Clinton files show worries over health care bill

The Clinton Presidential Library released a batch of roughly 4,000 pages of previously-secret White House documents Friday, fueling questions about how history could affect the presidential ambitions of former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Several topics covered in Friday’s release relate to Mrs. Clinton, including records from the Health Care Task Force she headed and from her press office in the White House.

Continue Reading

The papers include internal musings by White House aides, including a warning that there was “great disquiet” on Capitol Hill about whether the Clintons understood the legislative process needed to enact the health care reform package known as the Health Security Act.

(PHOTOS: Hillary Clinton’s 50 influentials)

In an unsigned memo from April 1993, an aide recommended that both Bill and Hillary Clinton hold three “working dinners” with Democratic leaders to hear their concerns.

“To restate the obvious: While the substance is obviously controversial, there is apparently great disquiet in the capitol over whether we understand the inter-activity between reconciliation and health, procedurally, and in terms of timing and counting votes for both measures,” the memo stated. “We need strategic agreement among ourselves and. between us and the Hill on timing and process. This can work, but it will come apart if we don’t get these pieces right.”

The memo also warned that “there is great concern that CBO is going to screw us on savings, etc. just as it did on the budget.” It asked, “Do we have a Reichauer [sic] strategy?” – an apparent reference to Robert Reischauer, then -director of the Congressional Budget Office.

(Also on POLITICO: Clinton defends Obamacare)

Another line in the memo warned that then-House Speaker Tom Foley’s “relations with the Democratic Caucus, especially the freshmen, are remarkably bad.”

The health care reform effort ultimately bogged down in Congress and was declared dead by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell in September 1994.

POLITICO reported Tuesday that about 33,000 pages of records withheld as confidential advice given to President Clinton or exchanged among his top advisers, along with information about candidates for appointments to federal office, were still unavailable to the public even though the legal basis to withhold them under the Presidential Records Act ran out in January 2013 — 12 years after Clinton left office.

(WATCH: Reince Priebus: ‘Truckload’ against Hillary Clinton)

A White House official said Tuesday that lawyers there had approved release of about 25,000 of the 33,000 previously-withheld pages.

The remainder of the roughly 25,000 pages are expected to be posted online in the next couple of weeks. The White House has extended the deadline on the additional 8,000 pages until March 26, the National Archives said earlier this week.

The larger body of records includes legal memoranda about the Whitewater investigation and other independent counsel investigations. Those files do not appear to be among those being released Friday.

(PHOTOS: Stars line up for Hillary Clinton 2016)

The list of files disclosed Friday suggested they would touch on how Clinton’s team dealt with foreign policy crises, as well as Al Qaeda strikes that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

However, the only new document released in the 9/11-related file pertained not to that event, but to a decision not to send an additional note or gift to King Hussein of Jordan when he was at the Mayo Clinic being treated for cancer that would claim his life a few months later.

“Sounds like too much crepe hanging,” a Clinton aide wrote, recommending against the step.

A variety of Al Qaeda-related documents remain withheld on grounds that they’re classified for national security reason.

(Also on POLITICO: Hillary’s no slam dunk in 2016)           

The roughly 33,000 pages of still-secret records accumulated through early last year as records from the Clinton Library were requested under the Freedom of Information Act or processed as part of systematic efforts to disclose records of most interest to historians and the public. Archvists reviewing the records marked the pages involved as exempt, but with an eye to releasing them after the 12-year waiting period ended.

It’s still unclear precisely why the records were tied up for more than 13 additional months. The process requires the National Archives, which runs the library, to give notice to the former president and current president. Their representatives ordinarily have 30 days to clear the records for release or declare an intention to withhold them under executive privilege. However, that period can be extended.

Aides to Obama and Clinton said this week that no assertion of executive privilege was made for records in the cleared batch of 25,000 pages. No final decision appears to have been made on the remaining 8,000 pages.

(WATCH: ‘Hillary papers’ reporter speaks out)

A Clinton aide said that aides to the former president cleared the larger batch of documents for release immediately on Monday, just after getting word from Obama’s attorneys that the White House had signed off on disclosing the records.

Under an executive order Obama signed in 2009, a former president can object to disclosure by asserting executive privilege. Obama could then concur and block release of the records, or disagree and move towards release. Either way, such a dispute could end up in court.

That’s just what happened in 2001, when about 70,000 pages of records from President Ronald Reagan’s White House hit the same 12-year mark and were slated for disclosure. Ultimately, Reagan asserted executive privilege over just 74 pages. A judge upheld the assertion.

Obama’s White House vowed that his executive order would speed disclosure of even sensitive files at presidential libraries. However, with respect to the previously-withheld records now beginning to emerge, the pace is well behind that for comparable records of President George H.W. Bush. They started to come out days after the 12-year mark was hit in 2005.

David Nather contributed to this report.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

Clinton files show worries over health care bill

Damage-control worries followed NJ lane closings

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Officials squabbled over media leaks and worried about bad publicity in the days after lane closings near the George Washington Bridge caused huge traffic jams that now appear to have been politically orchestrated by a member of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration and key allies, documents released Friday show.

In the documents, officials appointed by Christie seemed more concerned about the political fallout than the effects of the gridlock in the town of Fort Lee during four mornings in September.

The thousands of pages were released by a New Jersey legislative committee investigating the scandal, which could haunt Christie’s expected run for president in 2016. The documents mostly involve the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the agency that runs the bridge.

Lawmakers are looking into allegations that Christie loyalists engineered the tie-ups to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie for re-election.

The documents show that the traffic mess created tension between New York and New Jersey appointees at the Port Authority, with the New York side angrily countermanding the lane closings.

In the correspondence, Port Authority chairman David Samson, a Christie appointee, suggested that the authority’s executive director, Patrick Foye, who was appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, had leaked to a reporter an internal memo ordering an end to the lane closings.

Samson called that possibility “very unfortunate for NY/NJ relations.”

On Thursday, Christie moved to contain the damage from the scandal, firing his deputy chief of staff, cutting ties to one of his chief political advisers and apologizing for the traffic jams. Two Christie appointees at the Port Authority resigned last month as the scandal unfolded.

Christie has denied any involvement in the lane closings, and the two batches of documents released on Wednesday and Friday do not implicate him.

The latest documents contain several emails from Port Authority media relations staff to higher-ups reporting on calls from reporters with questions about the closings. The agency did not respond to those calls.

It was Foye’s Sept. 13 email that ordered the lanes reopened that generated deep discussion. In it, Foye called the decision to close the lanes “abusive” and added, “I believe this hasty and ill-advised decision violates federal law.”

Bill Baroni, the Christie-appointed deputy director who has since resigned, forwarded a copy of the angry email to Christie’s scheduling secretary.

Later that morning, Baroni emailed Foye: “I am on my way to office to discuss. There can be no public discourse.”

Foye responded: “Bill that’s precisely the problem: there has been no public discourse on this.”

Baroni later authorized a statement for reporters explaining that the closings were part of a traffic study.

In recent weeks, there have been questions about the whether the closings were part of a legitimate study.

Christie himself said on Thursday: “I don’t know whether this was a traffic study that then morphed into a political vendetta or a political vendetta that morphed into a traffic study.”

The newly released documents show that there was, in fact, a traffic study that was done, or at least a preliminary one. There were emails from Port Authority contractors in late August on the mechanics and timing of a study.

Two versions of a study turned up in the documents — one was six pages and the other 16. Both were dated Sept. 12, the day before the lanes reopened.

The documents include study findings that Baroni gave to lawmakers at a hearing last year: When the lanes were closed, the main bridge traffic moved a bit faster, but local traffic had major delays.

Michael Cassidy, a University of California-Berkeley engineering professor who occasionally works with the California Department of Transportation, told The Associated Press that the preliminary study appears to be a legitimate internal report of the sort transportation officials often circulate among themselves.

“It could well be a good-faith effort, if not the finest in the annals. I cannot say this is not a study,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to publish it in an academic journal.”

How to deal with the fallout from the traffic jams became an issue.

In an Oct. 9 email exchange under the subject “morning clips,” Philippe Danielides, a senior adviser at the Port Authority, asked David Wildstein, a Christie appointee at the agency who has since resigned, “Has any thought been given to writing an op-ed or providing a statement about the GWB study? Or is the plan just to hunker down and grit our way through it?”

“Yes and yes,” Wildstein replied.

In a Sept. 17 email, Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak appears to send Wildstein a response to be sent to a reporter writing about the lane closings. “Traffic studies or pilots are done all the time,” he wrote. “They’re temporary, and if they’re not done, how can the effectiveness of a new approach be tested?”

The documents also showed confusion from some Port Authority employees as the closings were starting.

One employee asked, “What is driving this?” Another responded that he was wondering the same thing: “It seems like we are punishing all for the sake of a few.”

And another employee passed along a complaint from a woman who said that her husband, who had been out of work for more than a year, was 40 minutes late for a job interview because of the tie-ups.

One Port Authority police officer went searching for answers.

“The undersigned inquired if this is a permanent plan or temporary,” Capt. Darcy Licorish wrote in an email recounting her meeting with the bridge manager. “The manager could not supply an answer to that or other questions. Inquiry was also made as to the notifications of the township. No answers could be supplied.”

___

AP reporters David Porter and Katie Zezima in Newark, Jim Fitzgerald in White Plains, N.Y. and Cara Anna in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | RFID | Amazon Affiliate
Top Headlines

Damage-control worries followed NJ lane closings

EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil leads Latam currencies lower on Fed worries

EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil leads Latam currencies lower on Fed worries
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/e58d5__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

• Tweet


• 
  
• 
  
• Share this




• Email


• Print


• Reprints





Related Topics





• Stocks »


• Currencies »


• Bonds News »


• Bonds »


• Markets »






Fri Nov 1, 2013 11:20am EDT





 RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 1 (Reuters) - The Brazilian real led Latin American currencies down on Friday as investors tested new technical levels after the currency sold off about 2 percent in the previous session on fears of an early withdrawal of U.S. stimulus. Concerns that the U.S. Federal Reserve may start winding down its bond-buying program this year, potentially reducing the flow of dollars seeking higher yields in emerging markets, have caused Latin American currencies to weaken in the past few days. Those fears were on the rise again on Friday after data showed the U.S. manufacturing sector expanded at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years last month. * The Brazilian real weakened to as much as 2.2593 per dollar, briefly crossing its 100-day simple moving average, considered by analysts as a key resistance level for the currency. * The real had already weakened nearly 2 percent on Thursday, breaking key resistance marks that encouraged investors to test weaker levels for the currency. * Traders expect the real to strengthen back to the level of 2.2 per dollar in coming days, however, as dollars as foreign oil companies send dollars into the country to pay for a signing bonus related to a concession to explore the offshore oil area of Libra. * In an apparent attempt to cushion the real"s losses, central bank monetary policy director Aldo Luis Mendes stressed that the bank"s current intervention program in foreign exchange markets has no set date to end. * The Mexican peso slid 0.3 percent to 13.0550 per dollar, its weakest level in three weeks, also weighed by data showing the country"s factories remained stagnant in October despite recent interest-rate cuts by the central bank. Latin America FX prices at 1505 GMT: Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 2.2467 -0.58 -9.20 Mexico peso 13.0550 -0.26 -1.46 Chile peso 506.9000 0.36 -5.56 Colombia peso 1899.4000 -0.37 -7.02 Peru sol 2.7720 -0.51 -7.97 Argentina peso 5.9175 -0.08 -16.98 Argentina peso 9.8600 0.61 -31.24 





• Tweet this


• Link this


• Share this


• Digg this


• Email


• Reprints




We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/




Comments (0)


Be the first to comment on reuters.com.


Add yours using the box above.

Reuters: Bonds News

Read more about EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil leads Latam currencies lower on Fed worries and other interesting subjects concerning Bonds at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Dollar Fades on Fed Worries...

Updated Oct. 18, 2013 7:26 a.m. ET

Expectations that the Federal Reserve will have to keep its easy-money policies in place for longer following the partial U.S. government shutdown pushed the dollar close to its lowest point of the year against the euro and U.S. Treasury debt prices to their highest point since July.

Yields on the 10-year Treasury note, which move inversely to prices, were down to 2.55%, while the dollar continued its slide against the euro, which rose to $ 1.3695 from $ 1.3675 late Thursday in New York, edging closer to this year’s high of $ 1.3711 reached on Feb. 1. The dollar fell further against the pound, which traded just above the $ 1.62 level for the first time in two weeks, and resumed its drop against the yen, fetching ¥97.65 from ¥97.93.

About three hours before the start of trading, U.S. futures pointed to a relatively subdued open on Wall Street, where stocks staged a late-session comeback Thursday that helped push the S&P 500 to a record close of 1733.15. The front-month contracts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were both up 0.1%, at 15331.00 and 1729.80, respectively. Changes in futures don’t always accurately predict early market moves after the opening bell.

The drop in the dollar and the rise in Treasury debt prices were set in train earlier this week after lawmakers reached a temporary solution to raise the so-called debt ceiling, showing that investors doubt the Fed can start to reel in its stimulus measures—a process dubbed tapering—for as long as economic performance and data is compromised by the now-ended shutdown, and as long as the risk of repeat shutdowns lingers.

“As policy remains uber accommodative, the dollar has adjusted downwards,” said Scott Jamieson, head of multi-asset investing at Kames Capital in London, with $ 24 billion under management.

“While we have been inclined to see tapering next year, the market is only now coming to appreciate this,” said analysts at Brown Brothers Harriman. “After the September disappointment, surveys suggest that a majority shifted their expectations to December. Now in light of the fiscal drag and new uncertainty, the mid-January and mid-February limits on spending and debt issuance will loom large at the December Federal Open Market Committee meeting, and likely reduces the possibility of tapering then. The focus is likely to shift to the March 2014 FOMC meeting for the first tapering,” they said.

European stocks edged higher, supported by the late bounce in the U.S. and encouraging Chinese growth figures.

Now that Congress has temporarily approved a bill to raise the debt ceiling, attention is likely to shift back to earnings and fundamentals. And as investors reassess their expectations for any withdrawal of stimulus from the Fed, all eyes will be on the economic data that was delayed by the partial government shutdown. The next focus will be September’s nonfarm payrolls report, which is due on Oct. 22.

Write to Michele Maatouk at michele.maatouk@dowjones.com

Drudge Report Feed

Dollar Fades on Fed Worries...

Worries Over Growing Political Violence in Egypt

CAIRO — Thousands of Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi gathered in Cairo on Friday afternoon as Egypt’s highest religious authority warned of the possibility of “civil war” after days of escalating tensions and episodes of deadly violence.

The warning from the religious authority, Al Azhar, the seat of Sunni scholarship in Egypt, came on the eve of mass protests organized by a coalition of Mr. Morsi’s opponents, calling on the president to step down. Mr. Morsi’s supporters have called for counterprotests, leading to fears of violent clashes between the two camps.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist party, said that several of its supporters were killed during attacks on its headquarters and on mosques over the last three days. Early Friday, at least one person died in Zagazig, Mr. Morsi’s hometown, according to the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing.

In comments carried by state news media, a senior scholar at Al-Azhar, Hassan el-Shafei, blamed “ignorant people” for some of the attacks and said that the country needed to be alert “in order for us not to be dragged into a civil war that does not differentiate between supporters and opposition.”

On Friday afternoon, a few thousand Islamists gathered outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo, as the imam urged Muslims to choose peace over violence. Nearby, vendors sold plastic hard hats. Men who bought them said they wanted protection from the blistering sun, but also from rocks, in anticipation of clashes with anti-Morsi protesters.

Some carried long plastic tubes as clubs, one brought a golf club and another a wooden rolling pin — all for self-defense, the men said.

The start of the protests came a day after Mr. Morsi moved aggressively to preserve order and confront his opponents, deploying the army near government ministries and the Suez Canal, starting legal proceedings against several judges and purging critics from a state-appointed body that helps regulate the airwaves.

Though many had hoped that Mr. Morsi would move to defuse calls for mass protests against him this weekend, he instead wielded the might of the state to project power. His message to those challenging his authority was to either work through the political structures that have emerged since the country’s revolution in 2011, or have no say in how the state is run.

“One year is enough!” Mr. Morsi said repeatedly in a televised speech on Wednesday night, threatening to purge holdovers from the clique of former President Hosni Mubarak. He also offered no major concessions to those calling for his ouster, dismissing them as antidemocratic.

“This is the message he is sending, a threat pretty much that his tolerance and patience for so-called subversive acts and extra-constitutional activities will no longer stand,” said Yasser el-Shimy, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “If you would rather work outside the system, we are going to come after you.”

Mr. Morsi’s decision to shrug off the opposition and forge ahead comes at a time when bitter polarization over the direction of the country threatens to unleash a new wave of unrest.

In his speech, Mr. Morsi went after several individuals he said had broken laws and undermined the state. Action against some of them came swiftly, with government figures appointed by Mr. Morsi moving against them within 24 hours. On Thursday, an accountability body inside the justice ministry opened corruption investigations against a number of judges Mr. Morsi had accused of participating in rigging elections. Gehad El-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mr. Morsi to power, said in an online commentary that 32 judges were under investigation.

The prosecutor on Thursday also slapped a travel ban on Mohammed Amin, the owner of a satellite TV channel that has often been critical of Mr. Morsi since the president accused him of tax evasion. The prosecutor said Mr. Amin was under investigation on allegations he owes more than $ 60 million in taxes.

“He’s a tax evader — let him pay,” Mr. Morsi said. “He unleashes his channel against us.”

David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

NYT > Global Home

Worries Over Growing Political Violence in Egypt

UN Expert Worries About Killer Robots, Ignores The Ones That Already Exist

Autonomous war robots are coming. Panicking about them will only make things worse.

By Kelsey D. Atherton Posted 05.31.2013 at 5:00 pm

Fictional F/A-37 A fictional autonomous robot fighter plane from the 2005 movie “Stealth.” Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday, a United Nations expert called for a halt and moratorium on developing “lethal autonomous robotics,” or, in layman’s terms, “killer robots.”

His argument: once killer robots take part in war, there will be no going back. Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told the Human Rights Council that now is the time to regulate and stop killer robots, arguing that “decisions over life and death in armed conflict may require compassion and intuition.” He also urged the council to form a panel that would study whether international laws in place today adequately address the use of killer robots.

Thing is, killer robots already exist. And they’re about the least compassionate machines we could imagine.

Actual Killer Robots: a pile of landmines in Cambodia.  Neil Rickards, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m talking about land mines, those notorious explosives that explode when walked over. Land mines are programmed to kill when certain conditions are met. That is the same principle guiding a killer robot.

But there are some key differences: A killer robot might make a decision based on algorithms and inputs, internal coding and pre-programmed combat behaviors. It might be programmed to understand the laws of war, and it might use surveillance technologies to make distinctions between unarmed civilians and armed combatants. The same principles that power facial recognition software could apply to robots targeting their weapons at other weapons, so they fire to disable guns and not to kill people.

Land mines, on the other hand, fail to distinguish between civilians and soldiers, between soldiers of different nations, and between animals or large children or small soldiers. Land-mine triggers cannot be easily shut off and are designed for durability not intelligence. At their worst, killer robots could be as deadly and as indiscriminate as landmines. Chances are, though, they will be much more sophisticated.

The task before lawmakers is not to ban a technology out of fear but to adapt the law to the technology once it exists. Making legislative decisions about new technology is tricky business. In the United States, electronic communication is governed by a law passed well before email was a regular fixture of life. Provisions that made sense to congressmen in 1986 trying to imagine email led to great weaknesses in privacy and personal security, all because the technology wasn’t understood when the law was written. The stakes are much lower in governing electronic communications than in authorizing robots to kill.

Killer robots are coming. Efforts to halt their introduction or ban their development are not only likely to fail, but they’ll drown out legitimate concerns about the safest way to implement the technology with Luddite fear-mongering.

Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

UN Expert Worries About Killer Robots, Ignores The Ones That Already Exist