Journalist Woodward tangles with White House over spending cuts                

• 

Jump to video Bob Woodward vs. White House: What it says about Obama admin.                         

By Mark Felsenthal    

updated 2/28/2013

        

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A prominent Washington journalist said in interviews on Wednesday a senior White House official warned him he would "regret" publishing a story challenging the White House's account of how the idea for automatic spending cuts originated.    

1. Other political news of note
   1. Doomed sequester fixes limp towards defeat
      Updated 93 minutes ago 2/28/2013 6:43:53 PM +00:00 With less than 36 hours to go until the much-discussed 'sequestration' deadline, the Senate is set to take up competing bills Thursday to prevent the automatic budget cuts from taking effect.
   2. Court decision on Voting Rights Act could spur election changes, but not turn back the clock
   3. Committee punts on gun laws until next week
   4. After long wait, Violence Against Women Act renewal heads to Obama's desk
   5. A sequester standoff two years in the making

Bob Woodward said in interviews with Politico and CNN that when he informed the White House he was writing a story critical of the White House's handling of a debate over the origin of the cuts, known as sequestration, the official reacted angrily.

The aide "yelled at me for about a half hour," Woodward told Politico, and then followed up the tirade with an email.

"I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today," the official wrote Woodward. "You're focusing on a few specific trees that give a very wrong impression of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. ... I think you will regret staking out that claim."

Politico reported that Woodward saw the statement as a veiled threat.

"I've tangled with lots of these people," said the journalist, who established his reputation by breaking the story of the Watergate break-in under President Richard Nixon and has written a series of best selling books about Washington politics.

"But suppose there's a young reporter who's only had a couple of years — or 10 years' — experience and the White House is sending him an email saying, ‘You're going to regret this,'" Woodward said. "You know, tremble, tremble. I don't think it's the way to operate."

 

Some $85 billion in spending cuts are due to go into effect Friday unless Congress acts, and with the deadline approaching there is practically no movement toward preventing them. President Barack Obama has scheduled a meeting with congressional leaders on Friday, but little is expected of the encounter.
 

The president has crisscrossed the country in recent weeks to draw attention to the inconveniences and problems from the cuts, which economists say could shave 0.6 percentage points off of already anemic U.S. growth.

While the president has been conducting that campaign, the spat over what Woodward calls the "paternity" of the sequester has proven a distracting sideshow to the fiscal battle.

The administration has sought to counter charges by Republicans that the sequestration cuts were proposed by Obama administration officials.

Woodward's book "The Price of Politics" is a fly-on-the-wall account of the negotiations in 2011 that ended with a deal to raise the nation's debt limit. As part of the deal, both sides agreed to make additional efforts to reduce the national budget deficit, and proposed the sequester as an alternative so unappealing that it would force the administration and congressional Republicans to find common ground.

That deal proved elusive and both sides are currently trading blame for the sequestration cuts.
TWITTER FUN.

Woodward said in an article in the Washington Post on Friday that the president and his chief of staff at the time, current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, were wrong in initially claiming last year that the sequester was the Republicans' idea.

"Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and (Rob)Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid," Woodward said. "They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved." Nabors was then the White House's chief liaison to Congress and is now deputy chief of staff.

The administration has argued that both sides agreed to the terms of the sequester and has pointed to comments at the time from House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, that he was for the most part satisfied with the deal that spawned the arrangement.

Woodward's account of his recent testy exchange with the White House points to continued sensitivity over the issue of whose idea the sequester was.

A White House official said in an emailed response to Reuters that no threat was intended by the comment.

 

"The email from the aide was sent to apologize for voices being raised in their previous conversation," the aide said. "The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was inaccurate, nothing more."
 

The BuzzFeed news website identified the official who tangled with Woodward as Gene Sperling, head of the National Economic Council. The White House did not respond to a request to confirm the identity of the official.

News of the exchange drew instant reaction from Washington insiders on Twitter, much of poking fun at the war of words.

"My amateur advice: stop cooperating with Woodward in the first place," wrote Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress think tank and a former Obama campaign advisor.

"Hey, guess what? All of you will talk to Woodward for his next book, too," wrote Tony Fratto of Hamilton Place Strategies and a former White House official under President George W. Bush.

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; editing by Jackie Frank)

Six tanks now said to be leaking at contaminated Hanford nuclear site

Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images file

The Hanford site in eastern Washington is considered one of the most contaminated locations on Earth.

By M. Alex Johnson, staff writer, NBC News

The leaking of radioactive liquids at the Hanford, Wash., Nuclear Reservation is more extensive than previously reported, with six storage tanks affected, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.

In a conference call with reporters Friday after a meeting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Inslee disclosed that six of the 177 tanks were leaking at the nuclear facility in Richland, in eastern Washington about 50 miles southeast of Yakima.

---

Inslee said Chu told him that evaluation system of the tank levels wasn't used correctly, raising the prospect that there may be even more leaks. But he said he was told that there was no immediate threat, a point the Energy Department reiterated in a statement Friday evening.

 

Hanford — which houses millions of gallons of radioactive waste left over from plutonium production for nuclear weapons — is already considered one of the most contaminated sites on Earth, the U.S. government says.
 

Last week, the U.S. Energy Department said that only one tank was leaking at Hanford.
"We need to get to the bottom of this," Inslee said. He called the disclosure "very disturbing news" and contended that the Energy Department needed a new plan to remove liquid from tanks that can't be repaired.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and an outspoken critic of containment efforts at Hanford, toured the site this week — before Friday's announcement — and judged conditions there "an unacceptable threat to the Pacific Northwest for everybody," NBC station KING of Seattle reported.  The Associated Press quoted Tom Towslee, a Wyden spokesman, as saying the senator will be asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford's tank monitoring and maintenance program.

An estimated 1 million gallons of waste has seeped out of the underground tanks and reached groundwater that will eventually reach the Columbia River, scientists say. The U.S. plans to build a plant to turn the waste into low-level radioactive glass for safe storage, but that facility is years behind schedule for its projected opening in 2019.

In a statement Friday evening, Inslee warned that the federal budget impasse — which could lead to a "sequestration," or cuts, of $1.2 trillion in federal spending over 10 years — made the Hanford predicament even more alarming.

"Frankly, the state Department of Ecology is not convinced that current storage is adequate to meet legal and regulatory requirements," Inslee said.

"With potential sequestration and federal budget cuts looming, we need to be sure the federal government maintains its commitment and legal obligation to the cleanup of Hanford," he said. "To see Hanford workers furloughed at the exact moment we have additional leakers out there is completely unacceptable."

North Korea threatens 'final destruction' of South Korea in UN debate

By Tom Miles, Reuters

GENEVA - North Korea threatened South Korea with "final destruction" during a debate at the U.N Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday, saying it could take "second and third steps" after a nuclear test last week.

In response to North Korea's recent nuclear test, South Korea stages military exercises and artillery drills along the border with North Korea. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

"As the saying goes, a newborn puppy knows no fear of a tiger. South Korea's erratic behavior would only herald its final destruction," North Korean diplomat Jon Yong Ryong told the meeting.
Without specifically referring to the nuclear test, Jon said North Korea had recently taken a "resolute step for self-defense," which he described as "strong counteractions to a foreign aggressor."

 

"If the U.S. takes a hostile approach toward the DPRK to the last, rendering the situation complicated, it (North Korea) will be left with no option but to take the second and third stronger steps in succession," he added without elaborating.

His comments drew immediate criticism from other nations, including South Korea and Britain, whose ambassador Joanne Adamson said such language was "completely inappropriate" and the discussion with North Korea was heading in the wrong direction.

Ambassador Susan Rice tells reporters at the United Nations that North Korea's latest, "highly-provocative" and "regrettable" act of testing a nuclear weapon "directly violates" security council resolution and threatens international peace, "vowing a swift, credible and strong response."

"It cannot be allowed that we have expressions which refer to the possible destruction of U.N. member states," she said.
U.S. Ambassador Laura Kennedy said she found North Korea's statement profoundly disturbing.
“I also was particularly struck by the phrase 'heralding the destruction of the Republic of Korea' and find that language incredibly inconsistent with the goals and objectives that this body is intended to pursue," she said.
Related:
South Korea says new cruise missile can strike North as regional tensions rise
North Korea uses cash couriers, false names to outwit sanctions
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

708comments

Explore related topics: featured, world, un, nuclear, north-korea, korea, destruction

Report: Chinese army tied to widespread US hacking

Carlos Barria / Reuters

A general view of 'Unit 61398,' a secretive Chinese military unit on the outskirts of Shanghai on Feb. 19. The unit is believed to be behind a series of hacking attacks, a U.S. computer security company said, prompting a strong denial by China and accusations that it was in fact the victim of U.S. hacking.

By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News

BEIJING – A group of hackers linked to the Chinese military has stolen reams of sensitive data from more than 100 prominent American companies and organizations, according to an explosive new report.
“The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese Government is aware of them,” U.S. computer-security firm Mandiant Corp. said in a 74-page report released on Tuesday.
The story was first reported by The New York Times.

 

 

One group originating from China that Mandiant had been tracking since 2006 and identified in the study as “APT1” allegedly swiped data from 141 companies in 20 industries ranging from aerospace to telecommunications, according to the report. More than 110 of those companies were American, according to Mandiant.
Mandiant said that the data suggests that the hacker group was either working for or sponsored by China’s People’s Liberation Army. Indeed, according to the organization’s information, APT1’s activity originated from a People’s Liberation Army cyberware division known as “Unit 61398.”
“Our research found that People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission, capabilities, and resources,” it said, according to the report.  “PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.”
Mandiant said that the hacking originated from a drab 12-story office building on the outskirts of Shanghai. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of operatives performed covert corporate espionage and extracted trade secrets, blueprints, pricing data and other corporate information from countless American servers from the innocuous tower, according to Mandiant.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported on Thursday that Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated their computer systems. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

The hackers used techniques like “spear-phishing” -- using spoof emails to trick users into granting access to internal servers --demonstrating a strong proficiency in the English language and advanced understanding of computer security and network operations, the organization said.
Media blackoutThough the story exploded on Twitter and in the foreign news media, it has hardly made any waves in China. Twitter has long been blocked in the country and foreign media companies that broadcast on the mainland like CNN were blacked out when the report was mentioned on air.
Coverage of Mandiant’s report was also absent from Chinese news websites, but some discussion of the report could still be found on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo.
“Chinese hackers are so capable! I always thought Americans are very powerful!” exclaimed one user.
“Reports by foreign media cannot be fully trusted,” warned another user, “but there must be something.”
Related: Wall Street Journal infiltrated by Chinese hackers
This was a sentiment partly shared by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, who responded today to questions about the hacking report by calling them “groundless” and reiterating the government’s unwavering position on the matter.
“To make groundless accusations based on some rough material is neither responsible nor professional,” he said, before noting that China was also the victim of hacking attacks.
Hong also argued that the new evidence provided by Mandiant and the New York Times will not withstand closer scrutiny.
But China’s cyber activities have been under increasingly closer scrutiny in recent weeks, as a slew of news stories have come out about Beijing’s reported hacking ambitions. Last month, the New York Times reported that its own servers had been attacked by hackers originating in China, possibly in response to an embarrassing expose it published showing the hidden riches of out-going Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao.

 

 

While the White House has largely remained silent on the hacking issue -- President Barack Obama mentioned hacking in his State of the Union but did not specifically cite China -- the government has been noticeably increasing efforts to strengthen cyber security.
Last week Obama issued an Executive Order calling for the improving of critical infrastructure tied to cyber security. That the move came on the eve of the publication of two similar exposes -- last week Bloomberg printed another story demonstrating PLA hacking of American systems -- suggests the administration could be taking a long called for tougher stance on Chinese hacking by “naming and shaming” known mainland hacking groups.
Le Li of NBC News contributed to this report.
Related:
Congress urged to probe Chinese cyber-espionage
Internet Explorer zero-day exploit linked to China

Report of immigration draft plan brings White House statement

By Kristen Welker and Gil Aegerter, NBC News

Follow @kwelkerNBC

The White House is not directly commenting on a newspaper report that the administration is considering a path for illegal immigrants to become legal permanent U.S. residents within eight years.
USA Today said it obtained a draft of a White House immigration plan that contained the proposal.
The White House wouldn’t comment Saturday night directly on the USA Today report but released this statement:
“The President has made clear the principles upon which he believes any commonsense immigration reform effort should be based. We continue to work in support of a bipartisan effort, and while the President has made clear he will move forward if Congress fails to act, progress continues to be made and the administration has not prepared a final bill to submit.”

---

 

Since his re-election – which got a boost from Hispanic voters -- President Barack Obama has renewed his push for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration policy, including the topic in his inaugural address and State of the Union speech and making a trip to Nevada last month to highlight the issue.
And there’s been some progress in the Senate: A bipartisan group of senators announced in late January that they had agreed on goals for a major rewrite of immigration laws. Those include creating a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are here already and creating a system to ensure that employers don’t hire illegal immigrants.
But reaction to the USA Today report by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., points to the difficulty in passing any package. Rubio issued a statement Saturday saying that if the president's eventual proposal follows the draft described by USA Today, it "would be dead on arrival in Congress."  
NBC News' Ali Weinberg contributed to this report.

  

2-gallon a day cola habit linked to woman's death        

  

Uncredited  /  AP

Natasha Harris died of a heart attack in February 2010.

By NICK PERRY

updated 2/13/2013

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A New Zealand food industry association on Wednesday rejected a coroner's call to add health warnings to soft-drink labels following the 2010 death of a woman who drank about 2 gallons of Coca-Cola a day.
   

Coroner David Crerar issued a final report Tuesday into the death of 31-year-old Natasha Harris, concluding that the mother of eight died from a heart attack. He said the large amount of Coca-Cola she drank likely led to metabolic imbalances that gave rise to her heart problems, adding that Coke was likely a "substantial factor" in her death.

But New Zealand Food & Grocery Council Chief Executive Katherine Rich said "there isn't a labeling regime in the world" that could have prevented the death of somebody who chose to drink Coke in such large quantities.

The New Zealand branch of the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest beverage maker, disputed the coroner's findings, noting that experts could not agree on the most likely cause of Harris' death.

Crerar recommended that soft-drink makers consider including caffeine levels on the labels and warnings about the ill health effects if the drinks are consumed in excessive quantities.

Under New Zealand's food labeling system, warnings are mandatory on drinks with caffeine levels higher than 145 milligrams per kilogram. That covers many energy drinks, but not most soft drinks.
Rich said the coroner's recommendations were well-intentioned but ill-informed. She said that coffee, tea and chocolate also contain significant amounts of caffeine and that New Zealanders are unlikely to support the notion of health warnings every time they walk into a cafe or buy a chocolate bar.
She said the huge volume of Coca-Cola that Harris drank meant she couldn't receive adequate nutrients from other food sources.

"It doesn't matter what the food is. If it's consumed in excess, there will be ill health effects," Rich said. "It's clearly a very tragic and complex case, but not one that provides a strong argument for changes to labeling."

At a 2011 inquest into Harris' death, Vivienne Hodgkinson, the mother of Harris' boyfriend, said that Harris always needed to have Coca-Cola available, and that if she ran out she would "get the shakes, withdrawal symptoms; be angry, on edge and snappy."

The coroner also heard evidence that Harris was of normal weight, didn't eat much or drink any alcohol, and smoked about 30 cigarettes a day. She drank only regular Coke, preferring the taste over diet or caffeine-free varieties. The coroner heard that Harris had no energy in the months leading up to her death, felt ill all the time and often vomited and experienced a racing heart.

The coroner said it was hard to be certain about how much Coke Harris drank, but after reviewing evidence from her partner and friends, as well as 51 supermarket receipts, he estimated it was between 6 and 10 liters (1.6 and 2.6 gallons) per day.

The pathologist who examined Harris found that she likely suffered from hypokalemia, or low potassium, which contributed to her health problems, and that she had an enlarged liver from excessive sugar consumption.

Another pathologist giving expert testimony said that excessive cola consumption "can be dramatically symptomatic, and there are strong hypothetical grounds for this becoming fatal in individual cases."

But a third pathologist giving evidence for Coca-Cola said that Harris' health problems could have been caused by anemia or diabetes, and that genetic factors may also have played a role.

In a statement, Coca-Cola Oceania said it was disappointed the coroner chose to focus on "the combination of Ms. Harris' excessive consumption of Coca-Cola, together with other health and lifestyle factors, as the probable cause of her death. This is contrary to the evidence that showed the experts could not agree on the most likely cause."

Fact-checking Obama's State of the Union

AP Photo: Charles Dharapak, Pool. State of the Union fact-check: President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, gives his State of the Union address Tuesday. IMAGE

 By Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson and Robert Farley    

 

The president spins his accomplishments on jobs, health care and deficit reduction in annual address.

President Obama put a rosy spin on several accomplishments of his administration in his 2013 State of the Union address.

• The president claimed that "both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion." But that's only an estimate of deficit reduction through fiscal year 2022, and it would be lower if the White House used a different starting point.
• Obama touted the growth of 500,000 manufacturing jobs over the past three years, but there has been a net loss of 600,000 manufacturing jobs since he took office. The recent growth also has stalled since July 2012.
• He claimed that "we have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas." Actual mileage is improving, but Obama's "doubled" claim refers to a desired miles-per-gallon average for model year 2025.
• Obama said the Affordable Care Act "is helping to slow the growth of health care costs." It may be helping, but the slower growth for health care spending began in 2009, before the law was enacted, and is due at least partly to the down economy.

The president also made an exaggerated claim of bipartisanship. He said that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney agreed with him that the minimum wage should be tied to the cost of living. But Romney backed off that view during the campaign.
Analysis
President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, laying out his legislative agenda for the coming year and achievements of his time in office. But Obama puffed up his record.
Deficit Reduction
Obama said the administration and Congress "have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion." A bipartisan group called the estimate "very reasonable." But it is only an estimate — and a debatable one at that — for deficit reduction from budgets through fiscal year 2022. Exactly how much will be cut will be up to future Congresses.
And, even if Congress meets those deficit-reduction goals, deficit spending will continue and the federal debt will grow larger — unless much more is done.
Obama: Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion — mostly through spending cuts, but also by raising tax rates on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. As a result, we are more than halfway towards the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists say we need to stabilize our finances.
Obama has cited the $2.5 trillion figure on numerous occasions, including at a Jan. 14 news conference. It is based largely on two pieces of legislation: the Budget Control Act of 2011, which placed caps on discretionary spending beginning in 2012, and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which prevented tax hikes on most Americans in 2013 but allowed rates to go up on the top 1 percent of taxpayers. There was some additional savings from reductions in discretionary spending in the fiscal 2011 appropriations bills.
Republicans challenge the $2.5 trillion figure with some justification, because the amount of savings depends heavily on the baseline — that is, the starting point of comparison. The White House told us it used the Office of Management and Budget's January 2011 baseline.
In a recent report, the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated the deficit reduction at $2.7 trillion, using the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's August 2010 baseline. But it also acknowledged that "there is no simple answer to the question of how much deficit reduction has been enacted so far." The report says starting a year earlier or later would reduce the estimated savings.
CRFB, Feb. 11: Although $2.7 trillion is a very reasonable estimate of enacted savings, it is by no means the only way to measure past savings. It is worth noting that the discretionary savings in this number are in fact calculated from the high point of discretionary spending. Measuring either from a year later or from a year earlier would result in a smaller savings number because base discretionary spending (excluding the effects of the stimulus) actually increased between 2009 and 2010 due to larger-than-projected appropriations.
As we have written once before, the vast majority of the deficit reduction has yet to materialize. Congress is supposed to comply with the caps on discretionary spending imposed by the Budget Control Act in future appropriations bills. But whether that happens remains to be seen.
And, even if Congress complies, deficit spending will continue, and the federal debt will rise — just not as quickly as it otherwise would have. The latest CBO figures show the public debt — that is, the amount the federal government owes the public — will approach $20 trillion in 2023, an increase of more than $8 trillion from its current level of $11.6 trillion.
For that reason, most budget experts warn that the president understates the scope of the budget problem when he says, as he did in his speech, that "we are more than halfway towards the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists say we need to stabilize our finances." The nonpartisan Concord Coalition says the president's goal of accomplishing $4 trillion in deficit reduction "would hardly mean the ‘job is finished.'"
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget struck the same cautionary note in its report, saying the progress so far is "notable" but enacting $4 trillion in deficit reduction will not stabilize the debt.
CRFB, Feb. 11: Declaring victory with an additional $1.5 trillion would be dangerous, however, since it would leave no margin for error, would result in slower economic growth, would leave little fiscal flexibility, and would have little chance of stabilizing the debt beyond the ten-year window. For these reasons, we believe the debt must be not only stable, but on a clear downward path by the end of the decade.

More from MSN News Video: Obama: State of our union is 'stronger' Video: Obama: Tax, entitlement reform won't be easy Rubio pushes Obama on taxes Analysis: Obama isn't in the mood for compromise Text of Obama's State of the Union address Text of Rubio's GOP response Photos from the address Twitter's Take: State of the Union Awkward Rubio water bottle moment causes stir on Twitter Signs of unity in a divided Congress during speech What they're saying about State of the Union

Manufacturing Jobs
The president was correct when he said U.S. "manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three" years, but that's not the whole story.
Overall, there has been a net loss of more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs since Obama took office in January 2009, and manufacturing job growth during his tenure has stalled since reaching a peak of nearly 12 million jobs in July 2012.
Obama: After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.
Over the past three years — since January 2010 — the U.S. economy has added 490,000 manufacturing jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 11,950,000 manufacturing jobs in January 2013 — up from the 11,460,000 jobs recorded in January 2010. However, there were 12,556,000 manufacturing jobs in January 2009. So overall, there has been a loss of 606,000 jobs since Obama took office.
More recently, "manufacturing growth has been stuck in neutral," as the National Association of Manufacturers said Tuesday in a press release. During the three-year period cited by Obama, manufacturing jobs peaked at 11,957,000 in July 2012. Since then, the jobs figure has fluctuated, and the economy has lost 7,000 manufacturing jobs.
Invoking Romney on Minimum Wage
Making a pitch to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour, Obama argued for its bipartisan appeal by invoking his 2012 presidential campaign foe, Republican Mitt Romney, as a kindred spirit when it comes to tying the minimum wage to the cost of living. But Romney actually backpedaled a bit on that position during the campaign.
Obama: Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. … So here's an idea that Gov. Romney and I actually agreed on last year: Let's tie the minimum wage to the cost of living, so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on.
It's true that during a campaign event on Jan. 7, Romney remarked: "My view has been to allow the minimum wage to rise with the [Consumer Price Index] or with another index so that it adjusts automatically over time."
But just two months later, Romney hedged on that position in an interview with CNBC's Larry Kudlow, saying that in the midst of a recovery, "right now, there's probably not a need to raise the minimum wage.
Mitt Romney: Well, actually, when I was governor the legislature passed a law raising the minimum wage. I vetoed it. … And I said, "Look, the way to deal with the minimum wage is this. On a regular basis," I said in the proposal I made, "every two years we should look at the minimum wage, we should look at what's happened to inflation. We should also look at the jobs level throughout the country, unemployment rate, competitive rates in other states or, in this case, other nations." So, certainly, the level of inflation is something you should look at and you should identify what's the right way to keep America competitive. … Yeah, so that would tell you that right now there's probably not a need to raise the minimum wage.
Car Mileage Double-talk
The president claimed that "we have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas" — which isn't remotely close to being true right now.
In fact, according to the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, the average EPA city/highway sticker mileage of light duty vehicles sold last month was 24.5 miles per gallon. That's quite good — a record, in fact. And it's 17 percent better than the 21.0 mpg for vehicles sold four years earlier, in the month Obama took office. That's an impressive gain, but it's a far cry from having "doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas."
Obama was referring to his administration's actions for raising future federal fuel efficiency standards, which call for cars and light trucks to achieve 54.5 mpg by the model year 2025. But it remains to be seen whether automakers can produce — and consumers will buy — vehicles that achieve such a doubling of average mileage a dozen years from now.
Health Care Costs
Obama said the federal health care law was "helping" to reduce the growth of health care costs. It may be helping, but the slower growth of health care spending began before the law was enacted. And experts say the down economy has played a role. It's not clear how much impact the federal law has had.
Obama: Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.
From 2009 to 2011, the growth in national health care spending was at its lowest rate in 50-plus years, the entire time the National Health Expenditure Accounts reports have been published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Spending grew by 3.9 percent each year for 2009, 2010 and 2011. (The growth in 2008 was 4.7 percent, and 2007′s was 6.2 percent, with higher growth for years previous — see Table 3.)
But the Affordable Care Act wasn't signed into law until 2010, after the recent slowing began. And the bulk of the law, including the individual mandate and federal subsidies to help Americans buy insurance, has yet to take effect. Experts have mainly blamed the economic slowdown for a corresponding reduction in health care spending. Economists and statisticians at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported in 2011: "Job losses caused many people to lose employer-sponsored health insurance and, in some cases, to forgo health-care services they could not afford."
The New York Times reported this week that the slower growth meant lower deficits, as federal spending also eased. The Congressional Budget Office reduced its projected Medicare and Medicaid spending for 2020 by 15 percent. The federal health care law may be affecting spending, but it's unclear how much. As the Times said, "Health experts say they do not yet fully understand what is driving the lower spending trajectory."
The economy is part of the reason, said CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf. But the way doctors and hospitals deliver care may be another.
New York Times, Feb. 11: Some insurers have moved away from simply paying per procedure by giving health care providers financial incentives to reduce complications and rehospitalizations, for instance. Doctors, nurses and hospitals have also taken steps to reduce wasteful treatments. Many of the changes predate the 2010 health care overhaul, but the law has also contributed to the changes by offering some financial incentives, health care experts say.
So the health care law gets some credit. It's "helping" to slow the growth of costs, as Obama said. But the reduced growth began before the law was enacted and is due to forces — such as the economy — beyond the control of the legislation.
Puffing Up Renewable Energy
Obama said wind and solar energy have doubled. True, but they're still a very small percentage of energy production and consumption in the U.S.
Obama: We have doubled … the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar.
We looked at this claim when Obama made it several times on the presidential campaign trail last fall. We found that wind and solar energy generation had doubled from 2008 to 2011. Consumption for wind also doubled, and it nearly doubled for solar.
But wind and solar were very small portions of energy generated before — and even after — that increase. Wind was 13 percent of all renewable energy generated in 2011. (Renewable includes biomass, such as ethanol, and hydro.) Solar was 1.3 percent of renewable energy generated. Renewable energy altogether accounted for just 9 percent of U.S. energy consumption in 2011.
Frank V. Maisano, an energy expert at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, told us: "Making large increases in wind power or solar power is not as big a challenge, let's say, as making a 50 percent increase in natural gas. … You have to put it into context."
Sources
White House. "News Conference by the President." Transcript. 14 Jan 2013.
Budget Control Act of 2011. Pub. L. 112-25. 2 Aug 2011.
American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. Pub.L. 112–240. 2 Jan 2013.
Press release. "Murray's Deficit Reduction Goal Flawed and Dangerous." Minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee. 1 Feb 2013.
"Our Debt Problems Are Far from Solved." Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 11 Feb 2013.
Jackson, Brooks. "Reid Twice Wrong on $2.6 Trillion in ‘Cuts.‘ " FactCheck.org. 6 Feb 2013.
Congressional Budget Office. "Budget Projections — February 2013 Baseline Projections." 5 Feb 2013.
Press release. "For Future Deficit Reduction, Policy Choices More Important Than Amount." Concord Coalition. 18 Jan 2013.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Establishment Data. Table B-1. Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail." Undated, access 12 Feb 2013.
Press release. "NAM Launches Growth Agenda for Manufacturing Resurgence." National Association of Manufacturers. 12 Feb 2013.
Jamieson, Dave. "Mitt Romney: Minimum Wage Should Rise With Inflation." Huffington Post. 11 Jan 2012.
2012 Republican Candidates. Romney Position on the Minimum Wage. Video: The Kudlow Report on March 5, 2012.
University of Michigan, Transportation Research Institute. " Average sales-weighted fuel-economy rating (window sticker) of purchased new vehicles for October 2007 through January 2013." 4 Feb 2013.
U.S. Environmental Protection Administration. "President Obama Announces Historic 54.5 mpg Fuel Efficiency Standard/Consumers will save $1.7 trillion at the pump, $8K per vehicle by 2025." 29 Jul 2011.
Office of the Actuary, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. National Health Expenditures Account. NHE Tables. Accessed 13 Feb 2013.
Lowrey, Annie. "Slower Growth of Health Costs Eases U.S. Deficit." New York Times. 11 Feb 2013.
Goldstein, Amy. "U.S. health-care expenditures up only 4 percent in 2009, suggesting effects of recession." Washington Post. 5 Jan 2011.
U.S. Energy Information Administration. Electric Power Monthly. Table 1.1.A. Net Generation by Other Renewable Sources: Total (All Sectors), 2002-November 2012. 23 Jan 2013.
U.S. Energy Information Administration. "What are the major sources and users of energy in the United States?" 18 May 2012.
FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.

Personal note from ER doctor written after woman’s death goes viral

By Eric Pfeiffer | Yahoo! News

An emergency room doctor at New York Presbyterian Hospital has touched the hearts of millions after a personal letter he wrote about the death of a patient went viral on the Internet.

An emergency room doctor at New York Presbyterian Hospital has touched the hearts of millions after a personal letter he wrote about the death of a patient went viral on the Internet.

The letter was first published on Reddit by the son of the deceased woman, who reportedly died ofbreast cancer in December 2012. In the letter, the doctor explains that this is the first such note he has written in 20 years of ER work.

The letter has already been viewed by more than 2 million users on Reddit, with thousands leaving comments. The doctor's letter:

The letter has already been viewed by more than 2 million users on Reddit, with thousands leaving comments. The doctor's letter:

Dear Mr. (removed),

I am the Emergency Medicine physician who treated your wife Mrs (removed) last Sunday in the Emergency Department at (hospital). I learned only yesterday about her passing away and wanted to write to you to express my sadness. In my twenty years as a doctor in the Emergency Room, I have never written to a patient or a family member, as our encounters are typically hurried and do not always allow for more personal interaction.

However, in your case, I felt a special connection to your wife (removed), who was so engaging and cheerful in spite of her illness and trouble breathing. I was also touched by the fact that you seemed to be a very loving couple. You were highly supportive of her, asking the right questions with calm, care and concern. From my experience as a physician, I find that the love and support of a spouse or a family member is the most soothing gift, bringing peace and serenity to those critically ill.

I am sorry for your loss and I hope you can find comfort in the memory of your wife’s great spirit and of your loving bond. My heartfelt condolences go out to you and your family.

(removed), MD

The 24-year-old man who posted the letter said in an email interview with the Huffington Post that the outpouring of support from Reddit users has helped him cope with the passing of his mother.

"If my mother were alive to see this, she would want readers to reflect on the power of showing compassion toward a total stranger," he said in the interview. "The support I got from Reddit was amazing—doctors, nurses and other Redditors who have lost their mothers to cancer were all shocked and amazed that the doctor took the time to write such a heartfelt, meaningful letter.”

An emotional letter from a New York emergency room doctor to the husband of a deceased patient has touched millions …

msnNews

2.9.2013

 

Actor Steven Seagal, Ariz. sheriff train posses to guard schools

 

 

 



Arizona Democratic House Minority Leader Chad Campbell called the plan to use action-movie star Steven Seagal as an instructor "ludicrous."

PHOENIX — The self-proclaimed "America's Toughest Sheriff" joined forces this weekend with action movie star Steven Seagal to train volunteer armed posse members to defend Phoenix-area schools against gunmen.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced the controversial plan in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting that left 27 people dead, including the gunman and 20 first-graders.

The exercise took place Saturday at a closed school site in suburban Fountain Hills, outside Phoenix, where sheriff's SWAT members acted as shooters and teenagers played the part of students during mock scenarios involving up to three gunmen.

Seagal, best known for his roles in movies such as "Above the Law" and "Under Siege," planned to lead training on hand-to-hand defense tactics, among other techniques, drawing from his expertise in martial arts, according to a sheriff's office news release.

Arpaio's office didn't respond to requests for comment Friday and Saturday, and Seagal representatives also did not return telephone messages from The Associated Press.

When faced with criticism in January about the school posse plan, Arpaio snapped back, "Why would people complain about my posse being in front of schools to act as prevention?"

He boldly announced the plan on the grounds of an elementary school, saying at the time he wanted the patrols publicized.

"I want everyone to know about it for the deterrence effect," Arpaio said, adding that no taxpayer money would be spent on the patrols and volunteers will be supervised over the radio or telephone by actual deputies.

Arizona Democratic House Minority Leader Chad Campbell called the plan to use Seagal as an instructor "ludicrous."

"Steve Seagal is an actor. That's it. Why don't we also have Clint Eastwood and Chuck Norris and Bruce Willis come out and train them too while we're at it," Campbell said.

Campbell has been a vocal critic of Arpaio's school posse protection plan, complaining that using untrained, armed civilians to protect students is a bad idea and likely will only make the facilities more dangerous.

"He's making a mockery out of it. You're having a movie actor train people how to protect schools?" Campbell said.

Randy Parraz, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona, also a longtime Arpaio critic, said it's unfortunate the sheriff, known nationally for his tough stance on illegal immigration, is using the "wake of a tragedy like Newtown" to grab headlines.

"We'd like to think he would take something like this much more seriously," said Parraz, who added that his group planned to be at Saturday's event with petitions to recall Arpaio.

The patrols were launched at 59 schools in January throughout unincorporated areas and communities that pay Arpaio's agency for police services. The sheriff announced this week he needs more members to continue the patrols, calling for 1,000 additional citizens to step up and volunteer.

Current posse members already are used to bolster the sheriff's office force by providing police protection at malls during the holidays, directing traffic and transporting people to jail.

Arpaio even sent one group of posse members to Hawaii to conduct an examination into the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Joselyn Wells, a mother of three children at a school in suburban Phoenix, where Arpaio's posse has begun patrolling, said she was excited to hear about the initiative.

"A lot of people sit around and watch these things happen, watch key signs and no one wants to do anything about it," she said when Arpaio announced the plan. "Nobody wants conflict, nobody wants to be out in the limelight. And he doesn't care. He wants to do the right thing."

Andrew Sanchez, however, a town council member in Guadalupe, said he wants nothing to do with posse members patrolling schools in his community, which spends about $1.2 million annually for Maricopa County sheriff's patrols.

"We are paying him to have certified deputies here, not to bring a circus and not to use our town as a political platform," Sanchez has said.
The volunteers, dressed in uniforms and driving patrol vehicles, some authorized to carry guns after training, won't go onto school grounds unless they spot danger, but will instead patrol around the facilities, Arpaio said.

Seagal is already a volunteer posse member in Maricopa County and has been deputized with sheriff's offices in New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, where a film crew followed the actor on ride-alongs with Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies for the reality TV show "Steven Seagal: Lawman."

Arpaio says other notable people also have joined his more than 3,000-strong volunteer armed posse, including "The Incredible Hulk" star Lou Ferrigno and actor Peter Lupus of TV's "Mission: Impossible."

——
MSN News 

True bloodsucker: actual 'vampire' found in Turkey

 

A medical journal claims to have found a real-life vampire in Turkey: a 23-year-old man with an addiction to drinking blood. The man's name was not revealed by the Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, but the study documents how the man's compulsion progressed from drinking his own blood to stabbing and biting others and even recruiting his father to bring him goodies from the local blood bank. Doctors diagnosed the man with PTSD and Dissociative Identity Disorder, brought on by witnessing a variety of violent acts throughout his life. They also diagnosed him with multiple personalities, but did not say if one of them was Robert Pattinson. [Source]

Click on msnNOW.com,

 

 

White House: Congress to get classified drone info

 



Andrea Mitchell talks with Rachel Maddow about the breaking news that the Department of Justice, with the confirmation hearing for John Brennan to head the CIA looming, will share their legal reasoning for extrajudicial targeting of Americans with drone strikes with the intelligence committees in Congress.

By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News

 

Updated at 9:44 p.m. ET -- Reversing its course, the White House will now brief members of Congress on the legal justifications for drone strikes against U.S. citizens, an administration official said Wednesday night.

"Today, as part of the president's ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters, the president directed the Department of Justice to provide the congressional intelligence committees access to classified Office of Legal Counsel advice related to the subject of the Department of Justice White Paper," the official said.

The Justice Department paper, first obtained by NBC News, concluded that the United States can legally order the killing of American citizens believed to be al-Qaida leaders.

 

Until Wednesday, the administration would not even confirm these memos existed.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement Wednesday night she was pleased with the White House's decision.

"I am pleased that the president has agreed to provide the Intelligence Committee with access to the OLC opinion regarding the use of lethal force in counterterrorism operations. It is critical for the committee's oversight function to fully understand the legal basis for all intelligence and counterterrorism operations," Feinstein's statement read.

Earlier Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was engaged in an internal process deliberation to determine how to balance the nation's security needs with its values. He said Obama was committed to providing more information to Congress, even as he refused to acknowledge whether the drone memo even existed.

Follow @NBCNewsUS

"He thinks that it is legitimate to ask questions about how we prosecute the war against al-Qaida," Carney said. "These are questions that will be with us long after he is president and long after the people who are in the seats that they're in now have left the scene."

Some legal experts warned that the secret memo threatened constitutional rights and dangerously expanded the definition of national self-defense and of what constitutes an imminent attack.
The administration’s decision to give the memo to the congressional intelligence committees comes a day before the Senate confirmation hearing Thursday for John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the CIA. Brennan was an architect of the administration’s controversial escalation of drone strikes to take out suspected militants.

Members of Congress have expressed serious reservations about the memo. On Wednesday, Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News Radio that the memo “doesn’t answer the central questions” revolving around an important policy decision: "When does the government have the legal right to kill an American?"

"The administration has essentially been stonewalling the committee and myself and others for over two years by not actually making that memo available with someone willing to answer questions about it," Wyden said.

 

 

News Center

Dell to go private in landmark $24.4 billion deal

February 5, 2013
By Poornima Gupta0
TICKERS IN THIS ARTICLE

NAME		LAST	CHNG	% CHNG
#	RY	62.34	+0.06	+0.10
#	BAC	11.87	+0.39	+3.40
#	DELL	13.42	+0.14	+1.09
#	EVR	38.67	+0.51	+1.35
#	GS	150.45	+2.93	+1.99
(Reuters) - Michael Dell will take Dell Inc private for $24.4 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis, a deal that allows the billionaire chief executive officer to revive the fortunes of his computer company without Wall Street scrutiny. The deal - announced on Tuesday and financed with cash and equity from Michael Dell, cash from private equity firm Silver Lake, and a $2 billion loan from Microsoft Corp - will end a rocky 24-year run on public markets for a company conceived in a college dorm room. To many investors, Dell's decline in market share since its peak in the early 2000s symbolizes the rapidly dwindling prospects of the personal computer industry. The world's No. 3 PC maker, which Michael Dell began in 1984 as a computer-sales outfit while he was still a 19-year-old pre-med student at the University of Texas, is now going through a painful transition from a pure PC maker to a one-stop provider of enterprise computing services. Sales of PCs still make up the majority of its revenue. Analysts say the restructuring may entail job cuts and more costly acquisitions, as the company arms itself to do battle with larger and more established rivals like Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp. "We recognize this process will take more time," Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden told Reuters. "We will have to make investments, and we will have to be patient to implement the strategy. "And under a new private company structure, we will have time and flexibility to really pursue and realize the end-to-end solutions strategy." Gladden said the company's strategy would "generally remain the same" after the deal closed, but "we won't have the scrutiny and limitations associated with operating as a public company." Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake are paying $13.65 per share in cash for the world's No. 3 computer maker. Michael Dell's MSD Capital investment firm will also provide cash financing for the deal. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets will offer debt financing. Shares of Dell were up 0.8 percent at $13.38 in morning trading. Dell, whose fairy-tale rise throughout the 1990s and the early part of the next decade once made it a Wall Street darling, has ceded market share in recent years to nimbler rivals such as Lenovo Group. That is in spite of Michael Dell's efforts in the five years since he retook the helm of the company following a brief hiatus during which its fortunes waned. As of 2012's fourth quarter, Dell's share of the global PC market had slid to just above 10 percent from 12.5 percent a year earlier as its shipments dived 20 percent - the fastest quarterly pace of decline in years, according to research house IDC. While analysts said Dell could be more nimble as a private company, it will still have to deal with the same difficult market conditions. International Business Machines Corp last decade underwent what is considered one of the most successful transformations of a hardware company, all while trading on public markets. "This is an opportunity for Michael Dell to be a little more flexible managing the company," said FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi. "That doesn't take away from the fact they will have challenges in the PC market like they did before." RECORD BUYOUT The deal would be the biggest private equity-backed leverage buyout since Blackstone Group LP's takeout of the Hilton Hotels Group in July 2007 for more than $20 billion, and is the 11th-largest on record. The parties expect the transaction to close before the end of Dell's 2014 second quarter, which ends in July. News of the buyout talks first emerged on January 14, although they reportedly started in the latter part of 2012. Michael Dell had previously acknowledged thinking about going private as far back as 2010. The $13.65-per-share price is a premium of about 24 percent to the average $11 price of Dell stock before news of the deal talks broke and is far below the $17.61 that the shares were trading for a year ago. "The key question here is will shareholders approve this deal, because there is practically no premium where the stock is trading," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said. J.P. Morgan and Evercore Partners were financial advisers, and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP was the legal adviser to the special committee of Dell's board. Goldman Sachs was financial adviser, and Hogan Lovells was legal adviser to Dell. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz was legal adviser to Michael Dell. BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets were financial advisers to Silver Lake, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP was its legal adviser. (Writing by Ben Berkowitz and Edwin Chan; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Lisa Von Ahn) (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013.