Obamalog: A Brief History of the

Obama Administration

 

WEEK SEVENTY

May 16, 2010

        After more than three weeks of efforts to stop a gushing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, company officials said that BP engineers had achieved some success when they used a mile-long pipe to capture some of the oil flow and divert it to a drill ship on the surface, 5,000 feet above the wellhead:

·                    After two false starts, engineers successfully inserted a narrow tube into the damaged pipe, but BP’s senior executive vice president, Kent Wells, said that he could not yet say how much oil had been captured or what percentage of the oil leading from a 21-inch riser pipe was flowing into the four-inch insertion tube.

 

May 17, 2010

1.     The Obama administration unveiled a tax cut for small companies that provides health insurance, and even if it amounts to free money, many small business won’t qualify for the tax credit:

·                    The full benefit goes to companies that have ten or fewer workers with average salaries of $25,000 or less—they can get Uncle Sam to pick up 35% of their premiums—but sole proprietorships are not eligible and neither are firms with 25 or more employees or average wages of $50,000 and above.

2.     Scientists warned that the oil from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico was moving rapidly toward a current that could carry it into the Florida Keys and theAtlantic Ocean, threatening coral reefs and hundreds of miles of additional shoreline:

a.     Government officials insisted that the oil had not entered the Gulf’s so-called loop current, but two independent scientists, analyzing ocean current and satellite data, said that the oil was in an eddy that was quickly being drawn into the current;

b.     The White House said that President Obama would soon name an independent commission to investigate the cause and response to the spill, largely supplanting the inquiry now being conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service—the Interior Department is responsible for overseeing offshore oil operations.

 

May 18, 2010

1.     The U.S. introduced a U.N. resolution aimed at Iran’s suspected nuclear program, having won long-sought and pivotal support from China and Russiafor new sanctions against Tehran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard and new measures to try to curtail Iran’s military, financial, and shipping activities:

·                    The draft resolution, which appeared to be a significant victory for the Obama administration, would ban Iran from pursuing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, freeze assets of nuclear-related companies linked to the Revolutionary Guard, bar Iranian investment in activities such as uranium mining, and prohibit Iran from buying several categories of heavy weapons, according to a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the resolution has not been released publicly.

2.     The U.S. Coast Guard official leading the cleanup warned that the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is growing despite BP’s efforts to siphon some of the spewing crude from its ruptured deep-water well:

a.     BP doubled its estimate of the amount of crude being captured by a mile-long recovery tube to 84,000 gallons a day—but what percentage of the spill remains is still uncertain;

        b.     Related results include:

o       U.S. regulators nearly tripled the federal waters in the Gulf where fishing is shut down;

o       One hundred fifty-four dead sea turtles, 23 dead birds, and 12 dead dolphins have been found along Gulf coastlines since the spill started;

o       Shell Oil Company will take additional steps to insure the exploratory drilling it plans to do in the Arctic Ocean this summer will be done safely.

3.     A furious Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) accused Republicans of blocking debate of a closely watched amendment that would prohibit banks from making risky, but highly lucrative, trades that, at times, bet against investments made by their customers and helped set off the recession:

·                    Merkley”s outburst came after Republicans objected to what Democrats thought was a routine request for the Senate to consider—and later vote on—the amendment co-sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI)—a pattern that had been followed for the last two weeks.

 

May 19, 2010

        Another wave of selling hit the stock market in response to growing fears that Europe has no quick fix for its debt crisis, and the Dow Jones industrial average fell about 67 points after being down as much as 186 points—it was the Dow’s ninth drop in 12 days:

·                    The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, widely considered one of the best measures of how the stock market is doing, neared a 10% drop from the 2010 trading high it reached last month—that would make the first time the market has had a correction since it bounced off a 12-year low in March of last year.

 

May 20, 2010

1.     The Senate approved the toughest set of regulations since the Great Depression, adding tools and legal authorities that supporters hope will diminish the risk to investors and the potential for future meltdowns:

a.     Final passage came in an early evening vote of 59-39 after days of parliamentary jousting and legislative sacrifices—only four Republicans voted for the bill, while two Democrats, including Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, voted against it;

b.     An amendment by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to ban banks from engaging in high-risk proprietary trade was blocked from a vote by Republican objections and maneuvers—Merkley’s amendment would have also better insulated consumers from conflicts of interest such as the ones made famous by Goldman Sachs and Co.

2.     Gooey, rust-colored oil washed into the marshes at the mouth of theMississippi River for the first time, and BP conceded what some scientists have been saying for weeks: the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than originally estimated:

·                    At least six million gallons of crude have gushed into the Gulf (more than half the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez tanker in Alaska in 1989) since the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded 50 miles off the coast on April 20^th, and the EPA has now ordered BP to switch to less toxic dispersants to break up the oil gushing into the Gulf amid fears that the chemical now being sprayed over the sea and injected deep under water could harm marine life.

3.     Obama administration officials condemned North Korea for a torpedo attack they say sank a South Korean naval patrol ship in March, and they began a diplomatic effort through the U.N. to crack down on Pyongyang:

·                    Officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to signal strong U.S. support for a new round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea when she visits Seoul on Monday, and officials said that she will also urge support of the sanctions while she is in China, which has more leverage over North Korea than any other country.

4.     The stock market had its worst day in more than a year, with the Dow industrials tumbling 376 points, as fears intensified that a debt crisis in Europecould jeopardize the global economic recovery:

·                    The sell-off put the major U.S. stock indices in the red for the year and down more than 10% in less than four weeks—the market’s sharpest retreat since March 2009, when share prices bottomed out at 12-year lows.

5.     Daniel Tarullo, the Federal Reserve governor, said that Europe’s debt crisis poses serious risks to the unfolding economic recoveries in the U.S. and around the globe, and Tarullo told a House subcommittee that if the crisis were to crimp lending and the flow of credit globally, triggering more financial turmoil, that would endanger both the U.S. and global recoveries:

·                    Tarullo said, however, that such a development is viewed as unlikely, and for now there are good reasons to believe that U.S. banks and financial institutions can withstand some fallout from European financial difficulties.

6.     The Obama administration has made no major changes to a plan to protect endangered wild salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin in their submission of revisions for a 2008 Bush-era biological plan provided to U.S. District Judge James Redden in Portland:

·                    Redden said in February that the Bush-era plan likely violated the Endangered Species Act, but he gave the government three months to review new science that might strengthen it, and at that time, Redden warned that he would view with “heightened skepticism” efforts to deal with the issues superficially.

 

May 21, 2010

1.     National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair is resigning under pressure from the White House, ending a 16-month tenure marked by intelligence failures and spy agencies’ turf wars:

·                    Blair, a retired Navy admiral, is the third director of national intelligence, a position created in response to public outrage over the failure to prevent the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and his departure comes two days after a stark Senate report criticized Blair’s office and other intelligence agencies for new failings that, despite a top-to-bottom overhaul of the U.S. intelligence apparatus after September 11^th, allowed a would-be bomber to board a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

2.     According to the Labor Department, unemployment rates fell in a majority of states last month as 34 states and the District of Columbia reported lower jobless rates in April, while six states reported higher rates, and ten saw unemployment hold steady:

·                    After cutting their workforces to the bone during the recession, companies are now starting to boost hiring as their sales and profits improve.

3.     Obama directed the government to set the first-ever mileage and pollution limits for big trucks and to tighten rules for future cars and SUVs—the new standards, to be issued in July of next year, would apply to big trucks and buses for model years 2014-2018, and, at the same time, the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will get to work on stricter standards for cars and for trucks like SUVs to kick in with the 2017 model year and carry through 2025:

·                    According to the EPA, commercial trucks account for 21% of greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector—compared with 33% for passenger cars and 29% for SUVs, pickups, and minivans.

 

May 22, 2010

1.     Republicans scored a mid-term election victory when Honolulu City Councilman Charles Dijou won a Democratic-held seat in Hawaii in the district where President Obama grew up:

·                    Dijou’s victory was a blow to Democrats who could not find a way to win a congressional race that should have been a cakewalk—the seat has been held by Democrats for nearly 20 years and is located where Obamawas born and spent most of his childhood.

2.     BP PLC said that it wants to keep using a contentious chemical dispersant to fight the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, despite orders from federal regulators to use something less toxic:

·                    According to BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, the chemical dispersant, Corexit 9500, is “the best option for subsea application,” and he said that tests showed Corexit to be among the most effective agents at dispersing the oil.