JustOneMinute

The China Syndrome

China may finally be tugging on North Korea's leash:

China Bluntly Tells North Korea to Enter Nuclear Talks

By JANE PERLEZ

BEIJING — The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, bluntly told a North Korean envoy on Friday that his country should return to diplomatic talks intended to rid it of its nuclear weapons, according to a state-run Chinese news agency.

Via Josh Rogin at the FP, this freight train has been gathering steam for a while.

Salute This!

Matt Drudge and The Weekly Standard highlight CBS News' Mark Knoller noting that Obama failed to return the salute of a Marine while boarding the Marine One helicopter.

Without looking it up I will assert that, based on my recollections of related coverage from the Clinton era, Presidents, as civilians, are not supposed to be saluting anyone. Of course, there is military protocol and there is Presidential custom - my further recollection is that Presidents do in fact routinely return salutes, and some Presidents manage it better than others. 

So are we thumping Barry for inadvertently getting it right? For being a literalist instead of following tradition? Or is my memory utterly askew? Or has the protocol been changed since Clinton (yet another 9/11 effect?). So many questions.

Over to Google...

REASSURING: My steel trap is not fully rusted out yet:

Longstanding tradition requires members of the military to salute the president. The practice of presidents returning that salute is more recent — Ronald Reagan started it in 1981.
 
Reagan’s decision raised eyebrows at the time. Dwight Eisenhower, a former five-star general, did not return military salutes while president. Nor had other presidents.

Reagan reportedly discussed this with the commandant of the Marine Corps, who said that Reagan was the boss and a gesture of respect was fine. Clinton was mocked for his early efforts and naturally Bush 43 was criticized:

The debate over saluting has persisted, with some arguing against it for protocol reasons, others saying it represents an increasing militarization of the civilian presidency.

“The gesture is of course quite wrong: Such a salute has always required the wearing of a uniform,” author and historian John Lukacs wrote in The New York Times in 2003.

“But there is more to this than a decline in military manners,” he added. “There is something puerile in the Reagan (and now Bush) salute. It is the joyful gesture of someone who likes playing soldier. It also represents an exaggeration of the president’s military role.”

Garry Wills, the author and Northwestern University professor, echoed those remarks in the Times in 2007.
 
“The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements,” he wrote.

Very interesting. Since this incident comes the day after Obama's drone speech and his expression of hope that the war on terror will not be endless, maybe we are seeing an attempt by Obama to de-militarize the Presidency. That would actually be newsworthy, rather than thump-worthy.

Obama did return to shake the Marine's hand. If he wants to substitute some other gesture of respect for the salute, that might fly with people. However, I would not advise any President, but especially one with a reputation for cool aloofness, to adopt a new practice of striding past servicemen and women without acknowledging them.

Legalizing Pot

The NY Times has a round table on legalizing marijuana.

Mark Kleiman is one of the contributors. If I may steal a point he makes in his book "Drugs And Drug Policy", folks who think we should simply regulate marijuana as we do alcohol are sliding by the fact that (based on CDC numbers) our approach to alcohol could probably use some work:

There are approximately 80,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States.¹ This makes excessive alcohol use the 3r d leading lifestyle-related cause of death for the nation.² Excessive alcohol use is responsible for 2.3 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) annually, or an average of about 30 years of potential life lost for each death.¹ In 2006, there were more than 1.2 million emergency room visits and 2.7 million physician office visits due to excessive drinking.³ The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2006 were estimated at $223.5 billion.³

So alcohol abuse is not just killing people, it is (somewhat unlike cancer or heart disease) killing a lot of younger people.

Nixon's The One, But Obama Is Coming On

Yesterday, in anticipation of Obama's drone speech, the NY Times ran a guest piece blasting him. The author, James C. Goodale, represented The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case:

The search warrant filed to investigate the Fox News reporter James Rosen proved as many had suspected: President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a leaker. It is a further example of how President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.

Not a fan.

Obama has now made his inevitable left turn against his own drone war:

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Thursday announced new restraints on targeted killings and narrowed the scope of the long struggle with terrorists as part of a transition to a day he envisions when the nation will no longer be on the war footing it has been on since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In a widely anticipated speech at the National Defense University, Mr. Obama offered his most expansive defense of the drone war he has waged since taking office, but he signaled that he planned to wind down the strikes, which have stirred controversy at home and abroad. He referred obliquely to a new secret order imposing a higher standard on authorizing such attacks and shifting responsibility more from the C.I.A. to the military.

Beyond that, Mr. Obama proposed the creation of a secret court or some other independent body that would have to sign off on strikes in the future.

Stop me before I kill again!

Mark Mazetti, a Times reporter with a book on the drone war, provides his perspective on the speech. This is poignant:

In his speech, President Obama spoke of a “strong preference” for capturing militants rather than killing them. During his presidency, a far greater number of militant suspects have been killed than captured.

Mysteriously these darn terrorists haven't been walking into US Embassies and surrendering.

Only In Florida (Ongoing)

The latest legal hijinks to come out of the Sunshine State involves a classic Juliet and Juliet love story with a bit of an age twist:

(CBS) SEBASTIAN, Fla. - A Florida state attorney says the charges against Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old high school student who engaged in a same-sex relationship with a 15-year-old classmate, will not be dropped, despite petitions from the public, CBS affiliate WTSP reports.

...

The Indian River County Sheriff's Office held a press conference Monday in response to the public's uproar.

"If this was an 18-year-old male and that was a 14-year-old girl, it would have been prosecuted the same way," Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar said.

According to the station, Florida's law says any person who engages in sexual activity with a minor between the ages of 12 and 16 commits the crime of lewd and lascivious battery.

...

According to an arrest affidavit obtained by WTSP, Kaitlyn and her girlfriend began dating in November 2012. The victim reportedly told police they began a sexual relationship and according to the report, the victim was 14 and Kaitlyn was 18.

It would be interesting to know whether it would be significant if the relationship started when Kaitlin was 17. My guess is not, but it is wild to think that the relationship could have been legal at the outset but became illegal at the older girl's 18th birthday. This tidbit hangs over the proposed plea deal:

If she is found guilty, it's also possible that Hunt could apply to not have to register as a sex offender under a "Romeo and Juliet" law [more] because the girls were no more than four years apart in age, Colton said.

It would also be interesting to know the history of this law. I can't escape the suspicion that once upon a time the point of the law was to protect underage girls from predatory guys with pregnancy as the feared outcome (I didn't grow up hearing anyone refer to me as "jailbait" in my youth, although my mom assures all and sundry I was a handsome lad. Well, moms... Still, I never heard any other guys referred to as jailbait either. Hmm, Justin Bieber? Not any more!

Friday will be a big day for this case apparently. Hey, why not a pardon from thre Governor?

The IRS Hearings

Fox News in Cinncinnati delves into the IRS chain of command.

Now Apple Is The Enemy?

Democrats are going to demonize Apple as a non-taxpayer when there are so many US corporations from which to choose? What, did Obama's last fundraising swing through Silicon Valley disappoint?

The Times had an amusing and comprehensible example of a legal tasx minimization ploy:

Atop Apple’s offshore network is a subsidiary named Apple Operations International, which is incorporated in Ireland — where Apple had negotiated a special corporate tax rate of 2 percent or less in recent years — but keeps its bank accounts and records in the United States and holds board meetings in California.

Because the United States bases residency on where companies are incorporated, while Ireland focuses on where they are managed and controlled, Apple Operations International was able to fall neatly between the cracks of the two countries’ jurisdictions.

So for tax purposes Apple was nowhere. That is assuming the Times has this right, and in my experience they have a hard time on issues of tax and finance.

They also allude to a dumb but widely offered argument, to wit, that corparations that leave cash overseas to avoid taxes are inevitably under-investing in their US operations. That could make sense in the case of small businesses that lack ready access to our capital markets. However, the notion that Apple is constrained in its investments by a lack of internally generated cash is absurd. To their credit, the Times presents the research making that point:

As companies’ earnings have accumulated offshore, many executives have been pushing more aggressively for a tax holiday that would allow them to bring back funds at lower tax rates. Apple has recently announced that it will return $100 billion to shareholders over three years through a combination of dividends and purchases of its own shares. Though Apple has enough cash on hand to pay for those initiatives, the company recently announced it would take on $17 billion in debt, rather than bring overseas money back to the United States to avoid paying repatriation taxes on those returning funds.

“If Apple had used its overseas cash to fund this return of capital, the funds would have been diminished by the very high corporate U.S. tax rate of 35 percent,” Mr. Cook is planning to testify, according to the prepared text. Apple “believes the current system, which applies industrial era concepts to a digital economy, actually undermines U.S. competitiveness.”

Critics, however, say these so-called repatriation holidays, which bring back funds at lower tax rates, do virtually nothing to stimulate the economy and benefit only corporations, their executives and shareholders. Congress enacted a repatriation holiday in 2004, allowing corporations to bring back about $300 billion from overseas and pay just 5.25 percent rather than the regular 35 percent corporate rate.

But a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 92 percent of the repatriated cash was used to pay for dividends, share buybacks or executive bonuses.

“Repatriations did not lead to an increase in domestic investment, employment or R.&D., even for the firms that lobbied for the tax holiday stating these intentions,” concluded the study, which was conducted by a team of three economists that included a former Bush administration official. Tuesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill, along with the disclosures about Apple’s tax policies, are likely to make lowering repatriation taxes a more difficult proposition for lawmakers to stomach, Congressional staff members said.

 BIG FINISH: The most creative minds in Silicon Valley study and create computer code, the most creative minds in Wall Street study, and lobby for changes in, the tax code, and the result is Apple.

 

 

Scandals

 

A new ABC News/WaPo poll is out with some reaction to the various scandals.

A majority think the Administration is trying to cover up the facts on Benghazi.

A majority think the IRS deliberately targeted conservative groups; a [plurality think the Administration is covering up the facts.

But there is little love for the press - a majority think the federal prosecutors were justified in going after the phone records of the AP. That said, 69% are very or somewhat concerned that the feds will overstep in trying to protect classified information.

Here we go:

Q: Do you think the Obama administration (is honestly disclosing what it knows about what occurred in Benghazi) or (is trying to cover up the facts)?

33% say disclosing honestly: 55% say covering up.

But the Republicans are not unambiguously the good guys here:

Q: Republicans in Congress have criticized the way the Obama administration handled the attack in Benghazi, Libya. Do you think Republicans in Congress are (raising legitimate concerns), or are they (just political posturing)?

44% say they are raising legimate concerns; 45% say posturing.

On the IRS:

Q: As you may know it's been disclosed that the IRS singled out some conservative political groups for extra questions about their tax status. Do you think it was appropriate or inappropriate for the IRS to do this?

20% appropriate; 74% inappropriate.

Q: Do you think this extra focus on conservative political groups by the IRS was (a deliberate effort to harass these groups) or (an administrative mistake that was not intended to treat these groups unfairly)?

Deliberate - 56%; Administrative mistake - 31%

Q: In dealing with this situation with the IRS, do you think the Obama administration (is honestly disclosing what it knows about what occurred) or (is trying to cover up the facts)?

Disclosing - 42%; Concealing - 45%.

And on the AP:

Q: The AP reported classified information about U.S. anti-terrorism efforts and prosecutors have obtained AP's phone records through a court order. Do you think this action by federal prosecutors is or is not justified?

Justified - 52%; Not justified - 33%.

Nothing on the James Rosen, the Fox News reporter mentioned as a possible co-conspirator in a leak investigation because he wanted to interview a State Department source. And nothing on Secretary Sebelius' arm-twisting fund-raising from companies she regulates.

Don't Tell The President!

The latest revelation in the IRS debacle is stunning. From Politico:

The White House on Monday once again added to the list of people who knew about the IRS investigation into its targeting of conservative groups — saying White House chief of staff Denis McDonough had been informed about a month ago.

Press secretary Jay Carney said again that no one had told President Barack Obama ahead of the first news reports: not his top aide McDonough, nor his chief counsel Kathy Ruemmler, nor anyone from the Treasury Department.

I understand their desire to avoid even the appearance of interfering with an ongoing internal investigation, so not alerting the President before hand is a justifiable strategy. What is inexplicable is that the President was sent out after the story appeared in the press to express his disappointment and anger without any staffer mentioning to him that, by the way, we knew about that. So now, a week later, we find out that his chief of staff was keeping him out of the loop.

Of course, maybe Obama was just playing dumb and had been told immediately that his staff had been shelterering him for several weeks. At the press conference with Turkey PM Erdogan last Thursday Obama was queried specifically on the timing and ducked it:

Q    Unfortunately, we all forgot umbrellas.  Mr. President, I want to ask you about the IRS.  Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd?  And when they did find out, do you think that you should have learned about it before you learned about it from news reports as you said last Friday?  And also, are you opposed to there being a special council appointed to lead the Justice Department investigation? 

And also, Mr. Prime Minister, what is the status on efforts to normalize relations with Israel?  And do you still plan to go to Gaza in the coming weeks?  Thanks.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, with respect to the IRS, I spoke to this yesterday.  My main concern is fixing a problem, and we began that process yesterday by asking and accepting the resignation of the Acting Director there.  We will be putting in new leadership that will be able to make sure that -- following up on the IG audit -- that we gather up all the facts, that we hold accountable those who have taken these outrageous actions.  As I said last night, it is just simply unacceptable for there to even be a hint of partisanship or ideology when it comes to the application of our tax laws.

I am going to go ahead and ask folks -- why don't we get a couple of Marines, they're going to look good next to us -- (laughter) -- just because I've got a change of suits -- (laughter) -- but I don't know about our Prime Minister.  There we go.  That's good.  You guys I'm sorry about.  (Laughter.)   

But let me make sure that I answer your specific question.  I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press. Typically, the IG reports are not supposed to be widely distributed or shared.  They tend to be a process that everybody is trying to protect the integrity of.  But what I'm absolutely certain of is that the actions that were described in that IG report are unacceptable. 

So in addition to making sure that we've got a new acting director there, we're also going to make sure that we gather up the facts, and hold accountable and responsible anybody who was involved in this.  We're going to make sure that we identify any structural or management issues to prevent something like this from happening again.  We're going to make sure that we are accepting all of the recommendations that the IG has in the report. 

And I'm looking forward to working with Congress to fully investigate what happened, make sure that it doesn’t happen again, and also look at some of the laws that create a bunch of ambiguity in which the IRS may not have enough guidance and not be clear about what exactly they need to be doing and doing it right, so that the American people have confidence that the tax laws are being applied fairly and evenly. 

So in terms of the White House and reporting, I think that you've gotten that information from Mr. Carney and others.  I promise you this -- that the minute I found out about it, then my main focus is making sure we get the thing fixed.  I think that it's going to be sufficient for us to be working with Congress.  They've got a whole bunch of committees.  We've got IGs already there. 

The IG has done an audit; it's now my understanding they're going to be recommending an investigation.  And Attorney General Holder also announced a criminal investigation of what happened. Between those investigations, I think we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened, who was involved, what went wrong, and we’re going to be able to implement steps to fix it. 

And that, ultimately, is the main priority that I have, but also I think the American people have.  They understand that we’ve got an agency that has enormous potential power and is involved in everybody’s lives.  And that’s part of the reason why it’s been treated as a quasi-independent institution.  But that’s also why we’ve got to make sure that it is doing its job scrupulously and without even a hint of bias, or a hint that somehow they’re favoring one group over another. 

And, as I said yesterday, I’m outraged by this in part because, look, I’m a public figure -- if a future administration is starting to use the tax laws to favor one party over another or one political view over another, obviously we’re all vulnerable.  And that’s why, as I’ve said, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you should be equally outraged at even the prospect that the IRS might not be acting with the kind of complete neutrality that we expect. 

And I think we’re going to be able to fix it.  We’re going to be able to get it done, and we’ve already begun that progress and we’re going to keep on going until it’s finished.

More grist for John Stewart's mill.

Oklahoma

CNN has ongoing coverage of the disaster there.

The Fourth Scandal

The Times updates us on the fourth scandal of Hell Week:

Potential Donors to Enroll America Grow Skittish

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s efforts to raise private money to carry out the president’s health care law have provoked such a strong partisan uproar that potential donors have become skittish about contributing, according to several people involved in the fund-raising program.

White House officials said they did not sign off on the fund-raising calls made by Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, but were generally aware that she would be seeking support from outside groups.

Two House committees have begun investigating the solicitations. Five senior Republicans from the Senate and the House have asked the comptroller general of the United States, Gene L. Dodaro, to investigate the actions of Ms. Sebelius to determine if she was improperly circumventing spending limits imposed by Congress.

Having Ms. Sebelius raise money from the companies she regulates never sounded like a great idea. Let's flash back to the WaPo's seemingly straight-faced explanation of how she could it within the letter of the law:

Federal regulations do not allow department officials to fundraise in their professional capacity. They do, however, allow Cabinet members to solicit donations as private citizens “if you do not solicit funds from a subordinate or from someone who has or seeks business with the Department, and you do not use your official title,” according to Justice Department regulations.

No use of her job title? She's just another private citizen! Jeffrey Andersen of The Weekly Standard expounds:

When possibly the second-most powerful person in Washington comes and suggests that perhaps you should make a donation to her administration’s favorite cause, it’s hard to say no — especially when she holds almost unchecked power over the business sector in which you compete.

That seems obvious to me, but evidently not to Barry (who is no doubt planning to emulate Bill Clinton and raise money for his future library from the Oval Office as a "private citizen").

UPDATE: And then there were five: Fox News reporter James Rosen is described as a co-conspirator for a warrant in a leak investigation? Kidding?

Light It Up

Bill Keller of the Times on how to legalize pot. he includes an interesting aspiration for the market structure by way of drug policy sage Mark Kleiman:

One practical challenge facing the legalization pioneers is how to keep the marijuana market from being swallowed by a few big profiteers — the pot equivalent of Big Tobacco, or even the actual tobacco industry — a powerful oligopoly with every incentive to turn us into a nation of stoners. There is nothing inherently evil about the profit motive, but there is evidence that pot dealers, like purveyors of alcohol, get the bulk of their profit from those who use the product to excess. “When you get a for-profit producer or distributor industry going, their incentives are to increase sales,” said Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon, another member of the Washington consulting team. “And the vast majority of sales go to people who are daily or near-daily consumers.”

What Kleiman and his colleagues (speaking for themselves, not Washington State) imagine as the likely best model is something resembling the wine industry — a fragmented market, many producers, none dominant. This could be done by limiting the size of licensed purveyors. It would help, too, to let individuals grow a few plants at home — something Colorado’s new law permits but Washington’s does not, because polling showed Washingtonians didn’t want that.

I suppose with a fragmented market the producers could promote the product by way of a trade association - the Got Milk campaign springs to mind - but there is still a good point here. One does wonder about the history of the beer industry in the US, which was highly fragmented but (I suspect) locally concentrated a century ago. Presumably that was driven by high transportation costs which are not relevant to the current marijuana question.

Another Beautiful Sunday

Rain again? When does the global warming Al Gore promised us kick in?

On The Path (Again)

The White House Press Office delivers some light Saturday morning comedy:

President Seeks Path Forward Beyond Troubles

Their gist - the White House won't be distracted by these distractions and neither will the Times. Instead they will focus on the President's agenda, as soon as they develop one.

I can't wait for the musical: Somewhere, over the rainbow, states are Blue...