FCC Accused Of ‘Kafkaesque’ Behavior In Decision To Fine AT&T

The Federal Communications Commission announced Wednesday it plans to impose a $100 million fine on AT&T for capping data speeds on its unlimited wireless data plans.

What do you think?

The FCC claims in a press release that AT&T severely slowed down the data speeds for customers with unlimited data plans, and failed to adequately notify them that they could receive speeds slower than the speeds AT&T advertised, though the firm’s defenders contend its actions were allowed under the rules in effect at the time.

What do you think?

“Consumers deserve to get what they pay for,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “The FCC will not stand idly by while consumers are deceived by misleading marketing materials and insufficient disclosure.” (RELATED: FCC Fines AT&T $25 Million for Disclosing Data on Hundreds of Thousands of Americans)

What do you think?

AT&T began offering unlimited data plans in 2007, and in 2011, the company implemented a “Maximum Bit Rate” policy that caps speeds for customers once they exceed a predetermined amount of data usage within a billing cycle. AT&T has since discontinued unlimited data plans for new customers, but continues to allow renewal for existing customers, thousands of whom have sent formal complaints to the FCC since 2011.

AT&T began offering unlimited data plans in 2007, and in 2011, the company implemented a “Maximum Bit Rate” policy that caps speeds for customers once they exceed a predetermined amount of data usage within a billing cycle. AT&T has since discontinued unlimited data plans for new customers, but continues to allow renewal for existing customers, thousands of whom have sent formal complaints to the FCC since 2011.

Via: Daily Caller

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REPORT: Charleston church shooter caught in North Carolina

 

SHELBY, NC (WBTV) The suspect accused of fatally shooting nine people at South Carolina church Wednesday night has reportedly been arrested in North Carolina.

According to multiple sources, including the Richland County Sheriff's Office, 21-year-old Dylann Roof was arrested in Shelby, NC Thursday morning.

Roof is accused of opening fire in the Emanuel AME Church, in Charleston, Wednesday night.

According to police, nine people were killed after shots were fired during a prayer meeting inside Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun Street around 9:05 p.m. Police Chief Greg Mullen said officers arrived to find eight people dead inside the church. A ninth victim died later at a nearby hospital.

Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford has confirmed that police officers have someone detained but are still trying to identify him.

Copyright 2015 WBTV. All rights reserved.

Via: WBTV

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THE INSIDE STORY OF STARBUCKS'S RACE TOGETHER CAMPAIGN, NO FOAM

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has always tried to do right by his company, his customers & his country. So why did Race Together go so wrong?

It’s early April, just five days after a police officer fatally shot Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, in South Carolina, and the Starbucks CEO is on stage at Spelman College, the historically black institution of higher learning for women. He’s here for a panel discussion with United Negro College Fund chief Michael Lomax and Spelman president Beverly ­Tatum, author of the best seller Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Schultz is seated in an awkwardly large white sofa-chair, fielding tough questions from the crowd, mostly black students who have come to hear this white, 61-year-old billionaire speak about racial inequality.

Not long ago, he might have looked more out of place. But the crowd already knows that the head of the world’s largest coffee company is willing to thrust himself into this emotionally charged issue. Only three weeks earlier, he made waves with Starbucks’s "Race Together" initiative, an effort to spark a national dialogue about race in response to the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner—two other unarmed black men—and subsequent civil unrest. It was a bold idea that backfired. Starbucks had encouraged its baristas to write "Race Together" on the cups of coffee they served and engage customers in conversations. But critics lampooned what came across as a superficial gesture, and the backlash exploded onto social media, where Race Together received 2.5 billion impressions in less than 48 hours—much of it, Schultz complains, driven by a barrage of negative tweets filled with "visceral hate and contempt for the company and for me personally."

Via: Fast Company

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Pictured: Suspect, 21, on the run after shooting dead 9 people at historic South Carolina black church after telling them: 'I have to do this'

The white gunman sought by police for shooting dead nine people during a bible study meeting at an African-American church in South Carolina last night has been named as Dylann Storm Roof. 

Roof, who remains on the run since the horrific massacre at the 150-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, received a gun for his 21st birthday in April, his family has revealed.

On Wednesday, he allegedly entered the church and joined the group before suddenly opening fire an hour later. One survivor recounted how he reloaded his gun five times as he picked off his victims - killing three females and six males, including the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who is also a South Carolina state senator.

Pinckney's cousin told NBC News that one of the survivors told her they had urged Roof to stop.

'He just said: "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go",' Sylvia Johnson said.

Roof, from Columbia, spared one woman so she could 'tell the world what happened', eye witnesses recounted, while a five-year-old girl also survived the attack after her grandmother told her to play dead.

Police have launched a massive manhunt for Roof and have released surveillance images showing him and his car.

Via: Daily Mail

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[VIDEO] Manhunt on for gunman who killed 9 at South Carolina church prayer meeting

A frantic manhunt was on in South Carolina, hours after a "horrible scoundrel" opened fire in a historic African-American church in downtown Charleston, killing nine, including a state senator who is a prominent pastor, during a regular prayer meeting.

Police immediately branded the shooting spree, which began just after 9 p.m. Wednesday, a hate crime, and released surveillance images of a white man fleeing the scene at 180-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church after the horrific incident, which left six women and three men dead.

"This is an unspeakable and unfathomable act by somebody filled with hate and a deranged mind," Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley said in a Thursday morning press conference. He vowed that authorities were "committed to finding this horrible scoundrel."

"This is an unspeakable and unfathomable act by somebody filled with hate and a deranged mind."

- Charleston, S.C., Mayor Joseph Riley

A five-year-old girl reportedly survived the attack by following her grandmother's instructions to play dead, and a woman was allowed to leave to tell what had happened. It was not immediately known what message she was supposed to convey.

Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said the gunman, described as clean-shaven and approximately 21 years old with sandy blonde hair and a slender build, was still at large. Police said the man was last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt with blue jeans and Timberland boots. 

Via: Fox News

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Trade Promotion Authority hits a new roadblock: Barack Obama

Ever since the House rejected the Trade Adjustment Authority (TAA) bill, the House GOP leadership has been scheming for a way to pass the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) without the accompanying TAA.

House GOP leaders seeking to rebound after a surprise floor defeat on trade are zeroing in on a new strategy to grant President Obama fast-track authority.

The plan is to vote as soon as this week on the fast-track bill approved by the House on Friday but to leave aside a second part of the original package that was torpedoed by House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 18% (D-Calif.) and other Democrats.

Decoupling fast-track from a separate program granting aid to workers displaced by trade would put pressure on the Senate to pass the legislation, a top priority for Obama that would allow him to complete negotiations on a sweeping trans-Pacific trade deal.

If the House is successful, it will be up to Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 67% (R-Ky.) to get the bill through the upper chamber.

This was always going to be a tough sell. Allowing a trade agreement to be negotiated with low wage, state controlled, and utterly opaque economies without some protections for US businesses destroyed and workers made unemployed wasn't going to play well in attack ads in future campaigns.

There is little margin for error after last week’s stunning events in the House. Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 18%, moved to block a program they support — TAA — in order to prevent the fast-track trade bill from landing on Obama’s desk. But TAA is a bottom-line demand for the 14 Senate Democrats who voted last month to pass the fast-track bill, and Obama can only afford to lose two of those votes if he wants to see his priority enacted.

That makes the decision on how to sequence the votes in Congress a key consideration. Some top Republicans believe it makes sense to enact the fast-track bill first, prompting House Democrats to let TAA pass since it would be much harder at that point to use as leverage. But it’s no sure bet that Senate Democrats would go along with a vote on fast-track without immediate consideration of the worker aid package.

And Democrats were left a little puzzled as to how Boehner's strategy would work:

As rumors swirled about Boehner being ready to move forward with a stand-alone TPA bill, House Democrats initially scheduled an emergency caucus meeting for Wednesday morning, where pro-TPA Democrats were expected to try to garner support for the Republican strategy. That meeting was abruptly canceled late Tuesday after it was clear that the Rules Committee wasn't meeting to set up a vote on a clean fast-track bill. The panel isn't expected to meet until next week to set up the vote.

Boehner's strategy, according to Democratic and Republican aides, is to pass the clean TPA bill and send it to the Senate, where lawmakers would then attach TAA to a separate trade bill for African countries, the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The strategy behind the approach is to pressure members of the Congressional Black Caucus to support TAA this time around, since the controversial funding would now be tied to AGOA, which they support.

If House Republicans do pursue a stand-alone TPA bill, it won’t necessarily make matters better for the president’s trade agenda. Passing a clean bill would be far more difficult in the Senate. Obama has vowed to veto a fast-track bill unless TAA is also passed or attached. Obama’s trade package made it through the upper chamber last month, but TAA was attached.

These machinations may now be moot. Major Garrett is reporting that the President will not sign a TPA bill unless it is accompanied by a TAA bill.

Via: Red State

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Cyberattack takes down (Canada) government websites; ‘Anonymous’ claims responsibility

Federal government websites were hit by a cyberattack Wednesday and the hacking group Anonymous has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The websites for several federal departments -- including Weather.gc.ca, ServiceCanada.gc.ca and Parl.gc.ca -- went down around the lunch hour ET Wednesday.

Many federal employees also lost email service. Some sites, such as National Defence, remained online.

The sites appeared to go back online shortly before 3 p.m. ET.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement confirmed to reporters on Parliament Hill Wednesday afternoon that the shutdowns were caused by a denial of service cyberattack.

“I’ve just been through a briefing on it,”Clement said. “There has been an attack on Government of Canada servers.”

“We are working very diligently to restore services and to find out the origination of the attack,” he added.

“If Canadians have any issues and are being denied access to a GC account, they should phone 1-800-O-Canada,” Clement advised.

Clement could not say whether any data had been stolen or who might have directed the attack.

‘Anonymous’ video

A video released on YouTube claiming to be from the global hacking group Anonymous took responsibility for the attack. The video has not been independently verified by CTV News.

“We launched an attack against Canadian Senate and Government of Canada websites in protest against the recent passing of Bill C-51,” says the video’s narrator, whose voice has been disguised.

“(C-51) is a clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as removing our legal protections that have stood enshrined in the Magna Carta for 800 years.”

The narrator criticizes Prime Minister Stephen Harper, calls for “revolution” and asks Canadians to “take to the streets and protest” on Saturday.

Via: CTVNews.ca

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[Editorial] Trump Delivers a Message Republicans Need

Donald TrumpPhoto: Reuters

With humor, pride and two populist fists, Donald Trump on Tuesday entered the GOP race for the White House. However his campaign turns out, he’s already improved the field.

Above all, he spoke to the voters Republicans have to win over if they’re to retake the White House — to the Americans who believe in hard work and fair play, to the folks who show up every day to make this country work.

“We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military, can take care of our vets. . . We need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again.” Trump pretty well summed up the appeal the GOP needs to make.

He rained contempt on the political class and all its recent works, from ObamaCare to the pending Iran nuclear deal to “Third World” airports like LAX and La Guardia. He spoke up for people “tired of spending more money on education than any nation in the world per capita . . . and we are 26th in the world.”

He hit hard on the state of the economy — negative growth in the first quarter, joblessness far worse than the official rate, “a stock market that is so bloated” — and promised to be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”

He’s proud of making himself rich (“I’ve done an amazing job”), and rightly so. He didn’t even have to mention that he’s a guy who gets things done, because everybody already knows it. More, he knows his success is an asset, “the kind of thinking you need for this country . . . because we’ve got to make the country rich.”

With a dose of that attitude, Mitt Romney might be living in the White House right now.

Does candidate Trump have big problems? You bet; full-bore populists always do.

He’s got weird asides about how “we should’ve taken” Iraq’s oil “when we left”; silly stuff about a trade threat from Mexico; long anecdotes the fact-checkers will chew to pieces; bluster on trade and immigration that will turn lots of folks off.

And he’s viewed unfavorably by over half of GOP voters. No one’s ever turned around numbers like those.

Then again, “no one’s ever” are fighting words for Donald Trump.

This will be fun to watch.

Via: New York Post

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Head of Clinton Foundation: The Clintons are paranoid loonies

Clinton Foundation head Donna Shalala** privately expressed concerns about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s mental state in the mid-1990s, saying they had become “paranoid” and fixated on “right-wing conspiracies,” according to previously unpublished audio recordings obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

In 1994, four years before Hillary Clinton said a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was trying to take down her husband’s presidency, top aide Shalala said this theory was already embraced by the Clintons.

“They’ve become paranoid. Paranoia. Thinking people are out to get them, this right-wing conspiracy stuff,” said Shalala, who was the head of Health and Human Services during the August 1994 interview.

This isn’t new to anyone who has watched the Clintons. In addition to being grifters with no sense of propriety, they are clinically diagnosable as paranoids under DSM-5. What makes this newsworthy is that everyone knows this, even their cronies, but no one in the press has reported on it until now.

“[The Clintons are] feeling sorry for themselves. They talk about [conspiracies] all the time,” said Shalala. “That there really is a conspiracy out there to get us. That we don’t have a chance, people don’t understand how much good we’ve done. Our message isn’t getting across because these people are beating us up.”

Shalala said documents about supposed right-wing conspiracies were also being distributed to White House staffers.

“There is a feeling in the White House, and I don’t know whether it’s [James] Carville or [Paul] Begala or who’s giving them the materials,” said Shalala. “But sitting on the desks of their staff there’s these materials on this right-wing conspiracy.”

Rather than abating since they made their Clampett-esque exit from the White House, literally taking the furniture with them, the feelings of persecution seem to have metastasized– at least in regards to Hillary. Bill was confident enough to party with a pedophile. Her use of a private email server and having a handler follow a reporter into the bathroom are great examples of the ongoing paranoia. It also explains Hillary avoiding press questions and unscripted encounters with voters.

**Full disclosure. I have seen Donna Shalala in a tennis skirt (Montrose Park tennis courts, Washington, DC) and survived with only 20% of my body turned to stone, minor loss of sight in my left eye, and a permanent gag reflex at the sight of small curd cottage cheese.

Via: Red State

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Hidden Costs of Health Benefit Mandates

The upcoming King v. Burwell ruling, with its ramifications for the Affordable Care Act, has health-insurance costs back in the spotlight. Health-care mandates in particular have been an ongoing source of controversy. But states have been quietly passing their own health-insurance benefit mandates —requirements that insurers cover specific treatments and conditions — for decades, and there's much we can learn from them.

The number of state-level health-insurance mandates has steadily grown since the 1960s, with the average state imposing nearly 40. This growth surged recently due to the ACA's "Essential Health Benefits." The scope of the services targeted by these mandates varies widely, from cancer screening and prenatal care to acupuncture and chiropractic services.

Some mandated services seem essential to an adequate health-insurance plan, while others are of questionable benefit. What they all have in common is that they increase the cost of insurance by raising premiums for the people and employers who buy it. And higher premiums lead to other hidden costs as well.

In new research for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, we find evidence that new state health-insurance mandates distort state economies by leading to the existence of more large firms and fewer small firms.

The key to understanding how state mandates affect firm size lies in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. Under ERISA, employers who self-insure (that is, directly bear the cost of paying their employees'benefit claims instead of buying coverage from an insurance company) are exempt from state health-insurance mandates. While technically a firm of any size is able to self-insure its health plan, in practice it is only the largest employers who opt for this form of coverage. This is because any form of insurance is more cost-effective when risk is pooled over a larger population.

A large employer can easily absorb the cost of one employee's expensive cancer treatment, because the costs are relatively insignificant when spread out among its many more fortunate workers. However, if a small business had to pay the entire cost of the same cancer treatment, it could go bankrupt.

These incentives are clearly illustrated by breaking down the self-insurance rate by firm size. Approximately 84 percent of employees at large firms (employers with at least 1,000 workers) are covered via self-insurance plans, compared with only 13 percent of employees at small firms (fewer than 50 employees).

Because it is easier and cheaper for large firms to self-insure, and thus escape state health-benefit mandates, they face less of a burden than small firms. This grants them a competitive advantage in the form of lower labor costs. The result is surprising: We find that each state health-benefit mandate leads to about 3,000 fewer small firms (with, for instance, 15 workers each), but about 20 more large firms with 1,000 or more workers. The overall level of employment is essentially unchanged.

If there is no change in overall employment, just a shift in the size of the firm employing the average worker, why should we care? While it may seem harmless, the shift could actually have serious implications for the overall productivity of our economy. Take job growth, for example. A recent study found that new, small firms (as opposed to larger, more established firms) were the primary creators of new jobs. Given these results, we should be wary of any policy which places heavy burdens on small employers.

Via: Real Clear Policy

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Congress could vote on Trade Promotion Authority as a stand alone bill as soon as Thursday

Congress could vote on Trade Promotion Authority as a stand alone bill as soon as Thursday, congressional sources tell the Associated Press.

The new plan under consideration would have the House vote on TPA — which would grant President Obama fast-track authority to negotiate trade deals — separately from the Trade Adjustment Assistance provision rejected last week.

The decision to split up the bills comes as House Republican leaders and the White House attempt to figure out a way to pass “fast-track” in the face of diverse opposition. As the APreports:

Now Obama and his allies are considering something they had desperately hoped to avoid: revisiting trade legislation in the Senate, possibly after the House votes on a simplified fast track bill. It would give Senate opponents another chance to strangle the legislation with costly delays and other tactics.

According to The Hill, White House spokesman Josh Earnest did not express opposition to the move, merely stating that both TPA and TAA should be passed.

“The only legislative strategy the president can support is one that will result in both pieces of legislation arriving at his desk,” The Hill quoted Earnest.

The Hill noted that Earnest also did not offer an opinion on whether the bills should arrive at Obama’s desk as a package or stand alone bills.

“There is also this fundamental question … about whether or not they need to arrive at the same time, on the same day, as part of the same legislative vehicle or separately — that’s exactly what’s being discussed on Capitol Hill right now,” The Hill quoted Earnest.

The push for fast-track authority comes as the Obama administration hopes to advance 

Via: Breitbart

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First Mary Jo Kopechne, Then America

Sen. Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act allowed the Democrats to start winning elections the same way they win recounts: by enlarging the pool of voters.

Liberals couldn’t convince Americans to agree with them, but they happened to notice that the people of most other countries in the world already agreed with them. So Sen. Ted Kennedy’s immigration act brought in millions of poverty-stricken foreigners to live off the American taxpayer and bloc-vote for the Democrats.

The American people aren’t changing their minds. Americans are becoming a minority to other, new people.

Deft politicians used to know how to convince the 15 percent on the fence. But even Reagan would look at today’s electorate and say: Who are you guys? We live in a different country, and I don’t remember moving.

At the precise moment in history when the United States abandoned any attempt to transmit American values to its own citizens, never mind immigrants, the 1965 immigration act began dumping the poorest of the poor from around the world on our country.

When the Republican Congress passed welfare reform in 1996, one of the provisions prohibited immigrants from going on welfare for the first five years they were here — a mere five years! It turned out to be the single biggest savings of the entire welfare bill.

The New York Times immediately denounced the provision, demanding that at “the very least,” immigrants get food stamps if they become “disabled” after arriving — i.e., the biggest scam in the welfare apparatus — and also that they be eligible for health care under Medicaid. Previewing the line that would soon be adopted by the Democrats’ plaything, Sen. Marco Rubio, the Times proclaimed: “After all, legal immigrants pay taxes like everyone else.”

Via: Human Events

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Every breath she takes

Fifteen years ago this week, my beautiful daughter Veronica entered the world. She didn’t make a sound. As I stretched out my arms to hold her in the delivery room, furrow-browed doctors and nurses instead whisked her away. I shouted after them in panic:

“Is she all right? Is she going to be OK?!”

Slightly underweight and jaundiced, she remained in the hospital for several days before we got the all-clear. My husband and I counted our blessings. But it wouldn’t be the last time we felt the pangs of parental helplessness when it came to her health.

Here’s the good news: In the blink of an eye, our shy, clingy little girl blossomed into a wry, wisecracking and independent young lady. She loves to go fishing, hates shallow people, solves a Rubik’s Cube in 35 seconds, prefers true-crime novels to “Twilight” schlock and recently developed a thing for ice hockey players. Veronica’s a wicked Photoshopper, a talented drawer, a makeup artist and (unlike mom) a math whiz. Until six weeks ago, her main obsessions were “Grey’s Anatomy,” the Stanley Cup, Instagram, her new cartilage piercing, an actor named Evan Peters and the hope of getting a learner’s permit.

Just before Mother’s Day weekend, however, she started having what appeared to be respiratory trouble. She “couldn’t get a good breath” and began gently gasping and sighing for air every few minutes. Two trips to the ER later, she had been administered ibuprofen for “costochondritis” and then albuterol to open up her airways.

The problem is that all the various tests and exams indicate she’s getting plenty of oxygen. Her lungs, heart and vocal cords are all “normal,” and yet she describes a chronic feeling that she’s “drowning.” Every day begins with gasping beyond her control, multiple times a minute, nonstop, every hour of every day, until she reaches a point of exhaustion at 1 or 2 in the morning.

After a brief respite while sleeping, the day-mare starts all over again.

Via: Michelle Malkin

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End Civil Service 'Merit' Protection

Scott Walker’s proposal to end tenure in Wisconsin state universities is a great idea.  Here is another great idea that Governor Walker or some other brave Republican governor and legislature ought to implement: end the merit protection for state government employees.  Once that is demonstrated to work, propose the same reform at the federal level.

The Merit System was one of those odious “progressive reforms.”  It was intended to prevent politicians from placing their cronies in government jobs as a reward for support during campaigns and to prevent politicians in power from forcing government employees to support them in campaigns.

Has this reform “worked”?  It has worked about as well as all those other progressive reforms, which is to say that the Merit System has been a ghastly failure.  Witness the string of news stories following the VA scandal, the IRS scandal, the Secret Service scandal, and so on, all of which end with a variation of the phrase “so far, not a single employee has been fired.”  The Merit System makes it almost impossible to ever terminate a government worker.

One consequence of this fact is that supervisors never give government workers bad employee evaluations – that would be inviting even worse behavior – and when real horror stories break, the culpable employee has a sterling record of good evaluations, regular promotions, bonuses, and so on.  It also means that many more government workers are needed to do a job than would be needed in the private sector, because there are so many government workers doing little, if any, work.

Via: American Thinker

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Fed holds off on interest rate hike, downgrades economic forecast

The Federal Reserve downgraded its view of the U.S. labor market and economy on Wednesday in a policy statement that suggested the central bank may have to wait until at least the third quarter to begin raising interest rates.

The Fed's statement put in place a meeting-by-meeting approach on the timing of its first rate hike since June 2006, making such a decision solely dependent on incoming economic data.

The data, however, have been getting worse. Just hours before the Fed's statement, the U.S. government reported that first-quarter gross domestic product came in much weaker than expected.

The central bank acknowledged that growth had slowed in the winter months, a dimmer assessment of the economy than its view in March. And while it said the poor performance was in part due to transitory factors, it pointed to soft patches across the economy, in a sign it may have to hold off hiking rates until at least September.

"The committee anticipates that it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate when it has seen further improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term," the Fed said in its statement, following a two-day meeting of its policy-setting committee.

U.S. Treasury yields added to earlier gains and short-term interest-rate futures contracts dropped slightly after the Fed statement before paring the losses. Futures traders continue to bet the Fed will wait until December to raise rates, and give an October rate rise just a 46 percent chance, according to CME FedWatch.

Via: Reuters

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Pelosi-Obama Cold Front Moving Into California

On Friday, one of the Democratic Party’s most generous supporters may view up close what “climate change” looks like. That's when President Obama and Nancy Pelosi will be among those gathered at his home near San Francisco in support of House Democrats.

By anyone’s definition, putting Obama and Pelosi together under one roof to sing House Democrats’ praises a week after a messy intraparty rift over trade policy should be interesting.

Tom Steyer, a billionaire former hedge fund founder whose passion is combating climate change, is scheduled along with wife Kat Taylor to host a top-dollar fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at their home, where the president and the minority leader have replenished Democratic coffers many times before. 

But on Tuesday, it was unclear whether the president and the liberal congresswoman from San Francisco were on speaking terms. 

Scrambling to rescue his administration’s Asia-focused trade agenda, which Pelosi’s opposition helped torpedo on June 12, Obama spoke by phone several times with House Speaker John Boehner on Monday, but by Tuesday he had not touched base with Pelosi, according to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.  

“President Obama and Leader Pelosi have demonstrated that they have a strong enough personal and professional relationship to withstand a difference even on an important issue like this,” Earnest said.

Pelosi, in an interview with CNBC Tuesday, declined to describe her conversation with Obama before the climactic House votes tangled the trade trajectory. She spoke like a San Francisco congresswoman more than as a House Democratic leader when she said she wanted to “slow down” fast-track legislation that would have granted U.S. negotiators leverage to get a massive trans-Pacific trade pact completed. 

“What you saw on the floor on Friday was an expression of concern of the American people. We are representatives. That is our title, and that is our job description. These are our constituents,” she told CNBC’s John Harwood.

“I'll take you with me to my district, we'll go to church, we'll go to a parade, any place, the dry cleaners. And you will be very surprised at how everyday people who are not connected to any organized organizations, who come up and say, ‘Don't vote for that.’”

Via: Real Clear Politics

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White House Has No Backup Plan If Supreme Court Rules Against Obamacare

Millions of Americans could lose their insurance if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against President Barack Obama on his health-care law. And with the decision due in the next two weeks, the government has no backup plan.

The court will say whether tax subsidies under Obamacare that make insurance more affordable for 6.4 million people in 34 states are legal. If it decides they aren’t, that would trigger a high-stakes debate between the administration and Congress over how to respond. Most of the states have no answer either.

A ruling against the subsidies in the health-care law -- Obama’s biggest domestic achievement -- would triple or quadruple insurance premiums, on average, forcing many people to drop out and sending costs soaring for others.

“Chaos would ensue quite quickly,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit group that studies health-care policy issues.

There are steps the government could take: States affected by the ruling could set up their own health-insurance marketplaces, called exchanges. The federal government could make it easier for them by sharing the technology behind its healthcare.gov system.

Video: Interview Exposes Obama’s Ultimate Agenda Before Leaving Office

The distinction between state and federal marketplaces matters because the case hinges on the meaning of four words in the law that appear to reserve tax subsidies to people buying insurance on exchanges “established by a state.”

Opponents of the law sued, arguing that the subsidies shouldn’t be available in the three-dozen states that haven’t established their own exchanges and use the healthcare.gov system instead. Democrats who wrote the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act say that was never their intent.

To The Brink

Many states say that setting up their own exchanges would be too expensive -- or their governments are run by Republicans who refuse to do that. The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress is more interested in repealing the health-care law than in revising it.

“There’s a significant constituency within the Republican Party which is ‘repeal or nothing,’” said Margaret Foster Riley, a law professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “The concern is we’re going to play chicken right up to the brink.”

The first unknown is exactly when that brink would come. It’s possible that a ruling against the administration would end subsidies within a month. But Justice Samuel Alito suggested during oral arguments in March that the high court could stay its decision “until the end of this tax year” to allow Congress time to address the “very disruptive consequences.”

Via: Newsmax

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