This and That...

[Warph]

Senate Panel Backs 1 Percent Pay Increase And Cut In Housing Allowances For Military

What is the cost to the military for housing the illegals?

Via Military Times

Senate appropriators plan to fund only a 1 percent basic pay raise for troops next year and will go along with a Pentagon proposal to trim housing allowances in an effort to rein in personnel costs.

The moves, if adopted later this week, leave troops and families with a mixed message from lawmakers about how much belt tightening they'll see next year.

On Tuesday, members of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee offered their $549.3 billion funding plan for military operations in fiscal 2015, including $59.7 billion for overseas contingency operations and $128.4 billion in personnel spending.

That's about $300 million more than what House appropriators had set aside for personnel costs and about $400 million less than the White House had asked for. But the details indicate a more divided picture on how the changes will affect troops, one that lawmakers in both chambers will have to reconcile in coming months.

The Senate's 1 percent raise proposal mirrors White House requests for a modest pay increase, a move that would save $3.8 billion over five years. Earlier this year, the Senate Armed Services Committee included the same capped pay raise in its draft of the annual defense authorization bill.

Senators said the move, while difficult, will help free up funds for other priorities without cutting too deeply into troops' wallets.

But House appropriators in June funded a 1.8 percent pay raise, in line with increases in private-sector wages. The chamber also approved its draft of the defense authorization bill in May with language backing the 1.8 percent increase, although without any provisions to actually mandate the higher figure.

Pentagon officials have argued that lower pay raises are needed to keep costs in check and prevent personnel accounts from sapping money for readiness and modernization programs. Outside military advocates have argued that even the small pay difference will hurt military families already struggling to make ends meet.

Military officials also have lobbied to trim troops' housing allowances, scaling back from covering 100 percent of average housing costs to 95 percent in coming years, with troops expected to cover that average 5 percent out of their own pockets. Senate appropriators backed that plan, again mirroring their Senate Armed Services Committee counterparts. But the House has twice rejected the idea.

[Warph]

[Warph]

From Tweets To Shoes, NASA Relives Apollo 11 Moon Shot

Astronaut Gordon Cooper prays with his
wife Trudy and daughters Jan and Cam,
before dinner on patio at home.

(Back when NASA had a mission.  Expect a Obuma selfie tweet on 20 July)

Via Houston Chron
At this time in 1969, much of the world was caught up in the drama of Neil Armstrong making the first human footprints on the moon.

And just as NASA threw its best technology at getting to the moon in 1969, the agency and some of its biggest fans are throwing today's best technology at celebrating the 45-year anniversary this week.

Apollo 11 touched down on the moon's surface for the first time July 20, 1969.

In tribute, the space agency has generated a lively global conversation with a series of tweets carrying the hashtag #Apollo45. The posts retrace the steps of the moon mission, from launch to return.

Truly die-hard space fans can flip through the 353-page flight plan that covers every nuance — as well it should — of the approximately 250,000-mile trip. There's also the 248-page transcription of every word the astronauts said during the flight.

In military fashion, the flight plan is full of abbreviations, such as LM (lunar module), CDR (commander, Neil Armstrong), LMP (lunar module pilot, Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr.) and CMP (Command module pilot, Michael Collins).

At one point, Collins is giving a camera to Aldrin: "I'll just let go of it, Buzz; it will be hanging over here in the air."

The flight plan was much drier, stating, for example, that three entries into the lunar module were scheduled at times described as 56:30, 86:30 and 95:52.

"The frst entry ... will be for LM familiarization and will be performed by the CDR and LMP in the constant wear garments," the plan stated.

Page 74 had a space to enter the latitude and longitude coordinates of the desired landing area, as well as the orbit ignition time in hours, minutes and seconds, to reach the desired landing area.

Then, at p. 101, the detailed timeline begins. It describes the entire flight in 10-minute intervals, with notations for everything from technical maneuvers to nine-hour rest periods.

In tribute to the anniversary, GE has teamed up with Android Homme and JackThreads to issue sneakers in the style of NASA moon shoes, according to undustrytap.com. They are scheduled to go on sale at 4:18 p.m. eastern time July 20, the time of the moon landing.

[Warph]

US Jews Furious Over 'Washington Post' Cartoon Showing
Netanyahu Punching Palestinian Infant

(The SICK WAPO is so progressive they will only refer
to the Redskins as That Team)

Via JPost
http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/US-Jews-furious-over-Washington-Post-cartoon-showing-Netanyahu-punching-Palestinian-infant-363403[/b]

A prominent American Jewish organization is denouncing The Washington Post for posting an animated cartoon on its YouTube channel depicting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu beating a Palestinian infant.

The caricature is aimed at apportioning blame equally between Israel and Hamas for the suffering of Gazan civilians. It was created by Ann Telnaes, one of the newspaper's editorial cartoonists.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center declared its outrage over the cartoon. In a statement released to news agencies on Friday, the center's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said the clip was "disgusting."

"It is disgusting that The Washington Post would present an animated cartoon that is so profoundly removed from the truth," said Cooper. "Millions of Israeli citizens—men, women, and children—have been forced into bomb shelters and saferooms by thousands of missiles and rockets targeted at them by Hamas terrorists, whose open and avowed goal is the destruction of the Jewish state."

"Even Israel's enemies have recognized that Israel's military countermeasures against Hamas have included phone and text warnings as well as leaflets urging innocent civilians in Gaza to vacate the targeted areas," Cooper said. "It is the Hamas leadership that openly uses the people of Gaza to act as human shields to protect their weapons of mass destruction."

"Israelis are saddened by the deaths of four Palestinian children on a Gaza beach yesterday, but the blood of these innocent children is on the hands of Hamas leaders, not Binyamin Netanyahu," Rabbi Cooper also said.

[Warph]

Obuma To Sign Two LGBT Executive Orders That Will Force Christian Groups With Government Contracts To Violate Their Religious Beliefs

(Our Muslim President Barack Insane-Hussein Obuma denied an exemption request by religious groups as his way of sticking it to Christians over the Hobby Lobby ruling)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama plans to sign executive orders Monday prohibiting discrimination against gay and transgender workers in the federal government and its contracting agencies, without a new exemption that was requested by some religious organizations.

Obama's action comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in the Hobby Lobby case that allowed some religiously oriented businesses to opt out of the federal health care law's requirement that contraception coverage be provided to workers at no extra charge. Senior administration officials said Friday that ruling has no impact on non-discrimination policies in federal hiring and contracting.

Since Obama announced last month that he would sign the orders, he's faced pressure from opposing flanks over the religious exemption and given no indication of where he would come down. Many religious leaders and conservative groups wanted him to exempt religious organizations from the order, while liberal clergy and gay advocacy groups adamantly opposed such an exemption.

The senior officials said Obama's action planned for Monday at the White House would amend two executive orders. The first, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, prohibits federal contractors from discriminating based on race, religion, gender or nationality in hiring. Obama plans to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protections, and order the Labor Department to carry out the order. The officials said that means the change will probably take effect by early next year.

The senior officials said Obama's action planned for Monday at the White House would amend two executive orders. The first, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, prohibits federal contractors from discriminating based on race, religion, gender or nationality in hiring. Obama plans to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protections, and order the Labor Department to carry out the order. The officials said that means the change will probably take effect by early next year.

While few religious organizations are among the biggest federal contractors, they do provide some valued services, including overseas relief and development programs and re-entry programs for inmates leaving federal prisons.

[Warph]

Reuters Poll: Obuma's Approval Rating Drops To 37%

(More Heartache For Mr. PINK)

Via Reuters daily tracking poll:

[Ross]

Federal Health Experts
Plan to Turn Our Shopping Carts Into
Computerized Versions of Michelle Obama

First, it was Michelle's White House vegetable garden. Then it was her school lunch program. Now, a new report from the Department of Agriculture explains that the government wants to use a variety of tools – including "talking shopping carts" – to influence the items we buy at the grocery store.

The 80-page report, prepared by an "expert panel," makes recommendations on how to "nudge" the more than 47 million Americans on food stamps (SNAP) into spending their benefits on fruits and vegetables.


"Most Americans, including Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants, do not purchase enough whole grains, dark green and orange vegetables, and legumes, and purchase too many items with excess calories from fats and added sugars."

Enter the talking shopping cart.


The cart would be color-coded, physically divided, and have a system installed so that when the shopping cart reaches its healthy "threshold" it would congratulate the customer. (Not unlike a first-grader receiving a gold star for a job well done?)

*

"The algorithm would group the purchases to classify them and provide consumers with a message of support or encouragement, e.g., "You achieved a healthy shopping basket!" (More gold stars!)

 
So, would the carts work to the government's satisfaction? Keeping with the "rewarding a first-grader" idea, here's why it thinks so:

*


"The principle of self-attribution suggests that when an individual perceives they have the ability to freely choose between options, they are more likely to be satisfied with the choice they make.

Using this principle, positioning healthier items for increased salience can support consumers choosing healthier options."

So basically, even though you're being manipulated, if you think it's your idea, you're happy. Especially if you get a gold star!

Of course we should eat healthy foods. No one (with a modicum of sense) disputes that. The question is, is it the government's job to not only tell us what to eat, but how much of it we should eat? Gold stars, or not.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/158363-talking-shopping-carts-congratulate-customer-buying-healthy-food/

[Ross]

State police now fingerprinting every Texan

By Jon Cassidy  /   July 15, 2014

PRINTS: The Department of Public Safety wants everybody's fingerprints.

HOUSTON – The Texas Department of Public Safety has quietly embarked on a project to take the fingerprints of every Texan old enough to drive over the next 12 years, and add them to a statewide criminal history database.

Not only has the department made that momentous decision on its own, it doesn't even have clear legal authority to do so.

The credit for breaking the news on those two items goes to consumer affairs columnist Dave Lieber of the Dallas Morning News, whose long-running "Watchdog" column often shows up in my Google Alerts, for obvious reasons.

As an old-school columnist, Lieber tends to keep his opinions subdued, and he doesn't generally call people dishonest. But I have no problem with doing that, so I'd like to point out that the DPS spokesman he quotes at length is less than straightforward about his department's legal authority.

Last month, Lieber broke the news that DPS had started collecting full sets of fingerprints on everyone who went in to renew their license.

Friday, he followed up with a story on DPS' dubious legal authority to do so, and then posted lengthy quotations on the issue to his blog.

Lieber quotes an entire email from DPS spokesman Tom Vinger, who quotes Transportation Code Sec. 521.059 at length, including the key phrase, "The department shall establish an image verification system based on the following identifiers collected by the department: ....an applicant's thumbprints or fingerprints."

So clearly, the law contemplates the collection of fingerprints under some circumstance, but the passage quoted by Vinger doesn't mention anything else about it.

You could look up that section of law online, but the sections immediately surrounding it in the Texas Transportation Code don't clarify the matter.

To get the full context, you'd have to go back to the original bill that was signed into law, and then look up the relevant section of law, which states that an application for a drivers' license  "must include:  1) the thumbprints of the applicant or, if thumbprints cannot be taken, the index fingerprints of the applicant."

So that's why the law mentions fingerprints – it's index fingerprints, not a full set of 10 fingerprints. While the law mentions that those records can be used by law enforcement agencies investigating a crime, it doesn't say anything about making them generally available in a criminal database.

According to Lieber, a political science professor at Texas Christian University named Donald W. Jackson, who has a new organization called the North Texas Civil Rights Project, is offering legal support if anybody wants to challenge this new policy in court.

Lieber says the solution is for the Legislature to pass a clear law on the matter. I'd add that it throws into question the wisdom of having a law enforcement agency oversee licensing at all. The investigative function will always trump privacy rights.

http://watchdog.org/159443/state-police-now-fingerprinting-every-texan/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=saturday_29

[Warph]

How the Clintons went from 'dead broke' to rich: Bill earned $104.9 million for speeches

By Philip Rucker, Tom Hamburger and Alexander Becker

"The financial industry has been
Bill Clinton's most frequent sponsor,
paying him $19.6 million for at least 100 appearances.
Most of Bill Clinton's speaking fees — $55.3 million —
came from foreign appearances, many of them in
China, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom."

Over seven frenetic days, Bill Clinton addressed corporate executives in Switzerland and Denmark, an investors' group in Sweden and a cluster of business and political leaders in Austria. The former president wrapped up his European trip in the triumphant Spanish Hall at Prague Castle, where he shared his thoughts on energy to a Czech business summit.

His pay: $1.4 million.

That lucrative week in May 2012 offers a glimpse into the way Clinton has leveraged his global popularity into a personal fortune. Starting just two weeks after exiting the Oval Office, Clinton has delivered hundreds of paid speeches, lifting a family that was "dead broke," as wife Hillary Rodham Clinton phrased it earlier this month, to a point of such extraordinary wealth that it is now seen as a potential political liability if she runs for president in 2016.

Bill Clinton has been paid $104.9 million for 542 speeches around the world between January 2001, when he left the White House, and January 2013, when Hillary stepped down as secretary of state, according to a Washington Post review of the family's federal financial disclosures.

Although slightly more than half of his appearances were in the United States, the majority of his speaking income, $56.3 million, came from foreign speeches, many of them in China, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom, the Post review found.

The financial industry has been Clinton's most frequent sponsor. The Post review showed that Wall Street banks and other financial services firms have hired Clinton for at least 102 appearances and paid him a total of $19.6 million.

Since leaving the State Department, Hillary Clinton has followed her husband and a roster of recent presidents and secretaries of state in this profitable line of work, addressing dozens of industry groups, banks and other organizations for pay. Records of her earnings are not publicly available, but executives familiar with the engagements said her standard fee is $200,000 and up, and that she has been in higher demand than her husband.

The speaking itineraries could be a political challenge for Hillary Clinton should she run for president, giving opponents an opening to attack the Clintons for being beholden to powerful interests. Some companies that have paid Bill Clinton for speeches have faced scrutiny from federal regulators.

Matt McKenna, a spokesman for Bill Clinton, and Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, declined to comment.

Clinton's income from speaking, unlike that of other former presidents, is detailed in annual public disclosures because his wife has held public office.

Both Clintons also give speeches for free. Bill Clinton, for instance, makes frequent visits to the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas — appearances that Skip Rutherford, the school's dean, called "an Arkansas fringe benefit."

The Clintons also sometimes request that sponsors pay their fee as a donation to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family's nonprofit group that leads global philanthropic initiatives. Hillary Clinton is doing this with her $225,000 fee for a speech this fall at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, according to her office.

Bill Clinton has delivered his paid speeches to a diverse array of industry groups — from liquor distributors in China to coal-fired utility companies meeting in Florida to pharmaceutical executives in New Jersey — as well as to some nonprofit organizations, such as a Salvation Army event in Tulsa.

"He's a stud," said Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, which paid Clinton $175,000 to address its annual investment conference in 2010. Clinton's speech at the Las Vegas confab was so riveting, Scaramucci said, "there was nobody at the Bellagio cabana sunning himself when President Clinton was in the ballroom speaking."

Goldman Sachs has hired Bill Clinton for eight speeches over the years totaling $1.35 million, many of them client meetings in such locales as Paris, Phoenix, and the South Carolina beach resort of Kiawah Island.

Goldman also has paid Hillary Clinton: She addressed tech entrepreneurs in Arizona last fall and women in finance in New York this year.

"President Clinton's always interesting, but there's a lot more demand right now for her because she just came out of government and people want to hear about that, whether it's Iran or Russia or the big challenges she's faced, and about the dysfunction in Washington," said a Goldman executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking.

The Post's analysis found that TD Bank underwrote 10 of Clinton's speeches and paid him about $1.8 million, making it his largest single sponsor in the financial industry. TD Bank is affiliated with TD Ameritrade, founded by Joe Ricketts, a prominent donor to Republican campaigns and conservative causes.

AdvertisementTD Bank spokesman Gabriel Weissman said he had "nothing to add" to the public disclosures. A spokesman for Ricketts declined to comment.

Paid speeches are the biggest source of income for the Clinton family, although both Bill and Hillary also have earned tens of millions of dollars writing books and a smaller amount through their investments.

In his addresses, Bill Clinton speaks about policy issues of the moment, domestic and foreign, and tailors his remarks to the business interests of his sponsors. He often speaks without notes and keeps his audiences in rapt attention, playfully answering questions and dispensing pearls of wisdom from his White House years or childhood in Arkansas.

"It makes me feel like I'm president again," Clinton said in 2012 as he looked out at a large convention crowd at the National Retail Federation, which paid him $200,000.

Clinton shared advice with the retailers passed down from his mother: "When I wanted to be a musician, I was not very good for years, and she just kept beating up on me and she said, 'You just can't quit.' "

In 2011, the Silicon Valley Information Business Alliance paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to address about 400 entrepreneurs on trade issues with China and the financial crisis in Europe. Clinton spoke for about an hour, took questions and posed for pictures, said James Cai, a lawyer and president of the alliance.

The group was so pleased with Clinton's appearance that Cai said it tried to hire Hillary Clinton in 2013 — even developing a theme, "women entrepreneurs," that organizers hoped might attract her. Cai said she declined the invitation. He said he didn't know her reason, but noted that the fee offered to Hillary was less than the amount paid to Bill.

Both Clintons are represented by the Harry Walker Agency. Don Walker, the firm's president, did not respond to requests for comment.

Some sponsors say the Clintons' contracts have contained stipulations barring sponsors from recording their speeches or distributing video or text of their remarks.

"There's not a lot of negotiating room," said Chuck Carr, a vice president at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, which hired Bill Clinton to speak in 2009 and Hillary Clinton in April. "You are offered a contract and there's very little in the contract that you can change."

The engagements typically are closed to the news media, although some of Hillary Clinton's recent appearances have been open to reporters — including her paid speech in Chicago to the United Fresh Produce Association and Food Marketing Institute on June 10, the day her new book, "Hard Choices," was released.

Although many former presidents hit the speaking circuit in retirement, Bill Clinton's staying power has been unusual. His busiest year on record was 2012, when he gave 72 paid speeches and earned $16.3 million, according to The Post's review.

"I'm shocked that people still want me to come give talks," Clinton said this week, appearing to feign modesty in an interview with NBC's David Gregory.

Rutherford, a longtime Clinton friend and adviser, said, "I don't think he's viewed as an ex-president. I think he's viewed as a world leader. And because of that stature, his demand far exceeds the supply."

In the weeks after Clinton left the White House, Walker told The Post that offers were "piling up like airplanes over LaGuardia on a foggy day."

Clinton gave his first paid speech on Feb. 5, 2001, before Morgan Stanley Dean Witter bond traders and clients at a golf resort in Boca Raton, Fla. The firm paid Clinton $125,000, but some clients complained, fearing the controversy surrounding Clinton's recent pardons could rub off on the firm.

The company's chairman at the time, Philip Purcell, wrote an apology to clients for not being "more sensitive to the strong feelings of our clients over Mr. Clinton's personal behavior as president." Purcell declined to comment on the matter.

Controversy has surrounded a few other Clinton speeches as well.

In 2008, Clinton was paid $125,000 to address a conference in New York hosted by Rodman & Renshaw, a bank that specialized in investing in Chinese companies. He spoke again to the firm in 2010 at a fee of $75,000.

Two years later, amid inquiries from federal regulators, Rodman & Renshaw began to close down its securities business. The firm's court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, Yann Geron, declined to comment except to say "the current state of the company is that it is being liquidated."

In 2013, Clinton's $500,000 fee from the Jewish National Fund to speak at a 90th birthday gala for former Israeli president Shimon Peres leaked to the press and sparked an uproar. The fee was initially going to be paid to the Clinton Foundation, but the former president rerouted it to an Israeli charity.

Other former presidents also have stirred controversy with their paid speeches. Shortly after leaving office in 1989, Ronald Reagan received $2 million for addressing business executives in Tokyo at a time when the United States had an acrimonious trade dispute with Japan. George H.W. Bush made millions of dollars speaking to corporate groups around the world, as has George W. Bush, who in 2011 addressed, among others, financial firms caught up in scandal.

Scaramucci, the hedge fund manager, said he credits Bill Clinton with helping to put his annual SALT conference on the calendar for many financiers. After Clinton's appearance, he said, conference attendance grew by a third. And citing Clinton helped Scaramucci persuade other big-name speakers to appear in later years, including George W. Bush and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

"When you get the big dog, you can get the rest of the people to come after him," said Scaramucci, a top Republican fundraiser. "President Clinton single-handedly helped to institutionalize and bolster the prestige and credibility of our event."

Scaramucci said he tried to book Hillary Clinton for his 2014 conference last month, but she declined. "Mrs. Clinton," he said, "is obviously in very high demand."

Matt DeLong contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-clintons-went-from-dead-broke-to-rich-bill-earned-1049-million-for-speeches/2014/06/26/8fa0b372-fd3a-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html?wpmk=MK0000203

[Warph]

Obuma Blasts 'Phony Scandals'

President Obama hit the road Thursday for Minnesota, grabbing a burger stuffed with cheese and some ice cream while trying to interact with "real" people.  He also again dished out some criticism of the political culture in Washington, namely what he called "phony scandals" that he said are based on "fabricated issues" aimed at "ginning up a base" at a town hall.  The president followed up those comments later at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where he talked about the struggles of Rebekah Erler, a working mother he had spent time with earlier in the day.  Instead of figuring out ways to help Erler and her family, the president said lawmakers "talk about everything else."  He went on to say: "We talk about phony scandals, and we talk about Benghazi, and we talk about polls, and we talk about the tea party, and we talk about the latest controversy that Washington has decided is important — and we don't talk about her."   The comments come as House Republicans have intensified their investigation of the improper targeting practices of the IRS in light of reports that thousands of emails from former official Lois Lerner went missing after her hard drive crashed in 2011.  On top of that, GOP lawmakers have also formed a special select committee to investigate the administration's response to the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.  And House Speaker John Boehner announced Wednesday that Republicans planned to sue the president over his use of executive authority.

Mr. President,