SpaceX has been launching rockets in Florida or California for quite some time, but Texas will likely see most of the action once the company finishes building its new spaceport in Cameron County. While SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hasn’t made an official…
Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Faraj al-Shibli, who was suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, has been found dead, a Libyan source and locals in the town of Marj said.
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans think House Speaker John Boehner’s lawsuit against President Barack Obama is a pointless waste of resources, according to a new poll.
Boehner (R-Ohio) is pursuing a lawsuit against Obama, saying the president used executive power to delay provisions in the Affordable Care Act that should have required congressional approval. While the speaker’s proposed lawsuit has the backing of some Republicans in Congress, 51 percent of American voters view it as a “political stunt,” according to Public Policy Polling. Only 41 percent of voters consider the lawsuit to be legitimate.
Public Policy Polling, in a poll commissioned by liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change, surveyed 1,161 registered voters and found a great majority viewed the lawsuit as a misappropriation of Congress’ time and money. Fifty-eight percent said the lawsuit won’t benefit people like them, and 63 percent said Congress should prioritize jobs over the lawsuit.
While Democrats have accused Boehner of using the lawsuit to bolster conservative support ahead of the midterm elections, 46 percent of those surveyed said they were less likely to vote for Republican candidates in November.
The poll from July 11 to July 13 and has a margin of error of 2.9 percent.
American voters aren’t the only ones viewing the lawsuit as a political stunt. RedState.com editor Erick Erickson called it “political theater and a further Republican waste of taxpayer dollars.” Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Republicans would be better off pursuing impeachment.
“You don’t bring a lawsuit to a gunfight, and there’s no room for lawyers on our front lines,” Palin told Fox News’ Hannity.
A third of Americans, and two-thirds of Republicans, think Obama should be impeached, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.
In times past, Sarah Palin’s blunt call for the impeachment of President Obama for his alleged bungling of the border crisis would have been laughed off, as it deservedly should. Simply consider the source to understand why. But Obama didn’t laugh it off. During his recent swing through Texas, without referring to Palin directly, he derisively mocked her impeachment call with the shout to an audience, “Sue me! Impeach me!”
Obama has heard this call before, many times, from the legion of right-wing bloggers, websites, and talk-show gabbers, and from a motley group of tea-party-affiliated GOP House reps. Though House Speaker John Boehner and GOP establishment leaders quickly squash any talk of impeachment, the truth is that the call is very much on their table, for very good cynical, crass, and politically chilling reasons. It’s the perfect ploy to further hector, cower, and intimidate Obama into backpedaling fast from the use of executive orders to get even faint action on his major initiatives on gun control, health care, jobs, education and transportation-spending measures, and of course immigration reform. The GOP-controlled House has repeatedly declared these measures “DOA” the instant they come from the White House. The GOP set this up nicely by hammering away on the myth that Obama is recklessly ignoring the Constitution by skirting Congress and going it alone in wielding the executive pen.
This is a gross falsehood. Obama is near the bottom on the list of presidents in the number of executive orders issued. The last president who issued orders at a lower rate than Obama was Grover Cleveland. GOP Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush issued far more executive orders per day in office than Obama. But then the issue is not, nor has it ever been, executive orders by intimidation, pure and simple.
The GOP knows that crying, “Obama is cavalierly using his executive power to bypass Congress and legislate from the Oval Office!” will trigger a powerful public backlash and reinforce its usual charge against him of dictatorial abuse. It has played this card with maximum skill in its fierce fight to wrest back control of the Senate. In this, the GOP can have it both ways on impeachment. Boehner and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has also sharply dismissed talk of impeachment, can take the high ground on the issue by insisting that their goal is to get more Republicans elected in November — that’s Senate Republicans. But that’s exactly the point of tossing out the word. The hope is that this will stir more doubt and skepticism about Obama among many voters in the key states where GOP senatorial candidates and some House candidates are gunning to unseat Democratic incumbents.
The incessant talk of impeachment has yet another cynical plus for the GOP. It implants the ever-widening notion in the media that Obama is making a mighty effort to impose an “imperial presidency” on the nation. This charge is almost always accompanied by tossing out the words “arrogant,” “indifferent,” and “callous” to describe his alleged thumbed nose at Congress. Boehner played hard on this with his frivolous lawsuit against Obama over the use of executive orders. He self-righteously claimed that his aims were noble and pristine and designed only to protect the rights of the legislative branch against the alleged unconstitutional assault by Obama. This crude campaign to rock Obama and the Democrats back on their heels has gotten traction from a dozen court rulings that have rapped Obama on the issuance of executive orders.
Obama demanded to know how the GOP can sue and impeach him for doing his job. That’s the point. He’s done his job too well. A case in point is the hike in the minimum wage. The GOP adamantly opposes Obama’s proposal to hike the minimum wage. He had absolutely no chance of getting this through the House. Instead he issued an executive order that boosted the minimum wage only to new federal contracts issued, and then only if other terms of a contractual agreement change. This was entirely legal but had little overall effect on the nation’s wage structure. Yet it was significant in another respect.
It was a frontal challenge to the GOP to cease its relentless, dogged, and destructive campaign of dither, delay, deny, and obstruct anything that has the White House stamp on it. There’s always the possibility that the GOP’s loose talk about impeachment could backfire and turn off more voters than it turns on. It could make the GOP look even more rigid, rightist, and desperate to do and say anything to tarnish Obama, even at the risk of making itself look and sound even more ridiculous. The GOP’s hedge against this is to wink and nod at Palin’s call for impeachment while publicly disavowing it but still relentlessly assailing Obama as the “imperial president.” There’s a method to the madness in this ploy.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM Radio Los Angeles and on the Pacifica Network.
NEW YORK (AP) — Apollo Education Group said the U.S. Department of Education will review the administration of federal student financial aid programs by its University of Phoenix subsidiary.
The for-profit education company said Monday that the government review, which is scheduled to start Aug. 4, will initially cover the 2012-13 and 2013-14 years. The review will also cover the University of Phoenix’s compliance with laws governing campus security and crime statistics and drug policy. The university has about 241,900 students.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Enrollments at for-profit education companies boomed during the recession, but demand is sliding and government scrutiny of the industry has intensified.
Another for-profit education company, Corinthian Colleges Inc., this month agreed to close or sell more than 100 campuses in the U.S. and Canada after the Department of Education had stepped up its financial monitoring of the company. The Education Department said Corinthian failed to provide adequate paperwork and didn’t comply with requests to address concerns about the company’s practices. The department said the concerns included allegations of falsifying job placement data used in marketing claims to prospective students, and allegations of altered grades and attendance.
Shares of Phoenix-based Apollo Education Group Inc. dropped $1.72, or 5.8 percent, to $27.85 in aftermarket trading Monday.
The Home Run Derby isn’t just for the game’s best sluggers. It’s a family gathering.
During the buildup to the Major League Baseball event on Monday night, some of the best players in both leagues got to show off their adorable children at Target Field in Minnesota. Rain may have delayed the derby, but it couldn’t stop some ridiculously cute photos of these kids from being taken. Take a look at some of them below.
Home Run Derby rain delay is awful, except for CUTE HOME RUN DERBY BABIES: http://t.co/8PqyNSTH8N pic.twitter.com/cRLICbVqYY
— SB Nation (@SBNation) July 15, 2014
Brandon Moss’ son made a mess in the dugout. #HRDerby pic.twitter.com/VCAFP0tSyR
— #ASG (@MLB) July 15, 2014
The All-Star Game is a family affair. @JohnnyCueto #JohnnyBeisbol #ASG2014 pic.twitter.com/co03vBiZst
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) July 14, 2014
Justin Morneau and his kids pic.twitter.com/MCifErpo8J
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) July 15, 2014
Mini-Miggy’s not happy pic.twitter.com/zlExnZGnnG
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) July 15, 2014
Carlos Gomez y Carlos Gomez II posando en #AllStarGame @C_Gomez27 #Brewers pic.twitter.com/RzVegwhGF3
— Enrique Rojas/ESPN (@Enrique_Rojas1) July 14, 2014
A King and a Prince. #ASG #Mariners pic.twitter.com/gR1GVBeC2Y
— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) July 14, 2014
This post originally appeared in Sightings, an online publication of the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School.
“THE NEW JIHAD” screamed the first line of a really, really big headline in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal. The next few lines were equally and credibly, or incredibly, alarming: “A brazen new generation of battle-hardened extremists has rebelled against al Qaeda, seeing the old guard’s leadership as too politically passive and restrained in the use of violence.” Also, in bold type, a take-out: “The rise of a self-declared caliph exposes a theological battle between al Qaeda and its rebellious affiliate in Iraq.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times and other newspapers and blog posts in which we do our sightings presented their usual quota of religiously-based or religion-related stories about violence. Islam, for a variety of reasons, dominates in this coverage, but the testimony is non-sectarian. In any week there are stories of Buddhist violence in Myanmar, Hindu in India, Jewish in Israel-Palestine, Christian in Africa, etc.
Whoops! Even as I write this I picture over my shoulder charges by “New Atheists,” and other formally and noisily anti-religion-people, who are often as ideological as the creed-people against whom they war.
Fortunately for this republic, the anti-religion-people do not ordinarily resort to violence. At first glance one might grant them their point: just kill off religion, all religions, and you will live in a world of peace. On second glance, that doesn’t work. People gather around their “idols of the tribe” even when they do not define themselves in reference to sacred icons. Historians are hard-pressed to come up with illustrative instances of “golden ages” and “good old days” of amity. Does the story end with people of good will simply stunned?
This issue of Sightings was inspired not so much by the headlines referred to above but by a wise column written by Nicholas Kristof for the New York Times (July 9, 2014). He takes off from a characteristically horrifying story about a Christian woman in the Sudan who was sentenced to be hanged after a 100-stroke lashing because she would not renounce her Christian faith.
Kristof, a widely-traveled and conscientious reporter and columnist, sees and knows many such stories. One of his personal friends, Rashid Rehman, a human rights lawyer, offended extreme fundamentalists in Pakistan and was shot by some of their breed. And on. . . and on. . .
Here is where many of us who report or editorialize on religion identify with Kristof. At least I did, as I read this line of his: “This is a sensitive area I’m wading into here.” He realizes that Islam-haters in America and the West seize on such stories “to denounce Islam as a malignant religion of violence, while politically correct liberals are reluctant to say anything for fear of feeding bigotry. . . .Yet there is a real issue here of religious tolerance, affecting millions of people, and we should be able to discuss it.”
So we try to discuss it. For example, it is unfair and does no good to compare “our” holy books favorably to “theirs” when seeking the roots of holy violence. Sacred violence matches sacred violence. Robert Alter’s fine translation of the biblical Joshua and Judges stuns. End of the story? There are many angles to these.
In today’s world, I get inspiration from the American Muslims who abhor all the violence and who host and invite me and Jews and other Christians of my kind to their hyper-peaceful Iftar dinners during Ramadan.
These are small beginnings, but they are beginnings.
Sources and Further Reading:
Coker, Margaret. “The New Jihad: A new generation of Islamist extremists battle-hardened in Iraq and Syria sees the old guard of al Qaeda as too passive.” Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2014, The Saturday Essay.
Kristof, Nicholas. “Religious Freedom in Peril.” New York Times, July 9, 2014, The Opinion Pages.
Alter, Robert. Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.
Mansur, Salim. “Dishonoring the Message of Ramadan: Muslim extremists avow their faith yet violate a sacred month meant for prayer and reflection.” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2014, Opinion.
Schwartz, Stephen. “Ramadan Amid the New Middle East Crisis.” Huffington Post, June 27, 2014, Religion Blog.
Said, Abdul Aziz. “Islam and Peacemaking in the Middle East: Keynote Address for USAID Ramadan Iftar.” Lecture delivered at American University, Washington, DC, September 16, 2008.
This post originally appeared in Sightings, an online publication of the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School.
NOTE: This article is not available for republication without the consent of Sightings. Please contact the Managing Editor, Myriam Renaud, at DivSightings@gmail.com.
The Justice Department’s settlement with Citigroup was finally announced today. A $7 billion settlement against a too-big-to-fail bank? What’s not to love?
We’ll answer that with another question: If the settlement which the Justice Department just negotiated with Citigroup is as punitive, why did Citigroup’s stock go up when the deal was announced? Reasons for the rise include the report of a good second quarter – a report which just happened to be released on the same day this deal was announced.
Not bad for a bank which just settled fraud charges, recently failed a Federal Reserve stress test, and wouldn’t even exist if the American people hadn’t bailed it out.
Apparently the fraud settlement was anything but a mortal blow for the bank, an entity which was created by the actions of both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. Citigroup was subsequently saved from collapse with a $45 billion emergency loan from the government, after participating in the crime wave which helped precipitate a financial crisis. (More background here.)
It wasn’t just Citigroup. The stock market overall had a good day today. The American people, not so much. As we’ll see, the “consumer relief” in these deals tends to prove elusive. The government isn’t doing much to help. Of the $38.5 billion set aside to help homeowners in 2009, the Obama Administration has only spent $10 billion (as of the January 2014 TARP Inspector General’s Report).
These agreements leave criminal bankers with no incentive to mend their ways. They reinforce the message that they won’t be prosecuted, and allow them to keep their ill-gotten gains while shareholders (many of whom were defrauded by the bank itself) pick up the tab for their wrongdoing. And they allow a too-big-to-fail bank with an extensive record of fraud to remain a systemic threat.
If you’re looking for a silver lining, here it is: The Administration is clearly feeling the heat about its treatment of Wall Street. Otherwise the rhetoric wouldn’t be quite as stern and the settlement figures would probably be lower. But that’s not a reason for the public to settle for deals which leave perverse incentives – and dangerous banks – in place.
Here are seven reasons why the much-touted new deal isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, especially for consumers.
1. No individual prosecutions were announced.
They have the evidence, including damning emails which reveal that Citigroup employees knew they were peddling highly defective mortgages as AAA and materially misrepresenting them to investors. Consider this sentence, one of many such statements in the Justice Department’s filing: “Citigroup’s due diligence personnel reevaluated certain of the vendor’s loan grades and directed the due diligence vendor to change some of those grades …”
Who, exactly? Wasn’t that evidence of an intent to defraud?
Not a single Citi executive or employee is being charged with a crime as of this writing. In fact, no major banker has been. By contrast, more than 1,000 bankers were prosecuted and convicted in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s – a crime wave which represented much less fraud than that committed by America’s big banks in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
2. The Justice Department appears to be offering false hopes of prosecution.
Attorney General Eric Holder says that this doesn’t preclude the possibility of criminal indictments. But he said the same thing when the $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase was announced. That was eight months ago, in November of 2013.
“The bank’s misconduct was egregious,” the Attorney General said in today’s announcement. But “banks” don’t commit crimes. Bankers do.
There’s no deterrence in this deal – and, as David Dayen has observed, the usual suspects are up to some of their old tricks. It will take some prosecutions to change that. Let’s hope the Attorney General plans to follow through.
3. Citigroup seems to have negotiated the government to a draw.
Citi some bloggers and other financial types to buy the notion that it sold a much smaller number of mortgage-backed instruments than JPMorgan Chase, which came to a $13 billion deal. (Better Markets, an excellent bank reform organization, filed suit against that deal, maintaining that it was conducted with a lack of transparency that is against the public interest.)
But Citi wasn’t a minor play in the mortgage game. As Ben Protess, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Michael Corkery noted in the New York Times, “Citigroup … sold roughly half as many mortgage securities as JPMorgan had through its various subsidiaries.” (Their piece addresses the public relations timing of today’s announcement.) That makes the $7 billion figure roughly proportional. So, while the Justice Department told reporters it rejected Citi’s argument that its fine should be based on relative market share, it sounds like Citi did pretty well.
What’s more, since the Justice Department recently floated a figure of $10 billion, while Citi proposed $4 billion, it looks very much like they split the difference. That’s a pretty good deal for Citi, especially there was massive evidence that one of the parties committed criminal fraud – and the other party was the United States government.
4. This $7 billion settlement isn’t worth $7 billion.
Citigroup Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach told analysts on today’s earnings call that Citigroup may not pay out the entire $2.5 billion which it has agreed to provide in “consumer relief.”
What’s more, while the $4 billion fine is not tax-deductible, the CFO told analysts that the $2.5 billion (or however much it offers) will be deductible. That means the taxpayer will be footing part of the bill for this deal. (See the Wall Street Journal‘s “Citigroup to Get Tax Silver Lining in $7 Billion Settlement” for more.)
They may also be able to use this money as JPMorgan Chase has done: by presenting their construction work and other efforts as a charitable effort, earning community goodwill for what should be an act of penance – while taxpayers foot part of the bill.
No matter how you slice it, this isn’t really a $7 billion deal, once you factor in the loopholes and tax breaks.
5. The “soft dollars” in these deals are funny money, anyway.
The government’s disastrous foreclosure fraud settlement was touted as a $25 billion deal. But as we saw in that instance, banks have many ways to game the “soft-dollar,” consumer relief portion of these deals. They have “forgiven” debts owed to investors, not themselves, and counted it against the total. And they have counted renegotiated deals which were in their own best interests – deals which they would have renegotiated anyway – against this amount. (See Travis Waldron for more.)
Now, if Citi’s CFO is correct, they may also be able to get a tax break for those write-downs.
Who negotiated a deal like that? An Associate Attorney General named Thomas J. Perrelli “led the Government’s efforts” in those negotiations, according to his law firm’s website – efforts which ultimately led to an error-ridden, bank-friendly deal. (Perrelli rejoined his former firm after leaving government service.)
5. Half a billion dollars is going to the states – many of whom stiffed consumers in the last deal.
The states got to handle a big chunk of Perrelli’s “$25 billion” deal, too – and the money wound up being used for a lot of things besides helping consumers. (Homeowners’ groups recently filed a lawsuit against California Gov. Jerry Brown in an attempt to get the money back.)
And Citi’s CFO tells us that this money will be tax-deductible, too.
7. The agreed-upon “monitor” for this deal doesn’t inspire confidence.
The parties agreed that Citigroup would hire a “monitor” to make sure it adhered to this terms of the deal. He’s the one who is supposed to look out for the interests of bank consumers and the general public.
His name? Thomas J. Perrelli.
If you’re a developer eager to start tinkering with Google’s Project Ara modular phone technology as quickly as possible, it’s time to get in line. The company has started taking requests for test boards; if you fill out the form before July 18th and…
Beats is a brand that is known for their headphones. Some claim that they are extremely overpriced for what you get, while others buy it more for the prestige and the fashion that it offers. After all Beats has done a pretty good job at designing their headphones to look fashionable and trendy, versus your more regular headphones.
They’ve also partnered up with various celebrities and events in the past, and it looks like in commemoration of Germany’s win in the World Cup 2014, the company has announced that they will be making a gold version of their Beats Pro headphones which will be given out to the German football team. The headphones themselves look pretty striking and Beats decided to put together an ad (which you can check out above).
The ad stars model Naomi Campbell and is shot by fashion photographer Rankin. We have to admit that despite Beats being extremely expensive for headphones, the gold Beats Pro looks pretty sleek. The headphones, for those wondering, is one of Beats’ more high-end headphones. The company claims that it is the ideal headphones for serious music lovers, and can even be used professionally by DJs, sound engineers, and more.
We doubt the average Joe will be able to get their hands on the “Golden” Beats Pro, but it’s still worth checking out anyway. What do you guys think?
Gold Beat Pro Headphones Given To German World Cup Team
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