Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer - obama

Message to Notre Dame Response Group: President Obama's the Least of Your Worries

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:14:28 GMT

A group of students -- a very small group of students -- from Notre Dame University made a short movie trailer (a la Hollywood-summer-blockbuster trailers) in an attempt to rally support around their cause and what appears to be the thesis of their trailer: Don't let President Obama speak at this weekend's graduation ceremonies.

Kids, the president speaking at your commencement is the least of your problems.

First, the trailer chose to quote current clergy members, like quotes from movie critics and reviews (cute), and as if the opinions of these clergy members, like New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan (an apathetic voice to victims of clergy sexual abuse), are valid. (They're really not that valid, unless we're discussing Theology.) Seriously, they're not. Not unless the Catholic church begins to make a better effort to eradicate pedophiles, like Father Eric Swearingen. Once that effort has started and is clearly visible, then we can start discussing the validity of clergy members' opinions.

Second, you had former President George W. Bush, an enabler of torture, give last year's commencement speech at your school. (I'm shaking my head, too.)

Third, up until recently, the Catholic church fed the nonsensical belief to families who lost their children before baptizing them, that their unbaptized babies would unfortunately be lost in "purgatory" forever. (You know, because the Catholic church is vehement in its support of protecting innocent life, it just seems that the church stops caring about that innocent life, once it is born.)

Hmm... My conclusion: The Notre Dame Response Group is more concerned with women's reproductive rights and fearful of a pragmatic president, a venerable family man, who has done more in his first 100 days as president than Bush, the "alleged" torturer, did within his first seven months as president, who, again, spoke at Notre Dame last year without fanfare. To me, this reeks of nonsense, however, it does fit with some of the nonsense that is propagated throughout various Catholic teachings (i.e. Condoms have microscopic holes in them and are defenseless against AIDS -- yep, they're currently teaching that nonsense throughout Africa and South America).

Lastly, and to be completely serious, if I were a senior graduating from ANY college right now, I'd be less concerned with who's speaking at my graduation and more concerned with the ability to find a job after I receive my diploma.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Cardinal(s) Wrong

Paul Kiesel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:30:26 GMT

Cardinal George is wrong on his stance of Obama addressing this year's graduating class at Notre Dame University.

Ten priests in the Roman Catholic order that helps run the University of Notre Dame want the school to reconsider having President Barack Obama deliver this year's commencement address. They're wrong, too.

Why? Because it's not their graduation. It's the students' graduation. And what do the seniors who will be graduating from Notre Dame think: They appear to strongly back the university's invitation to Obama. The campus newspaper reports that 97 percent of the letters that have come in on the subject from graduating seniors are supportive.

So why does the American Life League, a Catholic pro-life organization, want to remove Notre Dame from future Catholic foundation funding? Because they don't think the students at the school are Catholic enough and, frankly, they likely disapprove of many of President Obama's policies.

This "political" and theological stunt by poorly advised cardinals and priests comes down to the disapproval of one's, in this case Obama's, political ideologies and they're turning a joyous occasion for many hard-working seniors into a publicity stunt, unfairly stealing the attention that should be focused squarely on the graduating class and the President's upcoming appearance.

However, this isn't the first time the Catholic church has had its priorities out of whack. Look at what took place in Fresno last week, as Bishop John T. Steinbock felt vindicated by a Fresno's jury verdict: Jurors unanimously agreed that Monsignor Anthony Herdegen molested two brothers from 1959 to 1972 while Herdegen was a priest at St. John's Catholic Church in Wasco. The jurors didn't find the church liable.

In a statement, Bishop Steinbock expressed regret that Herdegen had abused the Santillans, "even though the diocese learned that they were abused years after it occurred [FLAT OUT LIE]."

"Bishop Steinbock emphasized that if even one child is sexually abused, that is one child too many," the statement said. "Child sexual abuse afflicts all of society, and no community or institution is free from its effects -- even the church [SECOND FLAT OUT LIE]."

Steinbock's position on sexually abused children is sadly disingenuous: A little over two years ago, a Fresno jury found Father Eric Swearingen guilty (9-3) of molesting a former altar boy, however, Bishop John J. Steinbock has continued to allow this man to work with children at the Holy Spirit Parish in Fresno, California.

If this is the best the Catholic church has, when it comes to its leaders and rank and file members throughout the country, I'm unimpressed.

However, kudos to Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, who said in a statement last month that the invitation does not mean the university supports all of Obama's positions but that he will be honored as an "inspiring leader."

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Cardinal George "Embarrassed" of Obama Speaking at Notre Dame, But Indifferent to Clergy Abuse Matters?

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:16:12 GMT

Cardinal Francis George, Chicago's eighth Archbishop, is ripping Notre Dame for inviting President Obama to speak at the school's commencement.

From The Huffington Post:

[. . .] Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, called Obama's planned appearance an "extreme embarrassment" to Catholics while speaking at a recent conference hosted by the archdiocese's Respect Life office in Rosemont, according to a video his remarks on lifesitenews.com.

"[T]he problem is in that you have a Catholic university - the flagship Catholic university - do something that brought extreme embarrassment to many, many people who are Catholic," George told the crowd. "So whatever else is clear, it is clear that Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation."

The Embarrassing Cardinal

What embarrassment is Cardinal George exactly referencing: Obama's stance on science and fact trumping belief?

The Catholic Church claims that every life is important and worth defending, however, when it comes to children who have been abused by priests, they kind of scoff at the matter and try their best to sweep any "scandal" under their eagle rugs.

In the book, Being Catholic Now by author Kerry Kennedy, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke takes Chicago Roman Catholic Archbishop Francis Cardinal George to task for trying to split hairs on the priest sex abuse issue, specifically about how he portrayed a guest in his official residence. The guest, from Delaware, had admitted sexually abusing children, abuse that occurred before he became a priest.

Cardinal George said at the time that no priest in ministry in Chicago had substantiated claims of abuse against minors. He says now that was a true statement. Fr. Kenneth Martin had only been visiting and was not in ministry in Chicago.

Justice Burke says she was furious over what she calls the cardinal’s casual attitude about letting Fr. Martin stay with him. Burke says she found the cardinal’s lack of honesty difficult to deal with.

"I found the cardinal's lack of honesty really difficult to deal with," Burke said in the book. "How do I go on to trust what he says to me? This continues to the present day. He and his brother bishops have been in denial all along." (From Chicago's WBBM 780)

If Cardinal George would like to understand what an "extreme embarrassment" is, all he has to do is look in the mirror or read any one of my blogs on Cardinal Roger Mahony.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Paul Krugman is on the Edge

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:53:48 GMT

As the economy remains stagnant or contracts into a more depressing declivity, reports of the number of job losses from January coming in and continuing to rise (600,000 and counting; not to mention the 200,000 state workers in California who didn't work today), and a Republican Congress hell-bent on an "insurgency," here (below) is an article that compliments and captures the sentiments most people in this country currently feel.

On the Edge by Paul Krugman

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Rep. Maxine Waters of California: The Banking Industry "Has Owned this Congress Far Too Long"

Paul Kiesel — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:58:29 GMT

There is a fight building over judges' roles in altering loan terms on mortgages that are either unaffordable or that were structured improperly from their origination.

Congressional Democrats say the quickest way to save homeowners is to let them declare bankruptcy and allow the judges to dictate new mortgage terms.

This seems to be a practical approach to a terrible problem that is engulfing most of the country. (Most Americans can name at least one person who's going through either foreclosure, in an "underwater" mortgage, live near foreclosed homes or going through their own foreclosure.) However, the banking industry, led by 10 groups representing the lending industry and other businesses are "fighting back fiercely," according to MSNBC.com.

The groups collectively spent $83 million in lobbying throughout 2008 and shows how strong of a hold the banking industry has had on Congress throughout the George W. Bush administration.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), who backs the bankruptcy proposal being touted by her fellow Democrats, has said repeatedly that the banking industry "has owned this Congress far too long."

Additionally, President Barack Obama told Democratic leaders on Friday that he also backs the congressional Democrats' mortgage term modification plan.

Our Health Care Problem

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:11:41 GMT

The New Yorker has a great article this week discussing the many problems the U.S. health care system faces (too many to list in this sentence) and I've posted the first four paragraphs, and a link to the rest of the article below.

It's interesting to note that the article starts with the notion that health care reform, in many industrialized nations, develops after extreme examples of cruelty are made public. And the Bush administration provided many examples (again, too many to list in this parenthetical, but SCHIP being one example, as Bush vetoed the bill passed by the Senate and the House -- except the House didn't have enough votes in favor of the bill to override a veto -- in 2007; UnitedHealth reimbursement fraud, etc.) of why health care reform and the way we look at medical treatment in the 21st century needs to evolve and become more accessible and affordable.

United Health, the biggest U.S. health insurer, announced last week it would settle over $400 million in manipulated payments made to doctors and patients for the past 15 years, which resulted in myriad financial hardships for many who were insured by UnitedHealth. And what UnitedHealth (and several other U.S. health insurers) has been doing needs to be put to an end or companies like UnitedHealth need to be severely punished for manipulating not just health care services and payments, but the trust of the individual that is paying a company monthly to ostensibly take care of the individual or his family when they need the medical attention or treatment most.

From The New Yorker:

Getting There from Here

How should Obama reform health care?

by Atul Gawande

In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. The Canadians had stories like the 1946 Toronto Globe and Mail report of a woman in labor who was refused help by three successive physicians, apparently because of her inability to pay. In Australia, a 1954 letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald sought help for a young woman who had lung disease. She couldn’t afford to refill her oxygen tank, and had been forced to ration her intake “to a point where she is on the borderline of death.” In Britain, George Bernard Shaw was at a London hospital visiting an eminent physician when an assistant came in to report that a sick man had arrived requesting treatment. “Is he worth it?” the physician asked. It was the normality of the question that shocked Shaw and prompted his scathing and influential 1906 play, “The Doctor’s Dilemma.” The British health system, he charged, was “a conspiracy to exploit popular credulity and human suffering.”

In the United States, our stories are like the one that appeared in the Times before Christmas. Starla Darling, pregnant and due for delivery, had just taken maternity leave from her factory job at Archway & Mother’s Cookie Company, in Ashland, Ohio, when she received a letter informing her that the company was going out of business. In three days, the letter said, she and almost three hundred co-workers would be laid off, and would lose their health-insurance coverage. The company was self-insured, so the employees didn’t have the option of paying for the insurance themselves—their insurance plan was being terminated.

“When I heard that I was losing my insurance, I was scared,” Darling told the Times. Her husband had been laid off from his job, too. “I remember that the bill for my son’s delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself.” So she prevailed on her midwife to induce labor while she still had insurance coverage. During labor, Darling began bleeding profusely, and needed a Cesarean section. Mother and baby pulled through. But the insurer denied Darling’s claim for coverage. The couple ended up owing more than seventeen thousand dollars.

The stories become unconscionable in any society that purports to serve the needs of ordinary people, and, at some alchemical point, they combine with opportunity and leadership to produce change. Britain reached this point and enacted universal health-care coverage in 1945, Canada in 1966, Australia in 1974. The United States may finally be there now. In 2007, fifty-seven million Americans had difficulty paying their medical bills, up fourteen million from 2003. On average, they had two thousand dollars in medical debt and had been contacted by a collection agency at least once. Because, in part, of underpayment, half of American hospitals operated at a loss in 2007. Today, large numbers of employers are limiting or dropping insurance coverage in order to stay afloat, or simply going under—even hospitals themselves.

Article continues here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

NYT: Bush Aides Hurry to Pass Contentious Labor Department Rule

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:25:06 GMT

President Bush has said that he wants to work with President-elect Obama to make the transition process as smooth as possible. Logically, this makes sense for the greater good of the country, regardless of political ideology: We are in the middle of two wars, an economy that is in a recession, record foreclosure levels, levels of unemployment that haven't been seen in almost 20 years, and an anticipated turbulent first half to 2009.

Contrary to President Bush's words, his actions over the last few weeks do not signal a smooth transfer of power.

Below is an article from yesterday's New York Times that displays how Bush is doing his best to leave his imprint on the presidency for months if not years after he's left office (i.e. Bush is pushing through a ruling that will make it more difficult for women to get contraceptives. The loosening of restrictions makes it easier for health care workers to conscientiously object to filling birth control prescriptions), and the difficulty the Obama administration will have reversing new "midnight hour" regulations.

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.

The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in assessing the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather and analyze “industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during their working lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy process of developing standards to protect workers’ health.

Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay needed protections for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.

With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the transition “as smooth as possible.” But that has not stopped his administration from trying, in its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations.

The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious rules the Bush administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal with issues as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment.

One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species.

Mr. Obama and his advisers have already signaled their wariness of last-minute efforts by the Bush administration to embed its policies into the Code of Federal Regulations, a collection of rules having the force of law. The advisers have also said that Mr. Obama plans to look at a number of executive orders issued by Mr. Bush.

A new president can unilaterally reverse executive orders issued by his predecessors, as Mr. Bush and President Bill Clinton did in selected cases. But it is much more difficult for a new president to revoke or alter final regulations put in place by a predecessor. A new administration must solicit public comment and supply “a reasoned analysis” for such changes, as if it were issuing a new rule, the Supreme Court has said.

As a senator and a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama sharply criticized the regulation of workplace hazards by the Bush administration.

In September, Mr. Obama and four other senators introduced a bill that would prohibit the Labor Department from issuing the rule it is now rushing to complete. He also signed a letter urging the department to scrap the proposal, saying it would “create serious obstacles to protecting workers from health hazards on the job.”

Administration officials said such concerns were based on a misunderstanding of the proposal.

“This proposal does not affect the substance or methodology of risk assessments, and it does not weaken any health standard,” said Leon R. Sequeira, the assistant secretary of labor for policy. The proposal, Mr. Sequeira said, would allow the department to “cast a wide net for the best available data before proposing a health standard.”

The Labor Department regulates occupational health hazards posed by a wide variety of substances like asbestos, benzene, cotton dust, formaldehyde, lead, vinyl chloride and blood-borne pathogens, including the virus that causes AIDS.

The department is constantly considering whether to take steps to protect workers against hazardous substances. Currently, it is assessing substances like silica, beryllium and diacetyl, a chemical that adds the buttery flavor to some types of microwave popcorn.

The proposal applies to two agencies in the Labor Department, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Under the proposal, they would have to publish “advance notice of proposed rule-making,” soliciting public comment on studies, scientific information and data to be used in drafting a new rule. In some cases, OSHA has done that, but it is not required to do so.

The Bush administration and business groups said the rule would codify “best practices,” ensuring that health standards were based on the best available data and scientific information.

Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, said his group “unequivocally supports” the proposal because it would give the public a better opportunity to comment on the science and data used by the government.

After a regulation is drafted and formally proposed, Mr. Johnson said, it is “all but impossible” to get OSHA to make significant changes.

“Risk assessment drives the entire process of regulation,” he said, and “courts almost always defer” to the agency’s assessments.

But critics say the additional step does nothing to protect workers.

“This rule is being pushed through by an administration that, for the last seven and a half years, has failed to set any new OSHA health rules to protect workers, except for one issued pursuant to a court order,” said Margaret M. Seminario, director of occupational safety and health for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Now, Ms. Seminario said, “the administration is rushing to lock in place requirements that would make it more difficult for the next administration to protect workers.”

She said the proposal could add two years to a rule-making process that often took eight years or more.

Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, said the proposal would “weaken future workplace safety regulations and slow their adoption.”

The proposal says that risk assessments should include industry-by-industry data on exposure to workplace substances. Administration officials acknowledged that such data did not always exist.

In their letter, Mr. Obama and other lawmakers said the Labor Department, instead of tinkering with risk-assessment procedures, should issue standards to protect workers against known hazards like silica and beryllium. The government has been working on a silica standard since 1997 and has listed it as a priority since 2002.

The timing of the proposal appears to violate a memorandum issued in early May by Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff.

“Except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Bolten wrote, “regulations to be finalized in this administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than Nov. 1, 2008.”

The Labor Department has not cited any extraordinary circumstances for its proposal, which was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 29. Administration officials confirmed last week that the proposal was still on their regulatory agenda.

The Labor Department said the proposal affected “only internal agency procedures” for developing health standards. It cited one source of authority for the proposal: a general “housekeeping statute” that allows the head of a department to prescribe rules for the performance of its business.

The statute is derived from a law passed in 1789 to help George Washington get the government up and running.

The Labor Department rule is among many that federal agencies are poised to issue before Mr. Bush turns over the White House to Mr. Obama.

One rule would allow coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. Another, issued last week by the Health and Human Services Department, gives states sweeping authority to charge higher co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care and prescription drugs provided to low-income people under Medicaid. The department is working on another rule to protect health care workers who refuse to perform abortions or other procedures on religious or moral grounds.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Obama Names Economic Dream Team

Paul Kiesel — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:28:02 GMT

Earlier today, at a press conference in Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama called for "sound judgment and fresh thinking" in addressing the nation's economic crisis, which he described as a situation of "historic proportions." He then named his top White House economic team, prompting many in the press, based on Obama's selections, to label the group that will push forward Obama's policies and vision, "The Obama Economic Dream Team."

Here is the list of players with some biographical information:

Timothy Geithner: Treasury Secretary (will need to be confirmed by the Senate)

Mr. Geithner is currently the president of the New York Federal Reserve who worked very closely with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to facilitate the Wall Street financial bailouts of the past year.

Larry Summers: Director of the National Economic Council.

Mr. Summers, a former Treasury Secretary (for the last year and a half of the Bill Clinton administration), is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Christina Romer: Chairwoman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers

Ms. Romer has been an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, since 1988. This selection might later on be hailed as one of the more important advisory appointments that Obama made in his days leading up to taking office. Why?

Ms. Romer's e early work focused on a comparison of macroeconomic volatility before and after World War II. Romer showed that much of what had appeared to be a decrease in volatility was due to better economic data collection.

She has also researched the causes of the Great Depression in the United States and how the US recovered from the depression.

This sort of erudite individual can make a substantial impact on Obama's economic policy and her background in and heavy research of the economics surrounding the Great Depression is very applicable to the current financial state in the country.

Melody Barnes: Director of Domestic Policy Council

Ms. Barnes, an attorney and Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress, has been serving on the advisory board for President-elect Barack Obama's presidential transition team.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

The New Yorker: Bush's Midnight Hour of Deregulation

Paul Kiesel — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:35:46 GMT

Below is an article from this week's New Yorker on President Bush's last-minute push to pass everything he has can in the final days of his presidency, between now and January 20, 2009, which is known as the "Midnight Hour." Per Bush's agenda, it should be known as "Midnight Deregulation." The former term is eponymous with what John Adams did in the final hours of his presidency (literally), appointing several judges before his successor, Thomas Jefferson, assumed the role of president the following day.

Bush's midnight hour, based on his proposed changes to consumer protection laws and environmental laws, promises to be a very dark time and one that will rollover into the Obama Administration.

The New Yorker, November 24, 2008

When President Jimmy Carter lost his bid for reëlection, in November, 1980, he had lots of unfinished business that he did not intend to leave that way. Carter’s Administration spent the next several weeks generating regulations at an unprecedented rate, until, in its last month in office, it published more than ten thousand pages of new rules. These rules, which, like most issued by federal agencies, needed no congressional approval, touched on everything from crash tests for cars to access to medical records, and a phrase was coined to describe them. They became known as “midnight regulations,” after the “midnight judges” appointed by John Adams in the final hours of his Presidency.

Since Jimmy Carter, every President has complained about midnight regulations and, four or eight years later, every President has issued them. On a percentage basis, George Bush senior holds the record: his Administration issued a greater proportion of its rules during the midnight period—generally defined as the last three months in office—than any other President’s. In absolute terms, though, Bill Clinton takes the gold: his Administration, during its midnight phase, published more than twenty-six thousand pages’ worth of rules in the Federal Register. (According to the National Journal, by the time Clinton left office “the journalists who cover the White House had thrown up their hands at the prospect of keeping up.”) President George W. Bush used the timing of these regulations as a rationale for suspending many of them. “I told people pretty plainly that I was going to review all the last-minute decisions that my predecessor had made, and that is exactly what we’re doing,” he declared.

Now, of course, Bush has entered into his own midnight period, and it promises to be a dark time indeed. Among the many new regulations—or, rather, deregulations—the Administration has proposed are rules that would: make it harder for the government to limit workers’ exposure to toxins, eliminate environmental review from decisions affecting fisheries, and ease restrictions on companies that blow up mountains to get at the coal underneath them. Other midnight regulations in the works include rules to allow “factory farms” to ignore the Clean Water Act, rules making it tougher for employees to take family or medical leave, and rules that would effectively gut the Endangered Species Act. Most regulations are subject to public input; such is the sense of urgency that the Administration has brought to the task of despoliation that the Interior Department completed its “review” of two hundred thousand public comments on the endangered-species rules in just four days, a feat that, one congressional aide calculated, required each staff member involved to read through comments at the rate of seven per minute. “So little time, so much damage” is how the Times recently put it.

Why do Presidents wait till the last moment to push through changes they’ve had the power to impose all along? Legal scholars have advanced a variety of explanations; these range from megalomania (each Administration tries to extend its influence into the next) to simple distraction (federal agencies, like ninth graders, have a hard time focussing until they’re up against a deadline). Under the best of circumstances, experts point out, rule-making is a laborious process; many of the regulations published toward the end of the Clinton Administration—such as a rule limiting the amount of arsenic allowed in public drinking water—had been the subject of years’ worth of hearings and scientific review.

But none of these explanations is adequate to the current situation. What distinguishes this Administration in its final days—as in its earlier ones—is the purity of its cynicism. White House officials haven’t even bothered to argue that these new rules are in the public interest. Such a claim would, in any event, be impossible to defend, as just about every midnight regulation being proposed is, evidently, a gift to a favored industry.

Consider, for example, the case of New Source Review. Utility companies have always hated this provision of the Clean Air Act, which requires them to install up-to-date pollution controls when they build new plants or renovate old ones. A new rule being circulated would take a trick that the power company Duke Energy dreamed up for circumventing New Source Review and turn it into law. According to the Administration’s own estimates, this new anti-rule would allow an additional seventy million tons of CO₂ to be released into the atmosphere each year. “If you thought the first hundred days of the Bush Administration were bad, just wait and see what the last hundred could bring,” Representative Edward Markey, of Massachusetts, has warned.

Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate have already indicated that they will try to rescind the most egregious of Bush’s midnight regulations. There are a few ways to do this, all of them difficult. Under an obscure law passed in 1996, Congress has the power to revoke recently imposed rules. That law, though, has been used successfully only once. (President Bush, for all his grumbling—and despite Republican control of Congress for much of his tenure—ended up implementing more than three-quarters of the midnight rules that Clinton had left him, including the one on arsenic, just as they were written.) Alternatively, once in office, Barack Obama could ask his agencies to go through the rule-making process all over again. But, by the time that was finished, a good deal of the damage might already have been done. Once a power plant has been rebuilt, it can’t readily be unrebuilt.

The Bush Administration, probably as a result of its own experience, is now trying to craft rules that are as difficult as possible to reverse. Generally speaking, major federal regulations go into effect sixty days after they are published. On November 20th, it will be sixty days before Bush leaves office. Over at the Federal Register, it’s going to be a busy week.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Senator Barack Obama Discusses the Problems with Senator McCain's Mortgage Plan

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:38:41 GMT

In Tampa, Florida yesterday, Senator Barack Obama addressed an estimated crowd of 10,000 supporters about his plans to revitalize a sagging economy. He illustrated his plan to fix the foreclosure crisis, which happened to be his strongest point and sharpest attack against the poorly structured McCain Mortgage Plan.

The foreclosure crisis still blankets many parts of the country (Florida, incidentally, along with California and Arizona, has consistently ranked in the top three states with the most foreclosures per month over the past year).

Here is an excerpt of Obama's speech:

The rescue plan that passed Congress was a necessary first step to easing this credit crisis, but if we're going to rebuild this economy from the bottom up, we need an immediate rescue plan for the middle-class -- and that's what I'll offer as President of the United States.

Last week, I laid out a plan that will jumpstart job creation, provide relief to families, and rebuild our financial system. It's a plan that will also help struggling homeowners stay in their homes -- something that's particularly important here in Florida, where foreclosures are up 30% over the last year. All across this state, there are families who've done everything right, but who are now facing foreclosure or seeing their home values decline because of bad decisions on Wall Street and in Washington.

The other week, Senator McCain came out with a proposal that he said would help ease the burden on homeowners by buying up bad mortgages at face value, even though they're not worth that much anymore. But here's the thing, Florida. His plan would amount to a $300 billion bailout for Wall Street banks. And guess what? It would all be paid for by you, the American taxpayer. That might sound like a good idea to the former bank lobbyists running my opponent's campaign. But that's not the change America needs.

Look, we must act quickly to end this housing crisis. That's why last March, I was calling for us to help innocent home buyers. And that's why I fought to make sure the recent rescue package gives Treasury the responsibility and authority to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. But we should not put your tax dollars at unnecessary risk. We should not let banks and lenders off the hook when it was their greed and irresponsibility that got us into this mess. We should not be bailing out Wall Street -- we should be restoring opportunity on Main Street. And that's what I'll do when I'm President of the United States.

If the American people are going to put up $700 billion to rescue our financial institutions, we should make sure those institutions are doing their part for the American people. That's why I've called for a three-month moratorium on foreclosures. If you are a bank or lender that is getting money from the rescue plan, and your customers are making a good-faith effort to make their mortgage payments and re- negotiate their mortgages, you will not be able to foreclose on their home for three months. Now, we've also put in place long-term measures to restore our credit markets and help families refinance their mortgages, but until those measures start working, we need to help homeowners stay in their homes, and that's what this foreclosure freeze will do.

And while we're at it, there's another step we can take to help innocent homeowners that won't cost taxpayers a dime. Right now, if you own only one home, you're not allowed to write down your mortgage in bankruptcy court. But if you own more than one home -- if you own, say, six or seven homes like my opponent -- you are allowed to write down your mortgage. That might help Senator McCain sleep easier at night. But it isn't right, and it will change when I'm President of the United States.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel