Obamalog: A Brief History of the

Obama Administration

 

WEEK SEVENTY-THREE

June 7, 2010

1.     Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said that with the help of a wellhead cap, now keeping up to 462,000 gallons of oil a day from leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, the oil geyser spewing from the sea floor is tapering off more day by day, but there is no quick fix for containing much of the crude that has already escaped and is spreading across the Gulf—federal authorities have estimated the ruptured pipe is leaking between 500,000 and one million gallons a day:

·                    Allen said, “Dealing with the oil spill on the surface will take a couple of months,” but the process of getting oil out of marshlands and other habitats “will be years.”

2.     Countrywide Home Loans and its mortgage service unit, which are now part of Bank of America, agreed to pay $108 million to settle federal charges that the company overcharged customers who were struggling to hold onto their homes:

a.     The Federal Trade Commission claimed that Countrywide charged inflated amounts—$300 to mow a lawn, in one instance—to more than 200,000 homeowners whose mortgages Countrywide serviced as part of its home-loan business;

b.     The $108 million payment resolves the largest mortgage-servicing case in the FTC’s history with one of its largest overall judgments—the money will be used to reimburse homeowners who were charged the excess fees by Countrywide before their July 2008 acquisition by Bank of America.

 

June 8, 2010

1.     Senate Democrats proposed quintupling the tax that oil companies pay into a spill liability fund as they seek to pare back a House-passed tax hike on investment fund managers:

·                    The legislation unveiled would raise the tax on oil produced offshore from eight cents to 41 cents per barrel—that’s nine cents higher than legislation that passed the House last month, and the move to increase the tax would raise $15 billion over the coming decade as Congress seeks to shore up the fund in the wake of the catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

2.     Job openings jumped in April to the highest level in 16 months, a sign that private employers may boost hiring in coming months:

·                    The number of jobs advertised at the end of April rose to 3.1 million from 2.8 million in March, the Labor Department said, and that’s the most openings since December 2008—private employers accounted for the entire net gain, while government advertising for jobs decreased, despite the hiring of hundreds of thousands of census workers in May.

3.     The government and university researchers confirmed that plumes of dispersed oil from the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico were spreading far below the ocean surface, raising fresh concern about the spill’s potential impact on sea life:

·                    The tests, the first detailed chemical analyses of the deep seawater, show that some of the most toxic components of the oil are not necessarily rising to the surface where they can evaporate, as would be expected in a shallow oil leak, but are, instead, drifting through deep water in plumes or layers that stretch as far as 50 miles from the leaking well—scientists outside the government noted that the plumes appear to be so large that organisms might be bathed in them for extended periods, possibly long enough to kill eggs or embryos.

4.     Facing public skepticism about the new healthcare law, President Obamatraveled to Maryland to tout the distribution of $250 rebate checks for senior citizens who hit the so-called doughnut hole in Medicare’s drug coverage, one of the law’s first benefits:

·                    At the same time, Obama announced a new initiative to cut in half the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare program by the end of 2012, an ambitious goal that would require the government to recover as much as $18 billion—government authorities recovered $2.5 billion in 2009, according to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, which are jointly charged with stepping up enforcement.

5.     The White House raised the stakes on the Senate’s first major climate-change vote of the year, threatening to veto a Republican-led effort to stop the EPA from carrying out regulations controlling greenhouse gases:

·                    The White House, citing the environmental damage caused by the Gulf oil spill, said that the measure to overturn new EPA regulations would increase the nation’s dependence on oil and other fossil fuels, and “block efforts to cut pollution that threatens our health and well-being.”

6.     Senate Democrats weakened efforts to end a controversial Wall Street break, watering down a bid to raise taxes on managers of hedge funds, private-equity funds, venture capital firms, and other business partnerships:

·                    The Senate action retreated from a step taken last month by the House of Representatives, where lawmakers voted to get tough with Wall Street financiers, an apparent bow to election-year pressure from constituents outraged that some captains of finance are taxed at a lower rate than their secretaries are.

 

June 9, 2010

1.     Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a news briefing in Washington that the current containment system being used for the crude spewing from the gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico is catching 630,000 gallons daily—officials had previously cited that figure as the system’s general capacity, but Allen said that officials now believe it can handle 756,000 gallons daily:

·                    Even so, there is still more oil eluding capture, and BP is bringing in a second vessel that will increase capacity, as well as the North Sea shuttle tanker, which will assist in the transfer of the oil, and a device that will burn off some of it.

2.     The U.N. Security Council leveled its fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, but the measures do little to overcome widespread doubts that they—or even the additional steps pledged by U.S. and European officials—would accomplish the Council’s long-standing goal: halting Iran’s production of nuclear fuel:

·                    The resolution, hailed by President Obama as delivering “the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government,” took months to negotiate and major concessions by U.S. officials, but they still fail to carry the symbolic weight of a unanimous decision—12 of the 15 nations on the Council voted for the measure, while Turkey and Brazil voted against it and Lebanon abstained.

3.     According to a survey released by the Federal Reserve, for the first time since the beginning of the recession, modest growth has spread to every corner of the country—the first clean sweep since 2007:

·                    But Oregon’s recovery is faltering, economists said, as unemployment jumps again with no big source of job growth in sight—the state’s economy is just not growing fast enough to produce the jobs it would take to leave the recession behind, according to Tim Duy, a University of Oregon economist who produces a monthly index tracking items ranging from trucking activity to manufacturing.

 

June 10, 2010

1.     The Obama administration cautioned Senate leaders not to meddle with a proposed $3.4 billion settlement in a 14-year class-action lawsuit that accuses the government of mismanaging Indian trust funds:

·                    Attorney General Eric Holder and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote letters to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asking the Senate to pass the settlement without amendments, saying any changes could nullify the deal—the Senate faces a June 15^th deadline to vote on the settlement mandated by a federal court.

2.     The Senate rejected a challenge to Obama administration rules aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions from power plants and other big polluters—the defeated resolution would have denied the EPA the authority to move ahead with the rules, crafted under the federal Clean Air Act and set to go into effect in January:

·                    With President Obama’s broader green energy legislation struggling to gain a foothold in the Senate, the vote took on a greater significance as a signal of where lawmakers stand on dealing with climate change—the Republican-led effort to restrain the EPA was defeated with 47 senators voting yes and 53 voting no (both Oregon senators voted no).

3.     The Justice Department has decided that federal prosecutors should enforce crucial provisions in the Violence Against Women Act in cases involving gay and lesbian relationships, according to a newly disclosed memo:

·                    In a seven-page legal analysis, David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that federal prosecutors may use the law in cases of interstate stalking and domestic violence regardless of whether the victim or the defendant is a man or a woman—Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994.

4.     Researchers studying the flow of oil from the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico said that crude, in an amount of up to twice the amount previously thought, may be spewing into the sea since an oil rig exploded nearly two months ago—the new figures could mean anywhere from 42 million to more than 100 million gallons of oil may have already fouled the fragile waters:

·                    Louisiana politicians have been rushing to the defense of the oil-and-gas industry and have pleaded with Washington to bring back offshore drilling, warning that although they are angry over the disaster, state officials believe that the Obama administration’s temporary ban on drilling in the Gulf has sent Louisiana’s most lucrative industry into a death spiral.

5.     A picture of a steady but still sluggish recovery emerged from reports that showed fewer people are claiming unemployment aid while U.S. exports are slowing, and the reports echo Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s suggestion this week that the rebound will remain intact despite high unemployment, a fragile housing market, and Europe’s debt crisis:

·                    Initial unemployment claims fell by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 456,000, the Labor Department said, and that’s the third straight drop, but claims have not moved below where they stood in January, and it will take time to create enough jobs to bring down the 9.7% unemployment rate.

 

June 11, 2010

1.     A big drop in May retail sales has raised new concerns about the durability of the new economic recovery, according to the Commerce Department, who said that retail sales plunged 1.2% last month—the largest decline in eight months:

·                    Americans slashed spending on everything from cars to clothing to building materials, and economists are worried that households will start trimming outlays as they continue to be battered by high unemployment and uncertainty in the stock market—consumer spending accounts for 70% of total economic activity.

2.     President Obama called on Congress to pass a series of proposals to stimulate hiring by small businesses through tax credits and lending incentives, arguing that similar measures are partly responsible for the economic recovery during the past few months:

·                    Obama said that small businesses have historically been responsible for two out of three new jobs created in the U.S., and they need to be a crucial part of the economic recovery: “We need to make sure small companies are able to open up, expand, and add names to their payrolls,” Obama told reporters gathered in the Rose Garden.

 

June 12, 2010

        The Coast Guard sent a testy letter to BP’s chief operating officer demanding that BP step up its efforts to contain the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the week and telling the British company that its slow pace in stopping the spill is becoming increasingly alarming:

·                    The letter follows nearly two months of tense relations between BP and the government and reflects the growing frustration over the company’s inability to stop the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.