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Security

Obama Announces New Plans To Reduce Global Nuclear Weapons Stockpile

By Zack Beauchamp on Jun 19, 2013 at 11:33 am

President Obama delivers speech on foreign policy at Brandenburg Gate on June 19, 2013. (Credit: AP)

In a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, a historic symbol of the end of the Cold War, President Obama announced new plans to move towards reducing the American and global nuclear weapons stockpiles in order to reduce the risks these dangerous weapons pose to humanity as a whole.

Limiting the spread of nuclear weapons has long been a priority for Obama, dating at least back to his time as a Senator, when he introduced and authored several bills on the topic. In April 2009, the president declared moving towards “a world without nuclear weapons” to be a key American foreign policy objective.

The Administration has principally pursued this goal through treaty negotiations with Russia, which produced the “New START” treaty in 2010. Under New START, each former Cold War adversary agreed to cut their deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550, a 30 percent reduction from the previous 2002 bilateral agreement between the two states. Notably, however, New START placed no limits on non-deployed warheads.

The initiative Obama announced on Wednesday at Brandenburg would build on New START by cutting US and Russian deployed warhead levels by (ideally) another third, though the final reductions would likely be determined in negotiations between the two states. “After a comprehensive review,” Obama said, “I’ve determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third. And I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.”

The “comprehensive review” of US nuclear posture assessed what sort of reductions would be consistent with the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a document that served as the blueprint for the Obama Administration’s nuclear strategy. The NPR concluded, among other things, that the United States would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and that “[t]he role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security and military strategy has been reduced significantly in recent decades, but further steps can and should be taken at this time.” Obama also proposed negotiations on reducing U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, as well as a new treaty on the production of fissile material and renewed effort to pass the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty limiting nuclear testing.

The conclusion that the US could reduce its nuclear arsenal without threatening the credibility of its deterrent is supported by independent analysis. As CAP’s Larry Korb writes, “analyses by the Air War College, Gen. James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of U.S. Strategic Command; and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) all argue that these numbers of deployed and reserve nuclear weapons and warheads are far more than the United States needs for the purpose of deterrence in the 21st century.” Korb also finds that moderate reductions in nuclear stockpiles could save “tens of billions” of dollars over the next decade through reduced maintenance and repair costs.

Even though the president’s plan “affirms that the United States will maintain a credible [nuclear] deterrent,” it’s not clear nuclear weapons really do serve that purpose. There are only nine nuclear-armed countries globally, which means that there’s a very small sample size for drawing conclusions about nuclear weapons deterring major war. While there is some statistical support for the idea that nuclear-armed states are less likely to wage major wars, there’s also evidence that they exacerbate the risk of limited use of force between those powers. This seemingly contradictory finding is called the “stability-instability paradox” by international relations scholars, and it raises concerns that these low-level conflicts might escalate unpredictably.

Nuclear accidents and terrorism also exacerbate the risks posed by nuclear weapons. There have been several “near-miss” cases wherein Russian and American early warning systems misidentified blips as missile launches from the other side, nearly leading to a misguided nuclear response. The NPR identifies the risk that terrorists acquire poorly secured nuclear weapons or fissile material from a place like Pakistan or from a rogue state like North Korea as an equally critical concern for US nuclear policy as traditional deterrence.

Climate Progress

Is Obama So Feckless On Climate Change That He’s Influenced By Meaningless Dial Testing?

By Joe Romm on Jun 18, 2013 at 6:18 pm

Juliet Eilperin drops this vial of nitroglycerin into her latest Washington Post piece:

… according to several people familiar with his private remarks at the home of clean-tech entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, Obama expressed concerns about the political pain involved, saying that “dial testing” of his State of the Union speech showed that the favorability ratings “plummeted” when he vowed to act on climate change if Congress refused to do so.

Not exactly “profiles in courage.” Not exactly “the Environmental President.”

This may not come as a big surprise given how Obama’s once soaring rhetoric on the moral urgency of climate action has recently crash landed.

But what makes this particularly feckless is that dial testing is all but meaningless. Compared to using polls to determine political positions — a common if widely criticized practice — using dial tests to do so is like consulting your horoscope.

For those who aren’t political junkies, I recommend this introduction, “What Are Those Squiggly Lines on CNN Telling You?”

Dial-testing relies on hand-held dials that can be turned to register positive and negative reactions in real time. Participants in the focus group — 30 is a typical size — sit together and are instructed to continually adjust the dial to reflect how they react to a word, phrase, or sentence.

Here is a typical expert view of the value of dial group information:

Cliff Zukin, director of the public-policy program at Rutgers University and former head of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, argues that dial-testing is unhelpful and misleading. He points to the fact that the sample of voters is far smaller than even the tiniest poll.

“It has no scientific validity — it’s not a sample of anything that has generalized validity,” he says. What’s more, he argues, it introduces inaccurate numbers that assume a power of their own. “The problem with bad numbers is that people tend to believe their eyes.”

So the President is basing his climate policy decisions on something that has no scientific validity. Awesome. Perhaps next time it’ll be Tarot cards — or denier blogs, which are much the same thing.

Even worse, it’s entirely possible that respondents give a negative dial reaction for something that in fact works.

CNN’s focus group is run by Rita Kirk, who concedes:
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LGBT

President Obama: ‘We’ve Got To Keep Pushing’ For LGBT Equality

By Zack Ford on Jun 14, 2013 at 9:09 am

At the White House Pride Month Reception Thursday night, President Obama recommitted his support to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and other protections for LGBT people. Still, he continued to encourage activists to continue to push him and others toward complete equality for all people:

OBAMA: And as we saw earlier this year with the gun safety debate, sometimes this stuff takes time, and it’s frustrating. You take two steps forward and sometimes there’s a step back. But I deeply believe in something that Martin Luther King, Jr. said often, and that is that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Eventually, America gets it right.

Now that doesn’t mean we can be patient. We know from our own history that change happens because people push to make it happen. We’ve got to do the hard work of educating others, showing empathy to others, changing hearts and minds. And when we do that, then change occurs. It doesn’t come always as quickly as we like, but progress comes.

Watch his entire address:

Obama noticeably did not mention the executive order that he could sign right now to protect LGBT employees of federal contractors from discrimination, including many small businesses that would not be covered by ENDA. In fact, the White House has taken to describing such an order as “hypothetical,” despite understandings that it had been drafted and simply delayed well over a year ago. During the 2008 campaign, Obama promised to sign this executive order, and aside from championing ENDA — which is unlikely to pass a Republican-controlled House — the White House has offered no explanation for ignoring this simple fix that could protect 16 million people. Democratic National Committee treasurer Andy Tobias has confirmed there continues to be a “process” underway, but has not revealed any of the specifics that explain the delay.

LGBT

White House Excoriates House Republicans For Military ‘License To Discriminate’ Amendment

By Zack Ford on Jun 12, 2013 at 9:14 am

Last week, Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee advanced another “license to discriminate” amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, among many other amendments. This provision would limit commanding officers’ ability to discipline servicemembers for anti-gay bullying and harassment until after they “actually harm good order and discipline.”

The White House responded to the myriad of amendments with a threat to veto, specifically addressing the “rights of conscience” measure as an area of concern:

The Administration strongly objects to section 530, which would require the Armed Forces to accommodate, except in cases of military necessity, “actions and speech” reflecting the “conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the member.” By limiting the discretion of commanders to address potentially problematic speech and actions within their units, this provision would have a significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.

President Obama similarly condemned a weaker version of these “license to discriminate” protections that was included in last year’s defense budget as “unnecessary and ill-advised.”

Today, another classic anti-gay amendment will be considered: Rep. Tim Huelskamp’s (R-KS) recurring proposal to ban same-sex marriages on military bases, even in states where they are legal.

Climate Progress

U.S. And China Aim To Phase Down Use Of Potent Greenhouse Gases Known As HFCs

By Ryan Koronowski on Jun 8, 2013 at 7:12 pm

The United States and China announced on Saturday that they will work together and with other countries to “phase down” the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are extremely potent greenhouse gases. A global phaseout would be the equivalent of cutting 90 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping just finished a two-day meeting in California initially thought to be more of an unscripted chance for the two leaders to forge a personal relationship than a meeting with any specific policy agenda. This is Xi’s first meeting with Obama as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, which is the analogue to the Chinese presidency. Recently China has made news on plans to cut carbon emissions but then appeared to partially walk some of that news back. The fact that powerful greenhouse gases were on the agenda during their talks is a welcome sign. And if the so-called “Group of Two” regularly acts to reduce the use of substances that cause climate change, it makes it much more likely that the rest of the world will agree to do the same.

Congressional Democrats urged the President to bring up HFCs during the meeting in a letter on Wednesday. According to the White House, the specific agreement between China and the U.S. reads:

Regarding HFCs, the United States and China agreed to work together and with other countries through multilateral approaches that include using the expertise and institutions of the Montreal Protocol to phase down the production and consumption of HFCs, while continuing to include HFCs within the scope of UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol provisions for accounting and reporting of emissions.

HFCs are used in air conditioning, refrigeration, and if released, stay in the atmosphere for 15 years. Their use has skyrocketed as a replacement for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the ozone-destroying compounds whose production was banned in 1990 through a global agreement known as the Montreal Protocol. This agreement was signed in 1987 and required reductions in CFC use but an amendment in 1990 required a complete phaseout. Every country in the world is a party to this agreement. At the time, experts saw HCFs (and HCFCs, which were eventually regulated under the Montreal Protocol) as “one of the best substitutes for reducing stratospheric ozone loss.” In the 1990s, all new vehicle air conditioning systems began to use HFCs.

Yet HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases. While carbon dioxide is the most famous human emission that causes climate change, other so-called “super pollutants” are responsible for nearly half of global warming. HFCs are one of these super pollutants. Automobile manufacturers are aware that the air conditioning systems they sell contain substances that do this, and they encourage consumers to recycle their vehicles so that chemicals like HFCs can be reclaimed.

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Justice

How President Obama Went From Decrying The Surveillance State To Ruling One

By Andrea Peterson on Jun 7, 2013 at 3:00 pm

(Credit: Politico)

On the campaign trail, candidate Barack Obama decried the privacy invasions of the Bush surveillance program in 2007, saying it put “forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.” Though these comments referred to different (and, often, illegal) programs than the ones now being widely discussed, we now know that surveillance programs started under the Bush administration have been extensively expanded during his presidency.

First, The Guardian exposed the tip of the iceberg, releasing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order compelling Verizon to turn over metadata on nearly all calls, such as phone numbers, time stamps, and cell site location data. It was later revealed that this was a continuation of a seven year program involving all major telecommunications companies. This program would have been significantly curtailed, however, if a younger Obama’s attempt to limit such surveillance had succeeded. In 2005, then-Senator Obama co-sponsored the SAFE Act, which would have would drastically limited this sort of dragnet surveillance by amending the USA PATRIOT Act to require intelligence agencies show “specific and articulable facts” that a target was an “agent of a foreign power” before accessing phone records.

Soon after news of the Verizon order leaked, more details about the broad scope of American surveillance programs came out. On Thursday, The Guardian and the Washington Post revealed two programs, codenamed PRISM and BLARNEY with broad online surveillance implications — PRISM deals with the content of foreigners’ online communication (but with a very low threshold of proof that likely resulted in many American citizens’ privacy being “incidentally” compromised); BLARNEY appears to involve a broad collection of digital metadata. While tech companies have denied direct access to their servers or to their data as compelled by the law and the Post has since backtracked on that aspect of their report, that doesn’t rule out the NSA obtaining copies of that data. Subsequent coverage by the Wall Street Journal suggests the government also has access to credit card and Internet service provider (ISP) data.

But while revelations about both programs produced outrage, a White House spokesman told reporters aboard Air Force One Thursday before the PRISM story broke that the phone log data collection was a “critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats” and that “[t]he president welcomes a discussion of the trade-offs between security and civil liberties.”

Unlike the warrantless wiretapping programs of the Bush administration, the Obama administration asserts PRISM is legal under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). That section stemmed from the Protect America Act (PAA), signed by President Bush in 2007, which many at the time warned could end up being used to implement broad surveillance programs with “no meaningful judicial oversight.”

A statement from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declassifying some details of the phone data collection program released late last night decried the leaks that exposed the surveillance programs as threatening to do “potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.”

President Obama’s transition from a Senator and presidential candidate who objected to the specter of a surveillance state existing outside of the law (either on ideological grounds or to score political points) to a president who embraced the the expansion of of similar programs after they gained a cloak of legal legitimacy is perhaps unsurprising: The power and access to intelligence information that comes with the position can change perspectives. But the pre-presidential Obama seemed to understand the way an overaggressive surveillance state can transform society.

Climate Progress

Obama CYA On KXL? President’s Once Soaring Rhetoric On Moral Urgency Of Climate Action Crash Lands

By Joe Romm on Jun 7, 2013 at 12:07 pm

Once upon a time there was a second term President who understood that the science was in on the danger posed by carbon pollution.

This visionary understood “heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and more intense” as he made clear in his State of The Union Address: “We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.”

This leader spoke boldly of our moral obligation to act on climate in his second inaugural address: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. 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.

But, lo, a few months passed and he visited the Jersey Shore, much of which is still rebuilding from superstorm Sandy, yet his extended remarks made no mention whatsoever of climate change.

Then, just yesterday, he offered up these uber-lame comments at a California fundraiser:

When it comes to what I think will be one of the most important decisions that we make as a nation — this generation makes — the issue of climate change, we’re not going to be able to make those changes solely through a bunch of individual decisions that are made. We’re going to have to make some collective decisions about how much do we care about this when the science is irrefutable. And that means government is going to have a role to play in helping to organize clean energy research, and making sure that we’re taking into account the pollution that we’re sending into the air and that we’re encouraging new ways of delivering energy and using it more efficiently. We’re going to have a role to play.

“We’re going to have to make some collective decisions about how much do we care about this when the science is irrefutable…. We’re going to have a role to play”? What the hell happened to the guy who said:

But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.

This latest Presidential gobbledygook sounds a lot like preemptive cover-your-ass DC-speak for “I’m going to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

And what the heck does this even mean: “when the science is irrefutable”? The fossil-fuel-funded disinformers already refute the irrefutable and will do so long past the time it is too late to stop catastrophe. What happened to the guy who spoke of accepting “the overwhelming judgment of science”?

For the record, the National Academy of Sciences explained back in 2010 that man-made global warming is a “settled fact“:
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Health

President Obama To Tout Health Law’s Hispanic Outreach In California

By Sy Mukherjee on Jun 7, 2013 at 11:55 am

President Barack Obama will emphasize efforts to enroll young Latinos for health coverage under his signature reform law during remarks in San Jose, California on Friday.

Specifically, the president will tout a public-private partnership between the California Endowment and Spanish-language media outlets including Univision, Telemundo, La Opinion, and Radio Bilingue, according to senior administration officials. Obama will hold up this partnership as a “model” for the rest of the country.

White House officials say that such arrangements are critical to overcoming language barriers when reaching out to poor Latinos, especially in highly uninsured states with large Hispanic populations such as California, Texas, and Florida. Over 15 million of America’s 48 million uninsured residents live in just those three states, and the vast majority of them are Hispanic.

The California Endowment will give the Spanish media organizations $225 million to reach out to the public through local television, radio, and print advertising that aims to identify, educate, and enroll uninsured Latinos into the state’s expanded Medicaid program or individual coverage on the Obamacare marketplace. That could prove a lofty goal considering that there are over 4 million uninsured Latinos in the Golden State.

If Obamacare enrollment efforts prove successful, some Hispanics could benefit immensely from access to health coverage. In California, 30 percent of all Hispanics lack health insurance. In Texas and Florida, the figures are 38 percent and 36 percent, respectively. Many of those Latinos suffer from manageable chronic conditions such as diabetes at almost double the rate that non-Latinos do. With insurance, these Americans will be able to access preventative and primary care services that might prevent their underlying health problem from evolving into a costly — and potentially deadly — ailment.

California has been determined to effectively implement Obamacare by expanding Medicaid, constructing its own insurance marketplace, and aggressively engaging in public education efforts such as the partnership with Spanish-language media. But GOP-led states have proven far more reticent.

Texas legislators recently voted against expanding Medicaid under the health law, which amounts to denying basic health insurance to 1.5 million poor Americans. In Florida, lawmakers shot down Medicaid expansion despite a surprising endorsement of the program by the state’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Neither Texas nor Florida will be operating their own Obamacare marketplaces.

However, many Latinos won’t benefit from the law irrespective of federal or state action. Obamacare explicitly prohibits the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants from accessing Medicaid or federal subsidies to purchase private insurance on the marketplaces.

Even undocumented Latinos who gain provisional legal status under comprehensive immigration reform (if it ends up passing Congress) likely won’t have access to health entitlements, despite the fact that denying them affordable health care access will only exacerbate their medical problems and force the government to pay more for their care in the future.

Health

President Obama Urges Americans To Bring ‘Mental Illness Out Of The Shadows’

By Sy Mukherjee on Jun 3, 2013 at 6:25 pm

President Obama advocated on Monday to elevate the conversation about mental illness to “a national level,” with the goal of eliminating the stigma that surrounds mental health issues and expanding access to treatment.

The president made his comments during opening remarks to a day-long White House conference on mental health. The conference was inspired by last December’s tragic shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, whose perpetrator — Adam Lanza — had a history of mental health problems.

“All of you have shown an extraordinary commitment to what is a critical goal — and that is to make sure that people aren’t suffering in silence, and that we have the capacity to pool together all the resources and support and love that’s out there to go after an extraordinary challenge in our society,” Obama said to an audience comprised of mental health patients, their families, advocates, and medical professionals.

Obama’s rhetoric underscores the reality that the current U.S. mental health care system leaves millions of Americans by the wayside. Since the beginning of the recession, states have made massive cuts to safety net programs for the mentally ill. In Nevada, the cuts have been so dire that one state hospital began illegally dumping its homeless mentally ill patients onto buses for California, claiming that services would be more expansive there despite the Golden State’s similar cuts to mental health services. Affordable mental care is hard to come by for Americans who are financially better off, too. Inpatient services for mental health problems often have prohibitively expensive out-of-pocket costs, and many providers don’t accept private insurance due to low reimbursement rates.

Obama also empathized with the struggles that mentally ill Americans and their families face because of the stigma surrounding mental health issues, calling for a movement aimed at “bringing mental illness out of the shadows.”

“We want to let people living with mental health challenges know that they are not alone, and we’ve got to be making sure that we’re committed to support those fellow Americans. Because struggling with a mental illness, or caring for someone who does, can be isolating… It begins to feel as if, not only are you alone, but that you shouldn’t burden others with the challenge. And the darkness, day in, day out — what some call a cloud you just can’t seem to escape — begins to close in,” said the president.

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Education

Obama To Call On Congress To Avoid Doubling Student Loan Interest Rates

By Travis Waldron on May 31, 2013 at 10:45 am

Obama speaks about student loan rates during the 2012 election. (Credit: Getty)

President Obama will today launch a campaign aimed at preventing interest rates on federal student loans from doubling at the start of July, gathering college students at the White House in an effort to challenge Congress to prevent the rate increase. The White House has already re-upped its “don’t double my rate” campaign, which helped force Congress’ hand in passing a temporary fix in 2012, on social media.

The current rate on federal loans is 3.4 percent; that would double on July 1 without action from Congress. House Republicans approved a plan to halt the increase last week that would tie student loan rates to interest rates on 10-year Treasury bonds, which are currently at 2.5 percent and expected to rise above 5 percent over the next five years as the economy improves. Obama’s plan is similar in that it would also tie rates to Treasury notes.

But the White House has threatened to veto the House plan over a major difference between the two plans. Obama’s proposal would apply fixed rates to student loans, so that a borrower was guaranteed the interest rate he or she agreed to when the loan was originated. The House plan, however, would cap rates at 8.5 percent but would not fix them, meaning borrowers would be subject to varying rates over the life of the loan.

Under the House plan, a student who took out the maximum amount of federal loans would pay $14,430 in interest, nearly $2,000 more than they would pay if rates doubled as scheduled and twice what they would pay under current rates. “The bill’s changes would impose the largest interest rate increases on low- and middle-income students and families who struggle most to afford a college education,” the White House said in issuing the veto threat last week.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have introduced other proposals for dealing with interest rates on student loans. Gillibrand’s legislation would force the Dept. of Education to refinance any student loan with an interest rate above 4 percent to a fixed 4 percent loan, a plan the Center for American Progress estimates would save borrowers $14.5 billion in the first year alone. Warren’s plan would tie student loan rates to those received by large banks, which access federal loans at miniscule interest rates. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is also exploring ways to reduce the burden of student debt on borrowers.

Americans now hold more than $1 trillion in student loan debt, and they defaulted on those loans in record numbers during the first three months of 2013. The amount of debt is holding back the economy, as young borrowers are struggling to afford mortgages and other loans as they pay for the cost of education.

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