticizing America, accusing the commander-in-chief of using language that downplays America’s fundamental greatness.

He admonished Obama for admitting that the US tortured people in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks for “[undermining] those who managed successfully to protect us from further attack”. He also ​criticized him for downplaying American exceptionalism, ​saying that the president’s comments do not “suggest a becoming and endearing modesty, but rather a stark lack of moral clarity”.

“Presidents John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton all possessed the ability to walk a fine line by placing any constructive criticisms regarding the ways the country might improve in the context of their unbending belief in American exceptionalism,” Giuliani ​wrote. “Those presidents acknowledged America’s flaws, but always led with a fundamental belief in the country’s greatness and the example we set for the world.”

In an interview last week, Giuliani told 1010 WINS that he​ has made similar comments about Obama over the years. He told the radio station he believed his words stood out this time because of the crowd – who he said applauded after the remarks – and the number of people present.

Last week the 2008 GOP presidential candidate was forced to respond to accusations that his comments about Obama were racist and a low​ blow.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama RudyGiuliani politics republicans</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31591653">
    <title>BBC News - Homeland security cash stand-off over US migrant policy</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-23T23:35:12+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31591653</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[President Barack Obama and Congress are at loggerheads over homeland security's $40bn (£26bn) budget, with time running out to secure a deal.

Republicans, who control Congress, are seeking to remove funding for Mr Obama's attempt to save undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The department of homeland security protects the US borders, and guards against disasters and terror attacks.

Its current funding plan is due to end on Friday.

Mr Obama's plan to temporarily lift the threat of deportation for about five million undocumented immigrants has become a sticking point between the two parties.

Speaking to a conference of US governors on Monday, Mr Obama told them without funding there would be a "direct impact" on their state economies and on national security.

"We can't afford to play politics with our national security," he said.

Unless agreement is reached, a partial government shutdown will follow, which would limit the agency's ability to respond to terror threats, its head has warned.

"If we are going to shut down, we are greatly compromised," Secretary Jeh Johnson told US governors on Sunday at the National Governors Association annual meeting.]]></description>
<dc:subject>deptofhomelandsecurity security immigration politics republicans congress barackobama HouseOfRepresentatives senate</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b3d6f4ed5c8e4d85a67ea83f5f967b61/gov-walker-says-he-doesnt-know-if-obama-loves-his-country">
    <title>Gov. Walker says he doesn't know if Obama loves his country</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-22T20:36:24+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b3d6f4ed5c8e4d85a67ea83f5f967b61/gov-walker-says-he-doesnt-know-if-obama-loves-his-country</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a leading Republican contender for the White House in 2016, said Saturday he doesn't know whether President Barack Obama loves his country.

"You should ask the president what he thinks about America," Walker told The Associated Press while in Washington for a weekend meeting of the National Governors Association. "I've never asked him so I don't know."

Earlier in the week, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said during a dinner speech, with Walker in attendance, "I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America."

Democrats have assailed Giuliani for questioning Obama's love of country and urged the potential field of Republican presidential candidates to rebuke Giuliani for his comments.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, another possible 2016 candidate, said he didn't think it helps to question the president's patriotism or motives. Giuliani, Pence said, is "a great American" who is "understandably frustrated with a president who lectures us on the Crusades, but seems incapable of calling radical Islamic violence by name."

Walker, who has been amassing donors and headlines since a well-received speech last month in Iowa, has been a visible presence at the annual governors' meeting, participating in events and making himself available to reporters.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/upshot/why-giuliani-and-other-obama-critics-play-the-american-card.html">
    <title>Why Giuliani and Other Obama Critics Play the ‘American’ Card</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-22T19:57:15+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/upshot/why-giuliani-and-other-obama-critics-play-the-american-card.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Whatever his intentions, Mr. Giuliani’s statement reflects the ease with which people dissociate Mr. Obama and other African-Americans with American identity, especially those who don’t like him. A 2005 study examined this pattern using the Implicit Association Test, which measures the associations between concepts using differences in response timing during a categorization task. People tend to respond faster when categorizing paired stimuli that are congruent with their implicit associations (for instance, “thin people” or “good” versus “fat people” or “bad”) than those that are incongruent (the opposite pairings). In the study in question, the authors found response timing patterns that suggested that African-Americans as a group are “less associated with the national category ‘American’ than are white Americans” relative to the category “foreign” — a pattern that holds for other nonwhite groups such as Asian-Americans and Latinos.

These tendencies seem to translate into perceptions of Mr. Obama as being less American among his opponents. A study conducted during the 2008 election reported that supporters of both Mr. Obama and John McCain tended to implicitly associate their preferred candidate more closely with America, but these tendencies were especially pronounced among Republicans, who were “far more likely to dissociate Obama from the nation … than Democrats did with McCain.” The pattern of associating Mr. Obama with America less than political counterparts like Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton was found in another study to be stronger when Mr. Obama’s race was highlighted.

Given how closely bound up questions of American identity are with race, the debate that Mr. Giuliani revived, which is now drawing in Republican presidential contenders and pundits, threatens to make the 2016 campaign another racially fraught episode in the Obama presidency.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/rudy_giuliani_says_barack_obama_doesn_t_love_america_that_s_absurd_but_the.html">
    <title>Rudy Giuliani Is Right That Obama Isn’t Like Past Presidents</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-22T00:20:19+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/rudy_giuliani_says_barack_obama_doesn_t_love_america_that_s_absurd_but_the.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[As president he echoed this during a now-famous (perhaps infamous) 2009 news conference in Strasbourg, France, where he elaborated on his sense of exceptionalism. “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Every nation has a sense of its unique place in the world. Even still, Obama said, there are things especially exceptional to the United States. “I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality that, though imperfect, are exceptional.”

To be clear, Giuliani wasn’t somehow right, and to say he even made a point is to overstate the case. But it is true that Obama stands outside the norm. No, he’s not Jeremiah Wright, but he’s not Reagan either.

The obvious question is, Why? Why is Obama more circumspect than his presidential peers? Why does his praise come with a note of reservation?

The best answer, I think, lies in identity. By choice as much as birth, Obama is a black American. And black Americans, more than most, have a complicated relationship with our country. It’s our home as much as it’s been our oppressor: a place of freedom and opportunity as much as a source of violence and degradation. We’re an old American tribe, with deep roots in the land and a strong hand in the labor of the nation. But we’re often seen as other—a suspect class that just doesn’t fit.

As a president from black America, Obama carries this with him, and it comes through in his sometimes less-than-effusive vision of national greatness. He loves this country, but he also tempers his view with a nod toward the uglier parts of our history.

This isn’t the exceptionalism of the Republican Party or much of the national mainstream, and it can alienate Americans not used to a more critical eye—it’s why Mitt Romney chose “Believe in America” for his 2012 election slogan. But it is as authentically American as any other. And while Obama is far from a perfect president, I’m at least glad he’s here to give it a greater voice.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/us/politics/in-remarks-on-obama-rudy-giuliani-to-the-core.html">
    <title>In Remarks on Obama, Rudy Giuliani to the Core</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-22T00:11:46+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/us/politics/in-remarks-on-obama-rudy-giuliani-to-the-core.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[To some in Republican politics, Mr. Giuliani’s public eruption looks like the product of slack political instincts, the shoot-from-the-lip behavior of a former champion who has lost self-awareness with each year removed from office. The former mayor’s political career has sloped precipitously downward since his ill-fated 2008 campaign; while he remains an occasional fund-raising attraction, his time as a national Republican leader is past.

Mr. Giuliani has acknowledged that there is no future path for him to the party’s presidential nomination, citing his longstanding support for gay rights as an insurmountable obstacle. Unlike several of his 2008 competitors, Mr. Giuliani was not given a speaking slot at the 2012 Republican convention.

Even in New York, his clout is diminished. A Marist College poll released during the 2013 mayoral election found a strong plurality of city voters were less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Mr. Giuliani. His former deputy mayor, Joseph J. Lhota, attracted less than a quarter of the vote as the Republican nominee in his loss to Bill de Blasio.

Still, Mr. Giuliani’s personal celebrity is intact, to his great commercial advantage. He is a partner at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani and has a consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, housed alongside the New York office of the law practice on the 49th floor of the Exxon Building.

It has been years since he disclosed his assets, but Mr. Giuliani revealed as a presidential candidate that his personal wealth had ballooned from a modest sum when he left City Hall to more than $30 million in 2007.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/02/19/giuliani-obama-had-a-white-mother-so-im-not-a-racist/">
    <title>Giuliani: Obama Had a White Mother, So I'm Not a Racist</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-20T05:58:40+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/02/19/giuliani-obama-had-a-white-mother-so-im-not-a-racist/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York on Thursday defended his assertion that President Obama did not love America, and said that his criticism of Mr. Obama’s upbringing should not be considered racist because the president was raised by “a white mother.”

Mr. Giuliani’s remarks — made at a New York fund-raising event for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin on Wednesday night and first reported by Politico — set off an uproar.

“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Mr. Giuliani said at the event. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.”

Critics suggested that Mr. Giuliani’s description of Mr. Obama’s upbringing reflected a prejudiced view that Mr. Obama was different from other Americans.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani dismissed the criticism and said he was describing the worldview that had shaped Mr. Obama’s upbringing.

“Some people thought it was racist — I thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools, and most of this he learned from white people,” Mr. Giuliani said in the interview. “This isn’t racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism.”

He also challenged a reporter to find examples of Mr. Obama expressing love for his country.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jindal-wants-in-on-obama-patriotism-smearing.html">
    <title>Bobby Jindal: If We’re Smearing Obama’s Patriotism Here, I Want In</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-20T04:52:28+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jindal-wants-in-on-obama-patriotism-smearing.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The figure most discomfited by this turn of events was not Walker but Bobby Jindal, a rival candidate. Racially tinged dog whistles are Jindal’s thing. This has been his major point of differentiation against fellow Republicans. He can’t just sit there and let Walker bask alone in the reflected glory of Giuliani’s smear.

So Jindal released a statement to the media that he would not condemn Giuliani’s statement. Nobody even asked him, but just in case you were wondering what Jindal thought about smearing Obama’s patriotism — which was not a subject of intense curiosity, for the same reason nobody has wondered what Harvey Fierstein thinks about Alabama blocking gay marriage — he has cleared things up. No Walker-style dodge here.]]></description>
<dc:subject>BobbyJindal politics race racism barackobama scottwalker RuddyGiuliani</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/19/8071067/defund-immigration">
    <title>Why Democrats should welcome the latest conservative plan to keep DHS open</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-20T04:48:12+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/2/19/8071067/defund-immigration</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The National Review editors see this as a win-win: Republicans in Congress could still have a legislative fight over the president’s executive actions, but without the risk of shutting down homeland security. In their view, funding US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which regulates legal immigration into the US — and would also be the agency in charge of granting protection from deportation to the millions of immigrants who apply for relief under the president’s executive actions — is “not as politically vital” as keeping the rest of the department open.

But if there’s little downside for Republicans in letting USCIS go unfunded, there’s no downside for Democrats whatsoever. Here’s the problem: the overwhelming majority of USCIS isn’t funded by Congress. The agency is almost entirely self-funded. It runs off the fees that immigrants pay when they submit applications to get or renew legal status (or deferred action), or to become citizens.

That’s why Republicans haven’t been able to straightforwardly “defund” Obama’s executive actions through the budget: they weren’t funding them to begin with. And they aren’t funding most of the rest of the agency, either.

There’s one big exception: Congress is responsible for giving USCIS money to run the E-Verify program, which checks whether new hires at over 500,000 American companies are legally authorized to work in the US. But Republicans have been the ones championing E-Verify, and pushing to make it mandatory: earlier this month, the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a bill to require all employers to use E-Verify. (The committee has passed similar bills the past two Congresses.) Democrats have no particular love for E-Verify. So if USCIS goes unfunded, the only casualty will be the part of the agency that Republicans want to expand.]]></description>
<dc:subject>immigration politics HouseOfRepresentatives republicans senate congress democrats barackobama deptofhomelandsecurity</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-rudy-giuliani-love-article-1.2122253">
    <title>Wayne Barrett: What Rudy Giuliani knows about love</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-20T04:35:54+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-rudy-giuliani-love-article-1.2122253</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Rudy contends that his not-like-us Obama insights have nothing to do with race, adding in day-after doubling down that the President “was taught to be a critic of America,” while pointing out that his mother and grandparents were white. There are few in New York now, after 12 years of Mike Bloomberg and a year of Bill de Blasio, who doubt that Rudy was a conscious, almost energetic, polarizer. He never acknowledged his dark side then and he’s not about to now.]]></description>
<dc:subject>RudyGiuliani politics race racism culture barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/rudy-giuliani-president-obama-doesnt-love-america-115309.html">
    <title>Rudy Giuliani: President Obama doesn’t love America</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-19T05:52:31+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/rudy-giuliani-president-obama-doesnt-love-america-115309.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said during the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

With Walker sitting just a few seats away, Giuliani continued by saying that “with all our flaws we’re the most exceptional country in the world. I’m looking for a presidential candidate who can express that, do that and carry it out.”

“And if it’s you Scott, I’ll endorse you,” he added. “And if it’s somebody else, I’ll support somebody else.”

In an interview after the dinner – Walker aides insisted all of the governor’s comments were off-the-record – Giuliani said he would “eventually” back a Republican presidential candidate. He also elaborated on his criticism of Obama by arguing the president “sees our weaknesses as footnotes to the great things we’ve done.”]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/poll-gop-immigration-shutdown-worst-idea-ever.html">
    <title>Poll Confirms the Republican Immigration Shutdown Plan Is Their Worst Idea Ever</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-19T05:45:49+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/poll-gop-immigration-shutdown-worst-idea-ever.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Two days ago, House Speaker John Boehner announced he would “certainly” allow a government shutdown if President Obama refuses to curtail his plan to liberalize immigration enforcement. Today, CNN has a poll about who to blame in the event of such a shutdown. Fifty-three percent of Americans would blame the Republican Congress, and only 30 percent would blame Obama.

In the modern polarized electorate, this sort of finding is quite an accomplishment. Thirty percent of America represents your absolute hardcore base, the people who will side with your party on absolutely anything. If Boehner pulled out a lead pipe during the State of the Union Address and began beating the president in full view of the cameras, 30 percent is about the proportion of the public that would blame Obama for the fracas. If you can only get 30 percent to blame the opposing side, you’re in really bad shape.

It may be true that political geography so favors Republican control of the House that almost nothing they could do could pose any threat to their majority. That said, shutting down the government over immigration remains the worst idea they have ever had.
]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31508614">
    <title>BBC News - US judge temporarily halts Obama's immigration orders</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-18T02:36:12+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31508614</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[A judge in Texas has temporarily halted a plan by US President Barack Obama to give a reprieve from deportation to millions of undocumented people.

The ruling by US District Judge Andrew Hanen gives a coalition of 26 states time to pursue a lawsuit aiming to permanently stop the orders.

Some parts of the policy would have started to take effect on Wednesday.

US Attorney General Eric Holder said he is seeking to overturn the Texas ruling and the courts will ultimately decide.

The coalition of states, led by Texas and made up of mostly conservative states in the South and Midwest, say the order would increase costs for law enforcement, health care and education.

On Tuesday the White House defended the legality of its policy, announced by President Obama in November after immigration-reform efforts had failed repeatedly in Congress.]]></description>
<dc:subject>legal immigration lawsuit politics barackobama homelandsecurity</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31433277">
    <title>BBC News - Keystone XL: House backs oil pipeline, defying Obama</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-12T04:15:38+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31433277</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The US House of Representatives has given its final approval to a bill - already passed by the Senate - backing the Keystone XL pipeline, in defiance of the president's wishes.

The White House recently said President Barack Obama would veto the bill.

The bill has not enough votes to override a presidential veto.

The 875-mile (1,400km) pipeline would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the US state of Nebraska, where it joins pipes running to Texas.

The project has pitted Republicans and other supporters, who say it will create much needed jobs, against many Democrats and environmentalists, who warn the pipeline will add to carbon emissions and contribute to global warming.

The US president has been critical of the pipeline, saying at the end of last year that it would primarily benefit Canadian oil firms and not contribute much to already dropping petrol prices.]]></description>
<dc:subject>Canada oil KeystoneXL HouseOfRepresentatives senate government politics environment energy usa barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31425384">
    <title>BBC News - Islamic State will lose, says Obama</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-12T04:14:08+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31425384</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[President Barack Obama has said Islamic State (IS) militants "will lose" as he asks Congress to formally authorise military force against them.

"Our coalition is on the offensive. Isil [IS] is on the defensive, and Isil is going to lose," he said.

He warned against dragging the US into another prolonged ground war and called on lawmakers to show a united front.

The US has carried out air strikes against IS since last year, in a coalition with other nations.

It's the first time a US president has sought Congressional approval to use military force since President George W Bush in 2002, ahead of the invasion of Iraq.

In a White House address, he said the draft authorisation did not change the mission's core objective to "degrade and destroy" IS.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama usa military IslamicState isis government iraq congress diplomacy</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/02/best-private-sector-job-creation-ever.html">
    <title>Calculated Risk: Best Private Sector Job Creation &quot;Ever&quot;?</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-10T03:28:04+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/02/best-private-sector-job-creation-ever.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[On Friday, I mentioned that private job creation was on pace for the best ever during a presidential term. I received a few emails asking if that was correct.  The answer is "yes".

Here is a table of the top three presidential terms for private job creation (they also happen to be the three best terms for total non-farm job creation).

Note: Overall employment was smaller in the '80s, however the participation rate was increasing in the '80s.  The prime working age labor force was growing more than 3% per year in the '80s with a surge in younger workers and women joining the labor force. Now, the overall population is larger, but the prime working age population has declined this decade and the participation rate is generally declining now.

Clinton's two terms were the best for both private and total non-farm job creation, followed by Reagan's 2nd term.  Public sector job creation increased the most during Reagan's 2nd term.

Currently Obama's 2nd term is on pace to be the best ever for private job creation.  However, with very few public sector jobs added, Obama's 2nd term is only on pace to be the third best for total job creation.

Note: Only 14 thousand public sector jobs have been added during the first two years of Obama's 2nd term (following a record loss of 702 thousand public sector jobs during Obama's 1st term).]]></description>
<dc:subject>economics economy statistics government barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31173968">
    <title>BBC News - Susan Rice: US has ambitious but achievable agenda</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-07T21:28:12+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31173968</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Top White House adviser Susan Rice has said the US is pursuing an "ambitious yet achievable agenda" overseas.

Ms Rice argued US leadership had been essential for success on issues like Ebola, Iran's nuclear programme and sanctioning Russia over Ukraine.

President Barack Obama has faced criticism from Republicans in Congress over his foreign policy choices and perceived lack of leadership.

Her comments came as Mr Obama sent his national security strategy to Congress.

The document is a blueprint for foreign policy, defence and national security for the last two years of President Obama's term. It was last updated in 2010.

In a letter outlining the strategy, Mr Obama said the US would "always defend our interests and uphold our commitments to allies and partners".

"But we have to make hard choices among many competing priorities and we must always resist the overreach that comes when we make decisions based upon fear."]]></description>
<dc:subject>SusanRice diplomacy usa military barackobama politics</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-irriated-romney-2012-concession-david-axelrod-article-1.2102383">
    <title>Obama 'irritated' by Romney's 2012 concession: David Axelrod</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-05T03:43:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-irriated-romney-2012-concession-david-axelrod-article-1.2102383</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[President Obama was shocked and irritated by Mitt Romney’s concession call in the 2012 presidential election—and claimed Romney insinuated that Obama won only by getting out the black vote, according to a new book by presidential campaign strategist David Axelrod.

Obama was “unsmiling during the call, and slightly irritated when it was over,” Axelrod writes.

The president hung up and said Romney admitted he was surprised at his own loss, Axelrod wrote.

“‘You really did a great job of getting the vote out in places like Cleveland and Milwaukee,’ in other words, black people,’” Obama said, paraphrasing Romney. “That’s what he thinks this was all about.”]]></description>
<dc:subject>racism race mittromney barackobama election 2012 politics</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/2/7961735/obama-budget-grand-bargain">
    <title>Obama's new budget proves the grand bargain is finally dead</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-03T02:00:36+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/2/2/7961735/obama-budget-grand-bargain</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[One of the most striking elements of the Obama administration’s budget proposal to be released later today isn’t anything that it’s in it. It’s what isn’t in it — at least according to briefing documents provided by the White House. There’s no entitlement reform. There’s no Obama negotiating with himself. There’s no bending over backwards to look reasonable to his adversaries or to centrist pundits. Every previous Obama budget has been about positioning himself for a legislative or electoral showdown. This one isn’t.

And whileIt would be an overstatement to call it a liberal dream budget — left-wing Democrats could dream up plenty more — for the first time it’s really Obama’s dream budget. This is the end of the “grand bargain” era, and instead an opportunity for Obama to lay out his priorities for the long term — from transportation infrastructure to transforming child care. Rather than position himself in advance of a potential compromise, he wants to outline his vision for a future that will extend well beyond the life of his administration.

Make no mistake, Obama is still proposing things that would reduce the deficit. His budget offers $640 billion in net deficit reduction via a tax reform plan that would make the rich pay more. He says comprehensive immigration reform could deliver $160 billion more in deficit reduction. And he has $400 billion worth of ideas to build on health care cost containment ideas from the Affordable Care Act.

But these are purely aspirational statements of purpose. They are ideas that Obama believes in and wants to go on the record as supporting. They are rather obviously not things Republicans are going to vote for. Obama is trying to clarify where he stands on fiscal policy, not hoping they become law.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama politics congress economics economy budget government HouseOfRepresentatives senate republicans democrats</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120934/obamas-2016-budget-proposes-reforming-unemployment-insurance-system">
    <title>Obama's Budget Includes a Major Overhaul of Unemployment Insurance</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-03T01:52:23+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120934/obamas-2016-budget-proposes-reforming-unemployment-insurance-system</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The White House wants to fix those problems by permanently reforming and modernizing the EB program. The proposal eliminates the current triggers in the EB program and creates new ones at state unemployment rates of 6.5 percent, 7.5 percent, 8.5 percent and 9.5 percent. When a state’s unemployment hits any of those four levels, it triggers an additional 13 weeks of unemployment insurance available to the state’s unemployed workers. The four tiers can add a maximum of 52 weeks of benefits. In addition, if a state’s unemployment rate rises rapidly, the proposal would also trigger additional benefits. “Take the 6.5 percent [trigger] as an example. That would trigger [benefits] on if either the state’s unemployment is over 6.5 percent or the sum of the state’s unemployment rate and the change in the state’s unemployment rate over the past year is 6.5 percent,” the official explained. “So if the state had an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent but its unemployment rate had increased by a full point over a year—which would be a leading indicator of a recession—the extended benefits would turn on.” These changes would allow the UI system to react faster to poor economic conditions, getting relief quicker to affected workers and providing a minor stimulus to the economy. The administration projects that the plan will cost $50 billion over the next 10 years, given a range of economic conditions.

The White House is also proposing to create a $5 billion pot of money to incentivize states to reform their UI programs. This part of the proposal is modeled after a similar UI modernization plan that was part of the stimulus. The plan has two components. One would offer states financial rewards for changing the eligibility criteria so that more people who work part-time or who work on and off are eligible for benefits. The second part would encourage states to implement programs to promote reemployment. This is an area where the plan could receive bipartisan support. For instance, the White House suggests that states could offer the unemployed relocation vouchers to move where jobs are more widely available, an idea that Republican Senator John Thune proposed in 2014. States could also support more extensive reemployment services and job training programs.

Obama will fund this overhaul of the UI plan through the reimplementation of a 0.2 percent surtax on employers, which was in effect for 35 years but expired in 2011 after Republicans refused to renew it. That raises $16 billion over the next 10 years. However, the surtax was originally supposed to be a temporary means for the federal government to pay for extended benefits, so Republicans will almost certainly reject that funding source.

The White House wants to raise the remainder of the revenue by increasing the taxable wage level for UI benefits. Currently, the government imposes a 0.6 percent tax on the first $7,000 in earnings of each employee, $42 in total. It’s a regressive tax since it is not imposed on income above $7,000. That means a person making $7,000 and a person making $700,000 pay the same $42. Obama proposes raising that $7,000 threshold to $40,000 and indexing it to inflation. However, the administration will also adjust the actual tax rate so that the changes are revenue neutral in the first year. Over the long-term, the plan raises revenue because indexing it would index the taxable wage level to inflation, unlike the current system. The White House also projects the plan to save additional money as states use the higher wage threshold to shore up their own reserves, requiring less support from the federal government.

This comprehensive proposal is another indicator that Obama has moved past the crisis part of his presidency. He can now propose policies that reform and modernize different aspects of the government, in this case unemployment insurance. “We’re post-recession and post-expiration of EUC,” the senior administration official said, “[We can] really think what this program should look like going forward and lay down a marker for that.”]]></description>
<dc:subject>employment economics congress government unemployment barackobama</dc:subject>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/paul-ryans-most-shameless-lie-ever.html">
    <title>Paul Ryan’s Most Shameless Lie Ever</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-03T01:39:55+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/paul-ryans-most-shameless-lie-ever.html</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[What gives Ryan’s comments a veneer of plausibility is that income inequality has increased continuously, punctuated by a few short reversals, for more than three decades. Economists have extensively studied and debated the cause of rising inequality for years, clustering about multiple theories: the decline of labor unions, technological change, the growth of finance, and so on. None of the theories blame Obama’s economic policies.

We also do not yet know at this point whether the current recovery will produce the sort of rapid growth that lifts incomes in the middle and bottom, like the economy did at the height of the 1990s boom, or whether it will fail to do so, as happened during the previous recovery. It is worth pointing out that, comparing the previous two economic cycles, the one that followed the economic policies advocated by Ryan at the time, the Bush recovery, yielded stagnant incomes for middle- and working-class Americans, while the Clinton recovery, the one that favored higher taxes on the rich, bitterly opposed by Ryan, yielded much greater success. This contrast does not prove that the Democratic agenda necessarily produces stronger growth than the Republican agenda, but it certainly undercuts Ryan’s belief that the opposite is true.

What can be proven beyond a doubt is that, even if underlying economic trends have increased inequality, Obama’s economic policies have reduced it sharply. The stimulus included tax cuts for low-wage workers, and the Affordable Care Act was financed in part by higher taxes on the rich. Back when conservatives were lambasting Obama for stealing hard-earned money from the rich and handing it out to the unworthy poor, rather than pretending to worry about inequality, they were happy to make this perfectly clear. Here’s a circa-2012 chart from the right-wing Tax Foundation showing how Obama-era tax policies had increased tax rates for the top one percent and reduced them for all other income groups:]]></description>
<dc:subject>PaulRyan politics economics economy inequality wealth taxes government usa congress republicans barackobama</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/1/7959955/obama-corporate-tax">
    <title>Obama has a plan to cut corporate tax rates that corporations are going to hate</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-01T22:25:38+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.vox.com/2015/2/1/7959955/obama-corporate-tax</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Richard Rubin and Jonathan Allen at Bloomberg report that the Obama administration’s budget will include a proposal to change the tax treatment of American companies’ foreign profits. Were it to pass, these proposals would increase long-term tax revenue while lowering statutory rates, and also create a one-time surge in tax revenue that would finance infrastructure investments.

The plan as described has, roughly speaking, three elements:

A one-time 14 percent tax on stockpiles of cash being held in foreign tax havens.
A forward-looking 19 percent tax rate on foreign profits.
New measures to discourage tax avoidance.
To understand the significance and meaning of these measures, it’s useful to start with a high-level view of how the status quo works.]]></description>
<dc:subject>barackobama politics taxes economics budget congress republicans democrats</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-01/obama-said-to-propose-taxes-on-foreign-earnings-offshore-profit">
    <title>Obama Said to Seek 19% Global Minimum Tax to Aid Road Fund - Bloomberg Business</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-01T17:18:47+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-01/obama-said-to-propose-taxes-on-foreign-earnings-offshore-profit</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[President Barack Obama will propose that U.S.-based companies pay a minimum 19 percent tax on their future foreign earnings, capturing profits that are now often beyond the government’s reach.
Obama will also seek a 14 percent mandatory tax on about $2 trillion in stockpiled offshore profits, said two people familiar with his budget proposals, declining to be named because the document won’t be made public until Feb. 2. Companies would pay that tax regardless of whether they bring the money back to the U.S., the two said, creating a revenue stream the president would use to pay for roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.
Obama’s latest proposals add new details to the administration’s efforts to revamp the U.S. business tax system. The issue has been stalled in Congress, though lawmakers of both parties say they see potential room for agreement on business taxes.
In one sense, Obama is offering U.S. companies the kind of system they have sought -- one with lower corporate marginal tax rates and with future foreign profits subject to little or no extra U.S. tax when brought home.
However, he’s offering to do so on terms that are less favorable than companies would want, with rates that could mean significant tax increases for companies that have been shifting profits to jurisdictions such as Bermuda and Ireland and paying less than 10 percent on their foreign profits.
“The basic outline of a deal on the most important component of corporate tax reform is falling into place,” said Ed Kleinbard, a tax law professor at the University of Southern California who has criticized the current system that often lets companies avoid paying taxes anywhere.]]></description>
<dc:subject>taxes barackobama politics budget republicans congress democrats</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:jtyost2/b:eb1d5b206059/</dc:identifier>
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<item rdf:about="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/obamas-retreat-on-529-college-savings-plans-is-a-bad-omen-for-tax-reform/">
    <title>Obama’s Retreat On 529 College Savings Plans Is A Bad Omen For Tax Reform</title>
    <dc:date>2015-02-01T04:55:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/obamas-retreat-on-529-college-savings-plans-is-a-bad-omen-for-tax-reform/</link>
    <dc:creator>jtyost2</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[The lesson: If politicians (from both parties) are lobbying the president to drop his plan to simplify a program that amounts to less than $2 billion a year, then the much bigger tax expenditure programs are effectively untouchable.

That’s a problem because, as pretty much everyone agrees, the tax code is too complex. Many proposals for tax reform are modeled on the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was able to lower tax rates by limiting tax breaks (that is, the types of tax expenditures outlined above).

But when even small tax breaks have their vociferous defenders, it’s that much harder to simplify and improve the tax code.]]></description>
<dc:subject>politics taxes economics congress barackobama</dc:subject>
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