Some Republican Senators are now calling on President Obama to address Congress about the current mission in Libya as it approaches the 60 day period. Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Tom Coburn and several others believe President Obama should abide by the War Powers Act. They say he has already violated the law but not informing Congress about the current operations in Libya. The War Powers Act would prevent U.S. forces for continuing military operations in Libya without the approval of Congress. Sen. Rand Paul is even threatening to take this before the U.S. Supreme Court if Obama does not bring this before Congress. Paul believes that it is crucial that executive power to launch military operations be restrained by Congress to prevent the President from having to much power. Fortunately not all Republicans agree. Sen. John McCain a very vocal advocate of U.S. and NATO military operations against Muammar Gaddafi's forces. McCain has been attempting to create a bipartisan resolution to support the Libyan rebels. McCain believes that War Powers Act is unconstitutional and therefore does not need to be followed. He also stated that there has not been any President, Republican or Democrat, that has recognized the law's constitutionality. I agree with Sen. McCain. The Wars Powers Act has never really been a practiced law by any President. American and NATO involvement in general has been small and inconsistent with bombing raids against Gadaffi's installations and heavy weaponry. American involvement is so minimal that U.S. forces are not any high risk. I believe Sen. Rand Paul and the six other Republican Senators demanding the War Powers Act be enacted are doing this for partisan reasons more than the actual belief that the President should submit himself before Congress to continue military operations.

The revolving door in U.S. politics, again

Barely four months after the Federal Communications Commission contentiously allowed for the Comcast/NBC Universal media merger, making Comcast the worlds largest cable, broadcast, motion picture, and yes theme park conglomerate, a former FCC official joins their ranks. 

 

Merideth Attwell Baker, the former FCC official, announced May 18th that she is leaving the FCC when her term expires in June. Baker's new title: Senior vice president for government affairs for NBC Universal. ...Really?

Baker, one of two Republicans on the five-member commission, recently criticized the speed of the commission’s review of the Comcast-NBC merger, which took 355 days. The F.C.C. voted 4-1 in January for approval, subject to several conditions. "[It] took too long, in my view," she said. I bet it did. 

Among criticizers is The Daily Show's John Stewart (scroll to 1:30):

Other criticizers accuse the deal of allowing Comcast an unfair monopoly in many sectors, making way for unfair pricing and preventing relevant competition. 

 

Another blatant example of a so-called public servant taking advantage of their position to cash in at a company they are supposed to be regulating. This is another all-too-common example of the disease of cronyism that exists within the U.S. government. 

Is the War Powers Act now defunct?

As U.S. involvement in Libya approaches the 60 day mark, the War Power Act's modern relevancy is brought into question. 

For those unfamiliar, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a federal law restricting the power of the President to commit the U.S. to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress. Specifics of the law allow the President to send U.S. forces for a period of 90 days without direct allowance. Now 60 days into conflict in Libya, if Obama fails to get congressional support for the military action, he must end U.S. involvement by mid-June. Or does he?

Congress's only real power to enforce the rules of the WPA is to cut funding for the military operations, but they are clearly not willing to do that: what Congress wants to be accused of cutting off money for active duty troops? Also, no President has ever wanted to go to war without some semblance of political support...there has always been late-in-the-game dealmaking between the two branches. We've heard NOTHING about the WPA in the news or from the Presidents office, it's not even on the radar. 

Clinton received clearance from Congress after bombing raids carried out in Kosovo. George W. Bush also gained approval for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Does the WPA allow the President to wage war without our consent? If Obama fails to get formal Congressional support for our action in Libya, the War powers Act will silently die in the shadows. The funny thing is, it will die during the tenure of a President who pledged to put an end to unconsidered warmaking.

The Next "Bubble" Crisis: College

An opinion brief on the website "The Week" called "Is Education the Next Bubble?" looks at people who want to give advice to those seeking higher education. It was interesting to me to see the Founder of Pay Pal, the payment website famous by EBay, encouraging young people to not bother investing in an overpriced education. As I agree with this statement, we must be real and say that at this point, all education can be considered overpriced. Seeing our educational system here in NH, our tuition will only rise if our state government votes to cut our state university budget. A commenter on this article said that he is seeking to cut costs of getting an education, but even community college is becoming more and more an investment.

Another interesting aspect of this conversation is the old idea of college being an investment that will definitely have a return. The reason so many people these days are reluctant to pay high amounts for education is the fact that jobs are not available after graduation anymore to give back these said returns. I wasn't very impressed to see one quote from the article: "Grad school has become a socially acceptable way to drink beer, read, and go into massive debt in your 20s" said a writer for The Atlantic. As someone who wishes to soon begin to apply for grad school and save money in order to pursue that goal, I am not excited for an atmosphere such as that described.

I believe it is somewhat accurate to label this as a bubble crisis, as we are so fond as to put that label on anything that gives our wallets heartache. I think that the only way our society will relieve the pressures of high priced higher education is if the government stops cutting money out of budgets that are for education. This seems like such a simple idea, yet no one seems to be acting on this principle.

http://theweek.com/article/index/214400/is-education-the-next-bubble

CO Senate Bill 244 Dies in House

The Colorado State House voted down a bill Friday to take adultery laws off the books. The bill, which was voted down in committee, was initiated in the State Senate and would have removed the adultery statue and a similar statute, "promoting sexual immorality" [by renting a room to unmarried people who have sex]. The bill passed the democratically controlled senate but was defeated by republicans and one democrat in the House Health and Environment Committee.

According to the Denver Post, members of Colorado Family Action, a branch of Colorado Springs based Focus on The Family lobbed republican representatives not to pass the bill. The Director of Colorado Family Action said, “Colorado Family Action does not believe that as a state, we should encourage the moral decay of our society, no matter how archaic the laws may be and appear to some.”

When questioned, members of the House Health and Environment Committee said they did not want to vote for a bill they believed endorsed/excused adultery.

Regardless of the legislatures failure to remove these statutes it is unlikely that they could ever be enforced. Nathan Koppel, writing for the Wall Street Journal’s law blog notes that, “they are presumptively invalid under Lawrence v Texas” the 2003 Supreme Court case in which Texas’ anti-sodomy laws were overturned.

In any event, it is nice to see that someone else’s state legislature is behaving as well as our own.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/05/09/adultery-remains-a-no-no-in-colorado/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=smallbusiness

http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_18013601

Partisanship and Online Information

It appears, based on this New York Times article, that increasing numbers of Americans are receiving their political information from online sources. It should be no surprise that newspapers are no longer the primary source for political news, especially when the internet offers free information during troubled economic times. In that sense it is easy to understand to increase of internet use pertaining to political issues. The problem appears to be the content being spread by such websites. As we discussed in class, there is a clearly a strong partisan message accompanying most political blogs and websites. Teddy Wayne, the author of this article, observed these statistics in a Pew Internet Report that is linked at the bottom of this posting. While I agree that there are a lot of strong partisan messages offered through internet sites, and a lot of pure crap as well, is this really such a concern or a surprise to anyone? And who is the New York Times to talk? They are easily one of the most biased newspapers on earth. That is not to say that they are the only one by any means, but would the newspaper really be an adequate alternative to online political education? People tend to visit sites and read papers that reflect their own ideas. They could read opposing sources to get a relatively objective look at issues, but let's face it, Americans would be less likely to buy two newspapers just to compare them than they would be to visit two websites woth the intent of doing the same thing. Maybe internet sites have an unseen perk?
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/The-Internet-and-Campaign-2010/Summary.aspx

"Drill, Baby, Drill"

While I am upset that gas prices are going up, the fact that we have not learned our lesson and haven't started taking a preventative approach to the oil issue is rather discouraging. We use one quarter of the worlds oil while we only own two percent of its reserves and only account for 4.5% of the worlds population. Therefore drilling itself will not ensure any sort of energy independence. 

Last Thursday the House passed the first of three bills which will ask the Interior Department to accelerate drilling permits without proper environmental reviews. One of the bills that passed is called the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act.The bills, which are expected to clear the House but not the Democratically controlled Senate, would expand drilling to offshore Virginia and require the Interior Department to act within 60 days on permits for companies searching for oil offshore. After BP did we not learn anything, these bills are reinstating the leases and opening up protected coastal waters. Have we already forgotten the event that released 5 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico, did we forget that we released 53,000 barrels a day for more than three months? The Energy Information Agency projected that there would be no price impact whatsoever. Thus, focusing on energy efficiency should be a top priority. 

Senator Max Baucus in Montana is looking to draft a bill that would repeal the $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to the oil industry and use the proceeds to develop efficient cars etc. Oil companies have money and they should be the ones paying out of pocket. Ending tax incentives for the five largest oil and gas companies that announced the billions of dollars that they had made in profits is necessary. Last week, Exxon Mobil reported profits of nearly $11 billion in the first three months of the year, a 69 percent increase over last year. Meanwhile, Shell reported profits of $7 billion, ConocoPhillips reported profits of $3 billion, Chevron reported $6.2 billion and BP reported $5.5 billion. 

The BP crisis was supposed to be a wake up call. The attitude among Americans is not helping either. We need to start thinking for the long term rather than complaining about the 4$ at the gas pump. Right now we are on a one way track to a larger economic recession. In a time of desperate need for jobs, why are we not focusing on energy efficiency. Republicans are trying increasingly hard to ease the pain at the pump while accusing Democrats of wanting to be hooked on foreign oil. They continue to use the argument about the cost of gas to get legislation passed. More drilling domestically does not mean lower gas prices, it just means more profits for Big Oil. Many experts say that legislation will not reduce the price at the pump. 

Oil is traded on a world market, and the United States does not have enough petroleum to increase the global supply, which would reduce demand and thus the price for fuel.What comes out of the outer continental shelf is about 1 percent of the world total, and that's not enough to affect world prices. The oil and gas industry has actually given $8.8 million to the campaigns to the drilling bill's lead sponsors. This is not a fair system, the American government is only further proving that it choses big money over national priorities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/opinion/07sat1.html?ref=politics

Providence Leading the Way

In a time when so many people are without jobs in our country, it is very encouraging to come across headlines such as this: "Providence rehires roughly 75 percent of laid off teachers" on Yahoo News. The article claimed that the Rhode Island capital has given 1,445 teaching jobs back, out of the 2,000 individuals that it had dismissed in February. This generous act by the state was apparently "part of an effort to boost the city's precarious finances".
Don't get too excited though, Providence is currently in the process of closing down five of it's schools, which will cut around 50 more jobs in the near future. According to the news story, "The closures are expected to shave $12 million from the school budget".
The city had followed proper procedure in keeping all of its school employees informed by sending out termination letters to those who would possibly be effected prior to March 1st of this year. This move had sparked an uproar among Union members, claiming such action was unlawful; but, Mayor Taveras "said that Providence's looming $110 million deficit next fiscal year warranted the cuts". Tuesday of this week however, those lucky 1,445 teachers were notified of their rehire.

More information:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110504/us_nm/us_providence_teachers_layoffs;_ylt=ArKpw78IcC43UfcXWK7t4gtvzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTMzMjZqbGtjBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTEwNTA0L3VzX3Byb3ZpZGVuY2VfdGVhY2hlcnNfbGF5b2ZmcwRwb3MDMwRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA3Byb3ZpZGVuY2VyZQ--

I think that this measure taken by Providence to re-employ its workers is just what was needed. Hopefully this act will inspire other areas to reconsider their layoffs as well and put more people back into the workplace.

The United States and the Death of Osama Bin Laden

The United States cheers over the death of Osama Bin Laden. After the U.S. raid in Pakistan that brought about the death of one of the most well known faces in the world, the United States has issued various statements that celebrate such an achievement. With the U.S. President Barack Obama referring to the event as "...a good day for America," others around the country have celebrated by taking to the streets.

While there is reason for Americans to celebrate, it has also been mentioned that the possibility of retaliation should be considered. Osama Bin Laden was the most prominently known figure of Al-Qaeda. As such, he died with his beliefs firmly intact. Such a death could result in his followers declaring him to be a martyr. If such is the case, martyrs have a tendency of gathering followers and encouraging others to join the cause. This would lead to an increase in membership and action. CIA director Leon Panetta confirms this by stating that "(Al-Qaeda) would 'almost certainly' try to avenge the death of Bin Laden."

Another interesting piece of the information regarding Bin Laden's death was found in his location of Pakistan. While Pakistan has in fact cooperated with the United States over the years, U.S. counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan acknowledged that "it was "inconceivable" that Bin Laden did not have a support system in Pakistan." Furthermore, he added that "we're going to pursue all leads to find out exactly what type of support system and benefactors that Bin Laden might have had." Such a statement implies that U.S. action to uncover a hidden circuit of criminals in Pakistan is only beginning. And with time, it will be seen how far such action will go.

With no one in the United States complaining about having one less known terrorist in existence, there is also the other side of the picture where Bin Laden's death could serve the interests of the United States. If analysts, politicians, military and intelligence personnel are all looking for ways to benefit from the death, then it is not out of the question to consider the possibility that Bin Laden's death could have a very strong effect on America's foreign policy in the Middle East and Pakistan in Particular.