43 GOP Senators Threaten Obstruction Unless Consumer Protection Bureau Is Weakened

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 1, 2013 at 5:45 pm

When the Dodd-Frank financial reform law first passed, Senate Republicans refused to confirm a director for the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They promised to block any nominee — regardless of that nominee’s qualifications for the job — unless the Bureau was weakened and made subservient to the same bank regulators who failed to prevent the 2008 financial crisis.

President Obama was thus forced to recess appoint Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to be the Bureau’s first director. Now that Obama has renewed Cordray’s nomination, the Senate GOP is again promising to block any nominee unless the Bureau is watered down:

In a letter sent to President Obama on Friday, 43 Republican senators committed to refusing approval of any nominee to head the consumer watchdog until the bureau underwent significant reform. Lawmakers signing on to the letter included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

“The CFPB as created by the deeply flawed Dodd-Frank Act is one of the least accountable in Washington,” said McConnell. “Today’s letter reaffirms a commitment by 43 Senators to fix the poorly thought structure of this agency that has unprecedented reach and control over individual consumer decisions — but an unprecedented lack of oversight and accountability.” [...]

In particular, Republicans want to see the top of the bureau changed so it is run by a bipartisan, five-member commission, as opposed to a lone director.

They also want to see the bureau’s funding fall under the control of congressional appropriators — it currently is funded via a revenue stream directly from the Federal Reserve.

Republicans want to implement a commission (instead of a lone director) and subject the CFPB to the appropriations process in order to stuff it full of appointees with no interest in regulating and starve it of funds. The other financial system regulators that have to go before Congress for their funds already don’t have the resources to implement Dodd-Frank, thanks the House GOP, leaving large swathes of it unfinished. There are also a host of other reasons that the CFPB needs to be both independently funded and have a strong, independent director.

The CFPB has done important work on behalf of consumers, winning wide praise from consumer advocates and the financial industry. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have made it abundantly clear that they believe that blocking any and all nominees is an acceptable strategy.

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Justice

Hospital Chain Flouts NLRB Order After Court Ruling On Recess Appointments

By Nicole Flatow on Feb 1, 2013 at 5:15 pm

Last week’s radical federal appeals court ruling that called into question hundreds of presidential recess appointments made over the last 150 years is already taking a toll. While the decision finding unconstitutional President Obama’s appointment last January of three members to the National Labor Relations Board invalidated just one particular NLRB decision, a hospital chain declared this week that the ruling exempts them from all NLRB rulings over the last year, and is refusing to comply with rulings that require them to collect dues from union members, according to a Reuters exclusive:

Prime Healthcare was not a party in the cases involving union dues and internal investigations. But on Friday the company told the SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West that following the D.C. Circuit decision, it would disregard the NLRB rulings.

“The D.C. Circuit’s ruling from last Friday held all the Board’s cases decided by the recess appointments are void,” wrote Prime Healthcare’s assistant general counsel, Mary Schottmiller, in an email to Reuters. “As such, it would violate the law if we followed the Board’s rulings … regarding union dues and witness statements.”

Schottmiller told Reuters that Prime Healthcare’s response to the union needed no further elaboration because the D.C. Circuit’s opinion was clear. “Void is void,” she said, adding that all of the company’s hospitals would take the same legal position on the issue.

Contrary to Schottmiller’s statement, the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit did not hold that all cases decided by the recess appointees are void. It invalidated the one decision before the court, and only that one. The ruling does suggest that all other decisions are more susceptible to court challenge — if the D.C. Circuit’s ruling is not overturned, either on rehearing or by the U.S. Supreme Court. But other federal appeals courts have already come to opposite conclusions about such recess appointments in the past, and are incredibly likely to do the same in the future, so a challenge before another appeals court could have an entirely different outcome. As NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce pointed out in a statement he issued following the ruling, “It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.”

Although Prime Healthcare is definitively not entitled to defy NLRB orders based on the D.C. Circuit’s decision, the decision does create extreme uncertainty as entities subject to those rulings plan for the future. The ruling calls into question, at the very least, the concurrent appointment by President Obama of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, and the continuing validity of any other appointment made during an “intrasession” recess.

If the ruling’s reasoning were more broadly adopted, it would not only invalidate all recent NLRB decisions (a quorum of 3 members is required), all CFPB actions that required a director, and potentially affect the functioning of any other agencies with similar recess appointees. It would also so neuter the president’s power to make recess appointments that agencies lacking legally required personnel to do their work would be immobilized, thanks to Senate Republicans’ commitment to block absolutely anybody nominated to positions they’d rather see left empty.

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Health

The Super Bowl Ad That Coke And Pepsi Desperately Don’t Want You To See

By Sy Mukherjee on Feb 1, 2013 at 5:15 pm

This Sunday’s Super Bowl will be punctuated by dozens of ads featuring everything from adorable puppies to kids in Star Wars outfits. But one commercial you won’t see is a provocative ad by the carbonated beverage company SodaStream — an Israeli company that is no stranger to controversy — that takes on soda giants Coca Cola and Pepsi.

That’s because the ad has been pulled after pressure from the mammoth corporations led Super Bowl host CBS to take it down from its programming. Reportedly, Coke and Pepsi were upset with the commercials’ implied criticism of the soda industry’s use of plastic bottles and the subsequent harmful effects on the environment:

CBS rejected the ad, reportedly because of its direct assault on the big two carbonated-beverage makers (CBS didn’t return calls for comment). As the music from the movie Deliverance trills, deliverymen from Coke and Pepsi show up at a supermarket and rush to deliver their products. But the bottles pop and disappear, creating a mess. The ad then pans to a shot of a guy using SodaStream. The implication is that SodaStream will make bottled sodas irrelevant. [...]

Like many upstarts, SodaStream has taken an in-your-face, hyperbolic approach to marketing. The company doesn’t just suggest that SodaStream is a money-saving artisanal device. Rather, it suggests that some of the world’s popular brands (and biggest advertisers) are effectively evil forces. Why? They promote the production of polluting bottles and cans.

“SodaStream empowers consumers to make their own fresh soda at home in seconds, without the devastating environmental impact of plastic soda bottles and cans, which litter our parks and oceans,” said Daniel Birnbaum, the chief executive officer of SodaStream International, in a statement. “Our ad confronts the beverage industry and its arguably out-dated business model by showing people that there exists a smarter way to enjoy soft drinks. One day we will look back on plastic soda bottles the way we now view cigarettes; as a dangerous vice, not as an easily-accepted feature of everyday life.”

Watch the ad here:

Americans throw away enough trash every year to cover the state of Texas — twice. And this isn’t the first time that beverage giants have found themselves in hot water over public health issues. Just last month, Coca Cola launched a deceptive new ad campaign attempting to mask the harmful effects of calorie-laden sodas on America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics.

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Health

New USDA Rule Would Take Most Junk Food Out Of Schools

By Rebecca Leber on Feb 1, 2013 at 4:35 pm

The U.S. Agriculture Department proposed the first broad standards for healthier school snacks on Friday. Under the rule, required by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, most candy, sugar-filled sports drinks, and greasy foods would not be sold in school vending machines. Instead, they can offer snacks under 200 calories and low-calorie drinks.

Data supports a ban on unhealthy snacks in vending machines, showing that state regulations may have helped slow childhood obesity rates. However, the ban will not apply to food sold at after-school events or affect what kids bring in for lunch.

If passed, the proposal could go into effect as soon as 2014. First, it faces a 60 day comment period from proponents and critics. Taking backlash from Republican critics over its healthy school lunch rule, USDA modified standards in December to allow unlimited calories from meats and grains.

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Economy

Almost Two-Thirds Of Older Workers Plan To Delay Retirement

By Rebecca Leber on Feb 1, 2013 at 4:34 pm

While the richest Americans have fared well during the sluggish economic recovery, most Americans continue to struggle with falling wages and job uncertainty. According to a new report from the Conference Board, 62 percent of workers between 45 and 60 plan to delay their retirements, a stark jump from 2010 when 42 percent of workers planned a delay.

Job loss, financial loss, and a lower salary caused many workers to reshape their future plans:

Right now, more than half of middle class workers are expected to outlive their retirement savings, as pension plans have declined dramatically. Unfortunately, Republicans’ answer to the financial difficulties for two-thirds of Americans has been to propose raising Social Security and Medicare eligibility to age 70.

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Alyssa

Bradley Cooper On What ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ Can Teach Us About Mental Illness

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 1, 2013 at 4:32 pm

David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, nominated for eight Oscars, is hardly the first movie to find critical acclaim with a searing portrait of the impact of mental illness. But unlike many films, which portray people who suffer from mental health issues as either saintly or pitiable, Silver Linings Playbook, about Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a former high school teacher who is returning home from eight months at a mental hospital after he beat his wife’s lover and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, is savagely funny and often disarmingly sweet. It’s also a subtle vehicle for larger ideas about mental health care in America, ranging from the damage done by late-in-life diagnoses of mental illnesses, to the fact that for some people, treatment comes only after they come into contact with the criminal justice system, to training about mental health that could help everyone from teachers to cops do their jobs better.

I spoke with Bradley Cooper, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, the president of Give An Hour, which coordinates with volunteer mental health providers to get free treatment to American veterans, about the stigma around mental illness, the intersection of mental health care and law enforcement, and what kinds of conversations they hope Silver Linings Playbook can start. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length:

I wanted to ask you about the structural story of the movie, because the real tragedy of Silver Linings Playbook is that Pat’s biploar disorder doesn’t get diagnosed until it’s completely unmanageable. It’s awful that it gets to this point, but it’s also a way that he finally gets care, and that’s not a story we see very often.

Cooper: But reflective of what’s happening. I mean, that’s the whole point. Patrick Kennedy, he likens it to a diagnosis which happens at stage four of cancer. When that’s occurring, it’s a bleak horizon. The whole idea is to have it be diagnosed before he makes a plea bargain with the courts after he beat the hell out of a guy. That’s the only reason he even went to a hospital in the first place and was diagnosed there. But, if somebody recognized, or he had a venue when he was a teenager, to talk about the fact that his brain is working in such a way that make him feel like an outsider, like he’s not belonging, then maybe that would have been prevented, then maybe he wouldn’t have had to serve time and had a 500-yard restraining order out against him, and have no job.

At the same time, the movie treats the ongoing law enforcement involvement in Pat’s life—a local police officer is assigned to check up on him and respond to calls about him—as a good thing in Pat’s life. He doesn’t have a case worker, he has his therapist appointment once or twice a week, but the cops are actually doing a fairly good job of dealing with him.

Van Dahlen: That’s an unusual situation. The issue is having people in someone’s life who are consistent, who care. The police officer in this story was somebody who actually was willing to try when he could to be helpful, rather than just “Okay, I’m taking you back in.” And unfortunately, that’s not often the case in communities, nor is it the case that we’ve got teacher who have the knowledge, even though they care about the kids, they may not understand. So they’re not going to be the one that says “Maybe something else is going on here.” It’s educating all the way down the line in our communities so these folks are identified and have access and it’s part of our normal conversation. It should not be the case that someone has to keep feeling like “I’m going to try to keep it together, I’m going to try to keep it together.” We see this obviously with the service members, that whole culture, trying to keep it together when they can’t. Our society, unfortunately, puts a tremendous amount of pressure on people, and sometimes, they blow.

Cooper: The police officer for our story in the movie, he serves the same way that his friend Ronnie serves, his brother Jake and his parents, who say “You look great. Just adhere to the rules and you’ll be fine.” There’s no investigation into what’s going on. The cop doesn’t pull him aside at the movie theater and say “Explain to me what happens.” He goes “The restraining order. You want to go back to Baltimore?” Those aren’t ways of actually understanding the situation. And that’s the device we use in the movie to then introduce Tiffany Maxwell, who is Jennifer [Lawrence], and that’s the whole idea of somebody understanding him. And that’s where we can then use this movie in terms of spreading an awareness of people actually needing to investigate, and to inquire in what’s going on, so people feel free to share, instead of adhering to a set of rules, and that’s the way it is.
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Climate Progress

Chu Resigns, Writes Of Our ‘Moral Responsibility’ For Action Amid Growing Evidence We’re Making Weather More Extreme

By Joe Romm on Feb 1, 2013 at 4:12 pm

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation today. He sent out a remarkable letter to Energy Department employees.

Given that he has not spoken out strongly on the climate crisis since the start of his term, his words on the subject are striking. Here are some excerpts:

The average temperature of our planet is rising, with majority of the temperature increase occurring in the last thirty years. During the three decades from 1980 to 2011, the number of violent storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, as tabulated by the reinsurance company Munich Re, has increased more than three-fold. They also estimate that the financial losses follow a trend line that has gone from $40 billion to $170 billion dollars per year. Most of those losses were not insured, and the country suffering the largest losses by far is the United States. As the President said in his recent Inaugural Address, “some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activity has had a significant and likely dominant role in climate change. There is also increasingly compelling evidence that the weather changes we have witnessed during this thirty year time period are due to climate change.
Virtually all of the other OECD countries, and most developing countries including China, India, Mexico, and Brazil have accepted the judgment of climate scientists.
… China now exceeds the U.S. in internal deployment of clean energy and in government investments to further develop the technologies.
… the risks we run if we don’t change our course are enormous. Prudent risk management does not equate uncertainty with inaction….
The cost of renewable energy is rapidly becoming competitive with other sources of energy, and the Department has played a significant role in accelerating the transition to affordable, accessible and sustainable energy.
Ultimately we have a moral responsibility to the most innocent victims of adverse climate change. Those who will suffer the most are the people who are the most innocent: the world’s poorest citizens and those yet to be born. There is an ancient Native American saying: “We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” A few short decades later, we don’t want our children to ask, “What were our parents thinking? Didn’t they care about us?”

Chu has been an excellent Secretary of Energy, overseeing a near doubling of U.S. renewable energy capacity and a huge jump in clean energy R&D. You can see a comprehensive list of what has been achieved during Chu’s term in his letter.

My main disappointment with his tenure is that after beginning with such refreshing bluntness on the threat posed by unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions — see Steven Chu on climate change (2/09): “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California”– he was effectively muzzled by the White House.

But that was doubtless not his choice. Team Obama obviously didn’t want him or science advisor John Holdren — or anybody else, for that matter — speaking out strongly on the gravest preventable threat to modern human civilization (see “Team Obama Launched The Inane Strategy Of Downplaying Climate Change Back In March 2009“).

Chu will be missed.

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Security

Clicking Online Ads More Likely To Deliver Malware Than Surfing Porn Sites, Report Finds

By Andrea Peterson on Feb 1, 2013 at 4:00 pm

Your online habits may be less dangerous than you think if they involve the less savory aspects of the web: According to Cisco’s annual 2013 Security Report internet users are 182 times more likely to get malware from clicking on online ads than visiting a porn site. It turns out, the site on the gray or black market edges of the web most of us traditionally think of as dangerous aren’t the biggest threats to your online security, instead:

“The dangers […] are often hidden in plain sight through exploit-laden online ads that are distributed to legitimate websites, or hackers targeting the user community on the common sites they use most.”

Those common sites include online shopping and search engines, which were 21 and 27 times more likely respectively to deliver malicious content than counterfeit software sites according to Cisco. Unsurprisingly, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports of the 81% of American adults who use the internet some 91 percent report using search engines to find information and 71 percent buy products online.

Of course, many online users (around 10 percent according to one 2012 study) are already using ad-blocking software to avoid being served possibly malicious ads. And the proportion of online resources and time devoted to racy material is up for debate, with just 4 percent of the 1 million most popular of sites in 2010 revolving around sex and 13 percent of searches being for erotic content.

Beyond the eye-catching numbers about the relative safety of surfing for porn, the Cisco report identifies a number of other emerging threats — key among them the rise of Android malware exploits and the possible info-security minefield represented by the internet of things.
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Justice

NRA Publishes Enemies List With 506 Names

By Ian Millhiser on Feb 1, 2013 at 3:45 pm

Late last year, the National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm published a Nixonian enemies list naming organizations and individuals that “lent monetary, grassroots or some other type of direct support to anti-gun organizations” or have otherwise backed efforts to promote gun safety. The list totals 506 names, including major medical associations, law enforcement organizations, former presidents and a long list of celebrities. Here are five examples of the kinds of groups the NRA views as its enemies:

Doctors & Nurses

As it turns out, the sort of people tasked with saving the lives of victims of gun violence would rather that America’s trauma centers were not quite so busy. A short list of medical and nursing organizations on the NRA’s enemies list includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and the American Nurses Association, in addition to Ronald Reagan’s Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Educators

It turns out that sort of people who devote their lives to preparing our children for adulthood don’t much like to learn that a young life has been cut short by gun violence either. The NRA’s enemies list includes the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Education Association, the National Association of School Psychologists and the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

Law Enforcement

It also turns out that people who put risk their lives to keep our streets and schools safe don’t much like being in the line of fire. The National Association of Police Organizations, the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers, and the Police Foundation are all on the NRA’s enemies list.

People of Faith

The NRA may not want Americans to “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” but many people of faith take the Bible’s command seriously enough to earn a place on the gun lobby’s list of enemies. They include the American Jewish Committee, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Congress of National Black Churches, the Episcopal Church’s Washington Office, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs, the United States Catholic Conference, the United Methodist Church General Board & Church Society, and the United Church of Christ Office for Church in Society.

Boy Bands, Dweezil Zappa and MacGyver

Above anything, the NRA’s enemies list reveals its capacity to hold a grudge. It includes a long, long list of celebrities, many of which are far from Hollywood’s elite circles. It is not clear why the nation’s top gun organization feels so threatened by Art Garfunkel, for example. Or why Washington’s most heavily armed lobbyists fear a ragtag list of former talk show hosts, washed up actors and what appears to be the entirety of Frank Zappa’s progeny. Gun owners beware! Both Boyz II Men and ‘NSYNC are coming for your guns, and the NRA is very, very afraid.

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Economy

Two Charts That Make The Case For More Infrastructure Spending

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 1, 2013 at 3:25 pm

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the U.S. economy added 157,000 jobs last month, which is not enough to quickly bring down the unemployment rate. At the same time, America faces a huge infrastructure gap that is going to cost it 3.5 million jobs over the next decade.

The obvious solution should be more infrastructure spending, especially considering that the U.S. can borrow at historically low rates. This would help address the twin problems of a deteriorating infrastructure and persistently high unemployment. As this chart from BLS shows, U.S. construction jobs are far below where they were a decade ago:

As Calculated Risk noted, public construction spending “is now 17% below the peak in March 2009 and at the lowest level since 2006.” This chart shows the year over year change in construction spending since 1994 (the yellow-ish line is public spending):

Study after study has shown that infrastructure spending has a huge return in terms of jobs and economic growth. According to Smart Growth America “every $1 billion in additional funds committed to highway projects between 2009 and 2010 produced 2.4 million job-hours.” As Kristina Costa and Adam Hersh noted, “the return on investment on transit projects was even higher, with 4.2 million job-hours produced by every $1 billion in investment.” Meanwhile, the San Francisco Federal Reserve found that “each dollar invested into infrastructure boosts state economies by at least two dollars.”

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