Murdoch unloads on Kerry, Obama, the left
By Blake Hounshell
News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, in a discursive speech Monday evening, blasted Secretary of State John Kerry and attacked the left for creating an “identity crisis” that he charged has undermined American strength and fostered terrorism around the world.
And he drew a connection between U.S. foreign policy and domestic culture, arguing that “in recent years, there has been far too much institutionalization of grievance and victimhood.”
The Australian-born media mogul, a naturalized U.S. citizen, also touched on the Republican presidential primary, which he said “has articulated a deep distaste for the slow descent of our country.”
“Before delivering my modest message,” Murdoch joked at the outset of his address accepting the Hudson Institute's Global Leadership Award, “I feel obliged to alert college students, progressive academics and all other deeply sensitive souls that these words may contain phrases and ideas that challenge your prejudices — in other words, I formally declare this room an ‘unsafe space.’”
After a few words of praise for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who had just introduced him to the hawkish think-tank crowd, Murdoch quickly pivoted to a sweeping indictment of U.S. foreign policy under Barack Obama, though he did not mention the president by name.
“For a U.S. secretary of state to suggest that Islamic terrorists had a ‘rationale’ in slaughtering journalists is one of the low points of recent Western diplomacy and it is indicative of a serious malaise,” Murdoch said, referring to Kerry’s recent mangled attempt to draw a distinction between the assault on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the more recent Paris attacks. “For America to be embarrassed by its exceptionalism is itself exceptional and absolutely unacceptable.” (Kerry quickly walked back those comments, remarking the next day that “such atrocities can never be rationalized, and we can never allow them to be rationalized.”)
Murdoch also laid out a mission for the next U.S. president, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
“For America to have a sense of direction, two conditions are essential: A U.S. leader must understand, be proud of and assert the American personality,” he said, noting that Kissinger had offered a forthright defense of American exceptionalism in his book “World Order.”
“An identity crisis is not a starting point for any journey; and secondly, there must be clear goals informed by values and by a realization of the extraordinary potential of its people,” Murdoch continued.
He then offered a brief tour of 20th century diplomatic and military history, hailing the U.S. role in defeating Japan during World War II and standing up to North Korea — fortitude he said the United States had lost in recent years in favor of a culture of self-obsession.
“The left seemed to be happy for the incarceration of millions, whether in Vietnam under Ho or in China under Mao,” he said. “Why agonize over inhumanity when you could blithely celebrate yourself?”
Praising Kissinger’s role in nudging China toward a market economy, which he called “a modern miracle” that had lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, Murdoch said, “this fundamental, irrefutable truth must be denied by those who despise America and detest economic freedom.”
“The soft left,” he added, “cannot countenance that remarkable human success.”
In a seeming digression, Murdoch also weighed in on the U.S. domestic debate over hydraulic fracturing, which he said “has become a litmus test of principle.”
“Those governments that forbid fracking are the flat-earth fraternity, yes, including New York state,” he said. “They believe that the Earth revolves around them.”
Environmentalists fail to recognize the need for oil and gas to remain the dominant sources of energy, he charged. “To deny that reality is to condemn the most vulnerable to the indignity of poverty for the sake of an ideology -- that being the ideology of self. The triumph of the me over the needs of the many.”
Liberal “self-indulgence” had hobbled America’s sense of moral purpose, Murdoch suggested, asking: “How can we in this room be content with poverty, intellectual or economic, and how can we be content with a world defined by the ideologies of those who seek to please and appease?”
“We are here not to apologize for America, but to celebrate America,” he concluded. “We are here to reflect upon the world as it might have been without America — a much, much lesser world.”
December 01, 2015
Prosecute Bush officials
Human Rights Watch to Obama: Prosecute Bush officials for torture
By Nick Gass
Human Rights Watch, in a new report out Tuesday, urged President Barack Obama to prosecute top officials from George W. Bush’s administration as well as CIA contractors or their roles in creating, approving and implementing so-called enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees in CIA custody.
"There is substantial evidence supporting charges of conspiracy to torture against senior US officials and CIA contractors, including evidence that some individuals joined the conspiracy after it was first established," the report, titled "No More Excuses: A Roadmap to Justice for CIA Torture" states, outlining the ways in which it says U.S. officials knowingly violated the federal Torture Statute and other laws in committing "torture, assault, sexual abuse, war crimes, and conspiracy to commit such crimes."
A host of top-level officials should be investigated, the report recommends, including the former heads of legal counsel for the CIA, the White House and Justice Department, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's second-term national security adviser.
"Based on the information outlined above, the following individuals should be investigated for their role in the conspiracy: Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, Head of the Justice Department OLC Jay Bybee, OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, the person identified as 'CTC Legal' in the Senate Summary, CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Legal Advisor John Bellinger, Attorney General John Ashcroft, White House Counsel Legal Advisor Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to the Vice President David Addington, Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanigan, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice," the report states, in addition to CIA psychologist contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen who devised the program, proposed it to the agency and helped implement it.
Bush and Cheney should be also investigated for their roles in approving torture, it states. The report cites the executive summary of a 2014 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, which noted that Bush had not been briefed on the Senate program until April 2006, at which time he "expressed discomfort." The president wrote in his autobiography that he discussed the program with CIA Director George Tenet himself in 2002, and "personally approved them," according to HRW's report. (Rizzo has questioned Bush's account.) The report also cites media reports in naming Cheney and Addington as the principal political forces behind urging the use of the interrogation techniques. In a 2010 interview with ABC cited in the report, Cheney defended Yoo and other OLC lawyers by remarking that they did "what we asked them to do."
Human Rights Watch pointed to its own research and reporting, as well as the declassified information provided in the December 2014 Senate report, which detailed such practices as rectal feeding and one instance of a waterboarding session that caused one detainee to become "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."
"Ultimately, the guilt or innocence of any of the US officials involved in organizing or carrying out the CIA program will rest with the criminal justice system," the report states in its executive summary. "Suspects should be tried in criminal proceedings that comport with international due process and fair trial standards, including allowing them to challenge evidence, present defenses, and raise mitigating circumstances. But before these fundamental institutions of democratic rule can even be set in motion, US criminal justice officials need to first conduct credible investigations and bring charges where appropriate, requirements that have gone unmet for well over a decade since the first revelations of CIA torture after 9/11."
The Bush administration insisted repeatedly that its interrogation practices did not amount to torture, though it ruled out several techniques after public criticism.
By Nick Gass
Human Rights Watch, in a new report out Tuesday, urged President Barack Obama to prosecute top officials from George W. Bush’s administration as well as CIA contractors or their roles in creating, approving and implementing so-called enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees in CIA custody.
"There is substantial evidence supporting charges of conspiracy to torture against senior US officials and CIA contractors, including evidence that some individuals joined the conspiracy after it was first established," the report, titled "No More Excuses: A Roadmap to Justice for CIA Torture" states, outlining the ways in which it says U.S. officials knowingly violated the federal Torture Statute and other laws in committing "torture, assault, sexual abuse, war crimes, and conspiracy to commit such crimes."
A host of top-level officials should be investigated, the report recommends, including the former heads of legal counsel for the CIA, the White House and Justice Department, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's second-term national security adviser.
"Based on the information outlined above, the following individuals should be investigated for their role in the conspiracy: Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, Head of the Justice Department OLC Jay Bybee, OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, the person identified as 'CTC Legal' in the Senate Summary, CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Legal Advisor John Bellinger, Attorney General John Ashcroft, White House Counsel Legal Advisor Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to the Vice President David Addington, Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanigan, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice," the report states, in addition to CIA psychologist contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen who devised the program, proposed it to the agency and helped implement it.
Bush and Cheney should be also investigated for their roles in approving torture, it states. The report cites the executive summary of a 2014 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, which noted that Bush had not been briefed on the Senate program until April 2006, at which time he "expressed discomfort." The president wrote in his autobiography that he discussed the program with CIA Director George Tenet himself in 2002, and "personally approved them," according to HRW's report. (Rizzo has questioned Bush's account.) The report also cites media reports in naming Cheney and Addington as the principal political forces behind urging the use of the interrogation techniques. In a 2010 interview with ABC cited in the report, Cheney defended Yoo and other OLC lawyers by remarking that they did "what we asked them to do."
Human Rights Watch pointed to its own research and reporting, as well as the declassified information provided in the December 2014 Senate report, which detailed such practices as rectal feeding and one instance of a waterboarding session that caused one detainee to become "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."
"Ultimately, the guilt or innocence of any of the US officials involved in organizing or carrying out the CIA program will rest with the criminal justice system," the report states in its executive summary. "Suspects should be tried in criminal proceedings that comport with international due process and fair trial standards, including allowing them to challenge evidence, present defenses, and raise mitigating circumstances. But before these fundamental institutions of democratic rule can even be set in motion, US criminal justice officials need to first conduct credible investigations and bring charges where appropriate, requirements that have gone unmet for well over a decade since the first revelations of CIA torture after 9/11."
The Bush administration insisted repeatedly that its interrogation practices did not amount to torture, though it ruled out several techniques after public criticism.
Dump No Child
Congress set to dump No Child Left Behind
The House is expected to pass a bill that would dismantle key elements of the Bush-era law.
By Maggie Severns
Thirteen years after President George W. Bush and Congress embarked on the country’s biggest-ever education experiment to help the poorest and most vulnerable students — casting the federal government as enforcer — lawmakers are poised to step it back.
The House is expected to pass a bipartisan bill later this week that would dismantle key elements of No Child Left Behind, the sweeping law that became synonymous with one-size-fits-all testing and a punitive approach to failing schools — and which is reviled almost equally on the left and right.
NCLB’s replacement, which the Senate is expected to vote on next week, returns significant power over public education to the states and in some respects, repudiates both the Bush and Obama administrations, which gave huge power to Education secretaries.
The Every Student Succeeds Act, as the bill is called, would get rid of the unpopular requirement that schools must get all children reading at their grade level or face consequences, significantly diminish the power of the Education secretary and prevent the federal government from using its money and influence to promote national standards like the Common Core.
The agreement to toss whole chunks of the landmark law reflects a rare political convergence, uniting liberals who decried rote testing regimes, conservatives who wanted the federal government out of education, state officials angry about unfunded mandates and powerful teachers unions who said NCLB punished them, rather than giving them needed assistance.
“This will be a really good step forward for all of our parents and our teachers and our students across the country, because it will provide certainty that has been missing for a long time now,” said Sen. Patty Murray, a chief Democratic negotiator on the bill.
The Obama administration’s waiver system, put in place after NCLB’s escalating sanctions became increasingly common, has led to uncertainty in many states, including Murray’s home state of Washington, she said.
“Today, we have a system ... where the secretary of Education gives waivers to schools that are not meeting the requirements, or tells them they are not getting a waiver and they lose federal money. That’s not getting a good education for anyone,” Murray said.
The White House is expected to sign the measure, potentially teeing up a new law by the end of the year.
While almost everyone agrees NCLB was a deeply flawed law, some critics fear the new approach will leave poor and minority students with fewer protections.
No Child Left Behind was “very assertive and interventionist,” said Gary Orfield, education and law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles. He added that the Obama administration “doubled down the bets” by aggressively using its influence to get states to adopt favored policies, even after No Child Left Behind expired in 2007.
“Now we’re going to get something that’s much worse — a lot of federal money going out for almost no leverage for any national purpose,” Orfield said.
Proponents of the new bill, however, say it would keep enough federal safeguards in place by having the education department act as an “umpire.” Students would continue to take standardized tests annually in grades three through eight, and then, once in high school. The federal government would have to sign off on states’ plans for closing achievement gaps.
States and localities would be responsible for improving schools with low test scores, and they would still have to break out testing data to show how poor, minority and disabled students are performing — a provision in NCLB that the majority of lawmakers still believes is necessary.
Because of these safeguards, the bill has the backing of many Democrats, including the three members of the Congressional Black Caucus who served on the conference committee. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), ranking member of the House education committee and one of the bill’s chief negotiators, said he fully supports the compromise. So did every other Democrat on the conference committee when they voted on the bill in November.
But there has been hesitation among some in the civil rights community, and there were several minor, last-minute changes to beef up some provisions.
“I heard loud and clear from teachers and parents and kids in Connecticut that they wanted the federal government to take a big step back in terms of the role it has played over the last 10 years in the details of local education policy,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who voted against an earlier Senate bill because he thought it reduced the federal role too much.
But Murphy said he supports the final bill, which includes accountability provisions not in the Senate bill that are designed to help poor and minority kids.
“I was not willing to support a federal education law that didn’t continue to monitor and oversee the progress that minority kids and disabled kids and poor kids are making,” he said.
One reason Democrats and civil rights groups say they came to the table to hash out a deal in a Republican-controlled Congress was the fear of what might lie ahead. Some 2016 presidential candidates — for instance, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who voted against the earlier Senate bill in July — have called for getting rid of the federal Department of Education altogether. Even Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee and an ally of teachers unions, is not expected to be as strong a proponent of accountability as President Barack Obama, putting those who support such provisions in a weaker position.
Many Republicans clamoring for less federal involvement in education support the replacement bill for their own reasons. The compromise would restore more local control, albeit not enough for some House conservatives who have vehemently opposed it on those grounds. Nonetheless, House Republicans supporting the bill have said they think they will have sufficient votes to pass it.
Marty West, an education professor at Harvard who previously worked for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), one of the bill’s Republican architects, called it “an incredibly significant development.”
"This is the first reauthorization since at least the 1980s — but arguably dating all the way back to its inception — where you see a rollback of federal involvement, as opposed to further extension," West said.
Back in 2000, a newly elected Bush sought greater federal involvement.
As the domestic centerpiece of his presidency, he proposed greater accountability from schools in exchange for federal dollars. Helped in part by a wave of bipartisanship that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the White House worked with Congress to pass a bill that laid out a much more muscular role for the federal government in education.
Within a year, though, it was drawing complaints that it was underfunded and overly prescriptive.
“A lot of people were upset with the idea that the federal government was going to tell you how you were going to cure your problems,” said former Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), one of the original “big four” negotiators, along with retired Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), retired Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). “They said, ‘Wait, that’s our job — that’s the state’s job, the district’s job.’”
Miller said he is hopeful the new bill can be “the best of both worlds,” giving states more power, but still protecting the civil rights of poor, mostly minority children.
Despite the bitter feuding over NCLB, many experts and some lawmakers say it had successes — for instance, spotlighting previously hidden racial achievement gaps by requiring schools to break out student data by race and other categories.
“There’s much more awareness now in poor and minority communities that they don’t want their children hidden from performance standards and accountability,” Miller said.
The Obama administration allowed some states to combine those categories when reporting data, a practice criticized by Miller and some civil rights advocates. The new bill would eliminate use of that loophole.
A number of studies have credited No Child Left Behind with improving some test scores, especially for poor and minority students, in its early years. One influential 2009 paper found improvements in fourth- and eighth-grade math scores, but no evidence of a boost in reading achievement.
Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, tied those test scores to improved graduation rates, saying the law helped “millions of kids who would have been on a trajectory to drop out of high school, and instead, they made it.”
Still, Petrilli, who thinks the Obama administration made a power grab with its education policies, called the new law “much, much better” than No Child Left Behind, since it returns more responsibility to the states.
“We need to be humble about how much we know about what works,” he said. “Allowing another era for state experimentation makes a lot of sense.”
Since NCLB expired in 2007, multiple attempts to rewrite the highly politicized law have failed even as frustrations among educators and parents escalated.
States were required to test students annually in math and reading, and occasionally in science. But in some cases, that federal requirement piled onto state and local testing rules, resulting in many more hours of preparation and test taking than No Child Left Behind mandated. The result: Students in urban districts typically take 112 standardized tests by the time they graduate from high school, a study by the Council of the Great City Schools found.
The Obama administration’s waiver system further diminished the federal education brand, critics argue. Waivers were designed to give states a reprieve from the sanctions associated with No Child Left Behind, but they also pushed Obama education priorities that are unpopular with Republicans.
Most notoriously, the waivers pushed states to adopt rigorous standards for students — catalyzing the spread of Common Core math and English standards designed to promote critical thinking, which were adopted by more than 40 states.
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), one of the few NCLB co-authors still on Capitol Hill, said he remembers celebrating with the Kennedy and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) the night the final conference report was filed. But even then, they discussed how the law “was going to go from a positive to a negative” as sanctions for states ramped up, and how it would need to be rewritten.
Thirteen years later, that rewrite might finally get done. “We waited too long,” Isakson said.
The House is expected to pass a bill that would dismantle key elements of the Bush-era law.
By Maggie Severns
Thirteen years after President George W. Bush and Congress embarked on the country’s biggest-ever education experiment to help the poorest and most vulnerable students — casting the federal government as enforcer — lawmakers are poised to step it back.
The House is expected to pass a bipartisan bill later this week that would dismantle key elements of No Child Left Behind, the sweeping law that became synonymous with one-size-fits-all testing and a punitive approach to failing schools — and which is reviled almost equally on the left and right.
NCLB’s replacement, which the Senate is expected to vote on next week, returns significant power over public education to the states and in some respects, repudiates both the Bush and Obama administrations, which gave huge power to Education secretaries.
The Every Student Succeeds Act, as the bill is called, would get rid of the unpopular requirement that schools must get all children reading at their grade level or face consequences, significantly diminish the power of the Education secretary and prevent the federal government from using its money and influence to promote national standards like the Common Core.
The agreement to toss whole chunks of the landmark law reflects a rare political convergence, uniting liberals who decried rote testing regimes, conservatives who wanted the federal government out of education, state officials angry about unfunded mandates and powerful teachers unions who said NCLB punished them, rather than giving them needed assistance.
“This will be a really good step forward for all of our parents and our teachers and our students across the country, because it will provide certainty that has been missing for a long time now,” said Sen. Patty Murray, a chief Democratic negotiator on the bill.
The Obama administration’s waiver system, put in place after NCLB’s escalating sanctions became increasingly common, has led to uncertainty in many states, including Murray’s home state of Washington, she said.
“Today, we have a system ... where the secretary of Education gives waivers to schools that are not meeting the requirements, or tells them they are not getting a waiver and they lose federal money. That’s not getting a good education for anyone,” Murray said.
The White House is expected to sign the measure, potentially teeing up a new law by the end of the year.
While almost everyone agrees NCLB was a deeply flawed law, some critics fear the new approach will leave poor and minority students with fewer protections.
No Child Left Behind was “very assertive and interventionist,” said Gary Orfield, education and law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles. He added that the Obama administration “doubled down the bets” by aggressively using its influence to get states to adopt favored policies, even after No Child Left Behind expired in 2007.
“Now we’re going to get something that’s much worse — a lot of federal money going out for almost no leverage for any national purpose,” Orfield said.
Proponents of the new bill, however, say it would keep enough federal safeguards in place by having the education department act as an “umpire.” Students would continue to take standardized tests annually in grades three through eight, and then, once in high school. The federal government would have to sign off on states’ plans for closing achievement gaps.
States and localities would be responsible for improving schools with low test scores, and they would still have to break out testing data to show how poor, minority and disabled students are performing — a provision in NCLB that the majority of lawmakers still believes is necessary.
Because of these safeguards, the bill has the backing of many Democrats, including the three members of the Congressional Black Caucus who served on the conference committee. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), ranking member of the House education committee and one of the bill’s chief negotiators, said he fully supports the compromise. So did every other Democrat on the conference committee when they voted on the bill in November.
But there has been hesitation among some in the civil rights community, and there were several minor, last-minute changes to beef up some provisions.
“I heard loud and clear from teachers and parents and kids in Connecticut that they wanted the federal government to take a big step back in terms of the role it has played over the last 10 years in the details of local education policy,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who voted against an earlier Senate bill because he thought it reduced the federal role too much.
But Murphy said he supports the final bill, which includes accountability provisions not in the Senate bill that are designed to help poor and minority kids.
“I was not willing to support a federal education law that didn’t continue to monitor and oversee the progress that minority kids and disabled kids and poor kids are making,” he said.
One reason Democrats and civil rights groups say they came to the table to hash out a deal in a Republican-controlled Congress was the fear of what might lie ahead. Some 2016 presidential candidates — for instance, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who voted against the earlier Senate bill in July — have called for getting rid of the federal Department of Education altogether. Even Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee and an ally of teachers unions, is not expected to be as strong a proponent of accountability as President Barack Obama, putting those who support such provisions in a weaker position.
Many Republicans clamoring for less federal involvement in education support the replacement bill for their own reasons. The compromise would restore more local control, albeit not enough for some House conservatives who have vehemently opposed it on those grounds. Nonetheless, House Republicans supporting the bill have said they think they will have sufficient votes to pass it.
Marty West, an education professor at Harvard who previously worked for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), one of the bill’s Republican architects, called it “an incredibly significant development.”
"This is the first reauthorization since at least the 1980s — but arguably dating all the way back to its inception — where you see a rollback of federal involvement, as opposed to further extension," West said.
Back in 2000, a newly elected Bush sought greater federal involvement.
As the domestic centerpiece of his presidency, he proposed greater accountability from schools in exchange for federal dollars. Helped in part by a wave of bipartisanship that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the White House worked with Congress to pass a bill that laid out a much more muscular role for the federal government in education.
Within a year, though, it was drawing complaints that it was underfunded and overly prescriptive.
“A lot of people were upset with the idea that the federal government was going to tell you how you were going to cure your problems,” said former Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), one of the original “big four” negotiators, along with retired Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), retired Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). “They said, ‘Wait, that’s our job — that’s the state’s job, the district’s job.’”
Miller said he is hopeful the new bill can be “the best of both worlds,” giving states more power, but still protecting the civil rights of poor, mostly minority children.
Despite the bitter feuding over NCLB, many experts and some lawmakers say it had successes — for instance, spotlighting previously hidden racial achievement gaps by requiring schools to break out student data by race and other categories.
“There’s much more awareness now in poor and minority communities that they don’t want their children hidden from performance standards and accountability,” Miller said.
The Obama administration allowed some states to combine those categories when reporting data, a practice criticized by Miller and some civil rights advocates. The new bill would eliminate use of that loophole.
A number of studies have credited No Child Left Behind with improving some test scores, especially for poor and minority students, in its early years. One influential 2009 paper found improvements in fourth- and eighth-grade math scores, but no evidence of a boost in reading achievement.
Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, tied those test scores to improved graduation rates, saying the law helped “millions of kids who would have been on a trajectory to drop out of high school, and instead, they made it.”
Still, Petrilli, who thinks the Obama administration made a power grab with its education policies, called the new law “much, much better” than No Child Left Behind, since it returns more responsibility to the states.
“We need to be humble about how much we know about what works,” he said. “Allowing another era for state experimentation makes a lot of sense.”
Since NCLB expired in 2007, multiple attempts to rewrite the highly politicized law have failed even as frustrations among educators and parents escalated.
States were required to test students annually in math and reading, and occasionally in science. But in some cases, that federal requirement piled onto state and local testing rules, resulting in many more hours of preparation and test taking than No Child Left Behind mandated. The result: Students in urban districts typically take 112 standardized tests by the time they graduate from high school, a study by the Council of the Great City Schools found.
The Obama administration’s waiver system further diminished the federal education brand, critics argue. Waivers were designed to give states a reprieve from the sanctions associated with No Child Left Behind, but they also pushed Obama education priorities that are unpopular with Republicans.
Most notoriously, the waivers pushed states to adopt rigorous standards for students — catalyzing the spread of Common Core math and English standards designed to promote critical thinking, which were adopted by more than 40 states.
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), one of the few NCLB co-authors still on Capitol Hill, said he remembers celebrating with the Kennedy and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) the night the final conference report was filed. But even then, they discussed how the law “was going to go from a positive to a negative” as sanctions for states ramped up, and how it would need to be rewritten.
Thirteen years later, that rewrite might finally get done. “We waited too long,” Isakson said.
Paying off...
Christie's New Hampshire focus begins to pay dividends
After 49 visits, 36 town halls and more than 112 events, the New Jersey governor is finally seeing a return on his early-state investment.
By Daniel Strauss
The all-in-on-New Hampshire strategy might be finally paying off for Chris Christie.
The New Jersey governor, whose inability to gain traction in the presidential campaign has left him mired in single digits in national polls, is beginning to see a return on his considerable investment of time and energy in the first-primary-in-the-nation state.
For months, Christie has poured whatever resources he could muster into New Hampshire, visiting on an almost weekly basis. As of Monday, the governor had visited the state 49 times, hosted 36 official town halls and held more than 112 events there. He's also made a habit of repeatedly texting and calling potential supporters — and following up — in an attempt to win them over. Even supporters of rival candidates concede those dogged efforts have left a good impression.
In recent days, he's won a front-page endorsement from the state's largest newspaper, the New Hampshire Union Leader, and support from several coveted New Hampshire activists as well — most notably the influential Renee and Dan Plummer. While Christie is still buried in the middle of the pack in state polls, the latest surveys have shown a slight uptick over his mid-October numbers.
Former state House Speaker Donna Sytek, like many former and current GOP state legislators, said Christie's many text messages and phone calls eventually won her over as she winnowed her list of potential 2016 candidates.
"Part of it was I was very fond of a couple of other candidates and wanted to give them a chance to win my heart but it was just my own personal process that brought me to the point that I wanted to endorse him," said Sytek, who is set to formally endorse Christie on Tuesday. "The fact that the Paris terrorism attacks happened just reinforced my respect for his ability to be a leader and be a plain talker at a time when leadership was needed."
Christie's campaign recognizes there's still a long climb ahead to get into contention but insists that with more than two months to go before the primary there's still time for that.
"Campaigning the 'New Hampshire way' by directly engaging voters in dozens of town hall meetings and answering every question has been a key factor in growing support," Christie Communications Director Sam Smith said in an email on Monday.
America Leads, the super PAC supporting Christie, plans to incorporate the Union Leader endorsement as a "major part" of its advertising going forward, according to people familiar with the organization's strategy.
In any case, after months of languishing at the back of the pack — the governor failed to make the last GOP prime-time debate stage because his polling numbers were too low — Christie's camp is keeping its expectations in check.
"More than anything, this endorsement gives the governor a serious second look nationally," a Christie adviser said of the Sytek and Plummer endorsements. "We aren't saying that this means we're going to win New Hampshire, but it does means Christie is a real, viable contender in this race right now. The governor's hard work over the last few months showing up in front of voters started to pay off with his favorables turning right-side up, ballot moving from 2 to 8 percent and now this. In a crowded field with limited oxygen, this puts Christie in the middle of the narrative."
Even Republicans backing other candidates acknowledge that Christie seems to have turned a corner in a state that is critical to his fate. Tom Eaton, a former New Hampshire state Senate president who endorsed Carly Fiorina after hosting a number of candidates at his lake house over the summer, acknowledged that Christie is starting to capture the attention of New Hampshire voters and activists.
"I think Christie's making a track in New Hampshire and people are listening to him," Eaton said. Christie, Eaton continued, has smartly tried to gain incremental support in the state while Donald Trump and Ben Carson took up most of the oxygen over the past few weeks.
"Gov. Christie has just towed the line and talked very straight about what he would do and how he would do it. And I think after some of the world happenings people are starting to take a look and realize that he would be a very good, strong leader also," Eaton said.
Even after Eaton made clear he was sticking with Fiorina, the New Jersey governor continued to stay in contact with him, sending him a text message on Sunday that read "Tom—Good morning. Have had a few good days in NH. Hope all is well with you. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. All the best, Chris Christie."
The attention to detail is much appreciated in a small state where retail politicking is expected and the state's political class is accustomed to — and appreciates — small courtesies.
"A lot of the reasons I like him a lot is he actually listens," said New Hampshire Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, who's received multiple calls and texts from Christie. "When you have a conversation with him he listens. Certainly he's called me up a lot."
Bradley hasn't endorsed yet but said Christie is a definite possibility.
Juliana Bergeron, a Republican National Committeewoman from New Hampshire, expects the governor's polling numbers to tick up.
"I think his surge is coming," said Bergeron, who stressed that she's remained neutral in the primary. "I think it will give him legs to carry to the other states."
The question now, said Mike Dennehy, who ran Sen. John McCain's successful 2000 and 2008 presidential operations in New Hampshire, is whether Christie can capitalize when the GOP field becomes a little more settled and a window of opportunity presents itself.
"He's getting around the state in front of voters. This all goes in the bank," Dennehy said. "He has improved his image and he has put himself in a perfect position to capitalize on a shakeup of some sorts. Whether it's the demise of John Kasich or we get another month and the voters get behind another candidate. I just think everything he's doing is building for an opportunity. But I just don't think that opportunity has presented itself. And it may not until January."
After 49 visits, 36 town halls and more than 112 events, the New Jersey governor is finally seeing a return on his early-state investment.
By Daniel Strauss
The all-in-on-New Hampshire strategy might be finally paying off for Chris Christie.
The New Jersey governor, whose inability to gain traction in the presidential campaign has left him mired in single digits in national polls, is beginning to see a return on his considerable investment of time and energy in the first-primary-in-the-nation state.
For months, Christie has poured whatever resources he could muster into New Hampshire, visiting on an almost weekly basis. As of Monday, the governor had visited the state 49 times, hosted 36 official town halls and held more than 112 events there. He's also made a habit of repeatedly texting and calling potential supporters — and following up — in an attempt to win them over. Even supporters of rival candidates concede those dogged efforts have left a good impression.
In recent days, he's won a front-page endorsement from the state's largest newspaper, the New Hampshire Union Leader, and support from several coveted New Hampshire activists as well — most notably the influential Renee and Dan Plummer. While Christie is still buried in the middle of the pack in state polls, the latest surveys have shown a slight uptick over his mid-October numbers.
Former state House Speaker Donna Sytek, like many former and current GOP state legislators, said Christie's many text messages and phone calls eventually won her over as she winnowed her list of potential 2016 candidates.
"Part of it was I was very fond of a couple of other candidates and wanted to give them a chance to win my heart but it was just my own personal process that brought me to the point that I wanted to endorse him," said Sytek, who is set to formally endorse Christie on Tuesday. "The fact that the Paris terrorism attacks happened just reinforced my respect for his ability to be a leader and be a plain talker at a time when leadership was needed."
Christie's campaign recognizes there's still a long climb ahead to get into contention but insists that with more than two months to go before the primary there's still time for that.
"Campaigning the 'New Hampshire way' by directly engaging voters in dozens of town hall meetings and answering every question has been a key factor in growing support," Christie Communications Director Sam Smith said in an email on Monday.
America Leads, the super PAC supporting Christie, plans to incorporate the Union Leader endorsement as a "major part" of its advertising going forward, according to people familiar with the organization's strategy.
In any case, after months of languishing at the back of the pack — the governor failed to make the last GOP prime-time debate stage because his polling numbers were too low — Christie's camp is keeping its expectations in check.
"More than anything, this endorsement gives the governor a serious second look nationally," a Christie adviser said of the Sytek and Plummer endorsements. "We aren't saying that this means we're going to win New Hampshire, but it does means Christie is a real, viable contender in this race right now. The governor's hard work over the last few months showing up in front of voters started to pay off with his favorables turning right-side up, ballot moving from 2 to 8 percent and now this. In a crowded field with limited oxygen, this puts Christie in the middle of the narrative."
Even Republicans backing other candidates acknowledge that Christie seems to have turned a corner in a state that is critical to his fate. Tom Eaton, a former New Hampshire state Senate president who endorsed Carly Fiorina after hosting a number of candidates at his lake house over the summer, acknowledged that Christie is starting to capture the attention of New Hampshire voters and activists.
"I think Christie's making a track in New Hampshire and people are listening to him," Eaton said. Christie, Eaton continued, has smartly tried to gain incremental support in the state while Donald Trump and Ben Carson took up most of the oxygen over the past few weeks.
"Gov. Christie has just towed the line and talked very straight about what he would do and how he would do it. And I think after some of the world happenings people are starting to take a look and realize that he would be a very good, strong leader also," Eaton said.
Even after Eaton made clear he was sticking with Fiorina, the New Jersey governor continued to stay in contact with him, sending him a text message on Sunday that read "Tom—Good morning. Have had a few good days in NH. Hope all is well with you. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. All the best, Chris Christie."
The attention to detail is much appreciated in a small state where retail politicking is expected and the state's political class is accustomed to — and appreciates — small courtesies.
"A lot of the reasons I like him a lot is he actually listens," said New Hampshire Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, who's received multiple calls and texts from Christie. "When you have a conversation with him he listens. Certainly he's called me up a lot."
Bradley hasn't endorsed yet but said Christie is a definite possibility.
Juliana Bergeron, a Republican National Committeewoman from New Hampshire, expects the governor's polling numbers to tick up.
"I think his surge is coming," said Bergeron, who stressed that she's remained neutral in the primary. "I think it will give him legs to carry to the other states."
The question now, said Mike Dennehy, who ran Sen. John McCain's successful 2000 and 2008 presidential operations in New Hampshire, is whether Christie can capitalize when the GOP field becomes a little more settled and a window of opportunity presents itself.
"He's getting around the state in front of voters. This all goes in the bank," Dennehy said. "He has improved his image and he has put himself in a perfect position to capitalize on a shakeup of some sorts. Whether it's the demise of John Kasich or we get another month and the voters get behind another candidate. I just think everything he's doing is building for an opportunity. But I just don't think that opportunity has presented itself. And it may not until January."
More crazy talk....
Carson: 'Height of hypocrisy' to ask Turkey to seal border
By Nick Gass
Ben Carson on Tuesday called it the "height of hypocrisy" for the United States to call on Turkey to seal part of its border with Syria while failing to shut its own with Mexico
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the White House has urged Turkey to deploy thousands of additional troops to block a 60-mile stretch of border that officials have said acts as a corridor for Islamic State fighters to move in and out of combat. Officials have estimated that it could take up to 30,000 troops to get the job done.
“Yes, it would be good to seal off the border so that there wasn’t such a flow of people into the ranks of ISIS, but by the same token, you look at our border, it is completely porous," Carson said in an interview with "Fox and Friends."
"Terrorists can come here also. I’ve been down there. I mean, I was astonished by how little protection there is and all of the drugs that are coming through," he added. "So for us to sit there and proclaim sanctimoniously that you should close your border while we haven’t done that to protect the American people seems to me the height of hypocrisy."
The Republican presidential candidate visited refugee camps in Jordan last week, where he said efforts on the ground need more funding.
“They were saying what they would really like the United States and other countries to do is support programs like they have in Jordan. The Jordanians are wonderful people," Carson continued. "They’ve opened their hearts and their land, but they don’t have the money to sustain it, and consequently, there’s a brand-new hospital there that’s not even being utilized because they don’t have the money to run it.”
Asked whether those he encountered wanted to come to places like the U.S. or return to Syria, Carson said it was their goal to be repatriated to their home country.
"And also, look at what happens," he said, advocating what he presented as a practical but humane solution to the ongoing refugee crisis. "We bring in 25,000 people here. Look at the cost of that, and it does nothing, we’re talking about millions of people. It makes somebody feel good —yeah, we did our part! We gotta do things that work, not things that make people feel good."
By Nick Gass
Ben Carson on Tuesday called it the "height of hypocrisy" for the United States to call on Turkey to seal part of its border with Syria while failing to shut its own with Mexico
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the White House has urged Turkey to deploy thousands of additional troops to block a 60-mile stretch of border that officials have said acts as a corridor for Islamic State fighters to move in and out of combat. Officials have estimated that it could take up to 30,000 troops to get the job done.
“Yes, it would be good to seal off the border so that there wasn’t such a flow of people into the ranks of ISIS, but by the same token, you look at our border, it is completely porous," Carson said in an interview with "Fox and Friends."
"Terrorists can come here also. I’ve been down there. I mean, I was astonished by how little protection there is and all of the drugs that are coming through," he added. "So for us to sit there and proclaim sanctimoniously that you should close your border while we haven’t done that to protect the American people seems to me the height of hypocrisy."
The Republican presidential candidate visited refugee camps in Jordan last week, where he said efforts on the ground need more funding.
“They were saying what they would really like the United States and other countries to do is support programs like they have in Jordan. The Jordanians are wonderful people," Carson continued. "They’ve opened their hearts and their land, but they don’t have the money to sustain it, and consequently, there’s a brand-new hospital there that’s not even being utilized because they don’t have the money to run it.”
Asked whether those he encountered wanted to come to places like the U.S. or return to Syria, Carson said it was their goal to be repatriated to their home country.
"And also, look at what happens," he said, advocating what he presented as a practical but humane solution to the ongoing refugee crisis. "We bring in 25,000 people here. Look at the cost of that, and it does nothing, we’re talking about millions of people. It makes somebody feel good —yeah, we did our part! We gotta do things that work, not things that make people feel good."
Deep in the pocket...
GOP candidates stuck on drug prices
They blame skyrocketing costs on over-regulation and bad actors, but offer consumers little hope of relief.
By Paul Demko and Sarah Karlin
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio blamed skyrocketing drug costs on “pure profiteering” by drug companies at a private campaign event in New Hampshire.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson complained in Iowa that “the same drug that costs 60 dollars here for a pill, you can go to another country and get it for a quarter.”
And billionaire businessman Donald Trump said it was “disgusting” that Turing Pharmaceuticals had imposed a 5,000 percent price hike on a drug relied on by HIV patients.
What the 2016 GOP presidential candidates don’t say is that Medicare should negotiate drug prices or that the government should limit drug maker’s profits, steps that might dramatically shake up the marketplace. For the most part, they’re not even making modest suggestions to stem rising costs, focusing instead on hammering a few headline-making companies that they portray as bad actors.
Even as they try to address an issue that polls show is voters’ No. 1 health concern, the candidates are caught in the box of Republican free market orthodoxy — and also, of long-standing relationships with the pharmaceutical industry, a lobbying powerhouse on the Hill. In the 2012 election cycle, more than 60 percent of PhRMA’s spending went toward Republican candidates, compared to 25 percent of contributions to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
“Republicans are darned if they do and darned if they don't,” said Dean Clancy, a conservative health policy analyst and former White House and congressional staffer, now consulting for Adams Auld LLC. “If they oppose price controls, they look like they're in the pocket of the drug companies. If they endorse competitive reforms, they potentially risk the ire, not just of the drug makers, but also of insurers and patients. What I think they really want is to find a way to lay the blame on Obamacare.”
As a result, most have sought to ride the wave of populist anger by blaming the government for overzealous regulation, in addition to castigating the pricing outliers.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has called for modernizing the FDA’s “regulatory morass” — even though the agency has gone through a few rounds of congressionally-mandated overhauls and now approves drugs faster than most other developed countries, where many prescriptions are lower cost.
And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called for aggressive prosecution of price-gougers during a recent presidential debate, but scoffed at more aggressive Democratic proposals. “Does anybody out there think that giving Washington, D.C., the opportunity to run the pharmaceutical industry is a good idea?” he asked at the CNBC debate in Colorado.
In fact, polls suggest that many people do support some government intervention. A recent survey from the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing found 90 percent of likely Iowa voters believe it’s important for the candidates to address high drug costs and almost 70 percent said the government should ensure drug price increases are limited.
More Republicans were angry about drug prices than about Obamacare, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found. Republicans are also part of the huge majorities that back strong government measures to make drugs affordable, for instance, supporting Medicare negotiations over prices (83 percent) and capping what companies can charge for certain products (76 percent).
The GOP candidates’ reticence stands in stark contrast to Democrats, who have offered aggressive plans to bring down drug costs. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both want to attack prices through greater government intervention in the marketplace. Those ideas may ultimately prove politically problematic, but they acknowledge drug spending as a central pocketbook concern for voters.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, held an unusual public forum recently that brought together government officials, drugmakers and health insurers to brainstorm possible solutions and build a political case for a new approach.
As the election draws closer, all signs are the pressure on Republicans to address the issue will only grow.
Karen Ignagni, recently departed CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, compared the rising anxiety over drug costs to the debate about access to health care that simmered during the 2008 presidential cycle. That discussion forced presidential contenders on both sides of the aisle to offer significant proposals to address the issue and ultimately led to passage of the Affordable Care Act.
“We have reached a fork in the road where this issue now has been squarely teed up for the political dialogue,” Ignagni said. “Consumers and employers and public sector purchasers are focused laser-like on affordability.”
But there’s little indication that Republicans, on the campaign trial or on the Hill, have concrete solutions to address constituents’ concerns. Some on the right worry this could quickly become a liability.
“I think politically [Republicans] are in a challenging spot,” said Scott Gottlieb, a fellow at the free market-focused American Enterprise Institute who previously held senior policy positions at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration.
Republicans are starting to discuss the drug price issues, but without a set of policy solutions to back them up, he said.
“In the absence of a defined set of policies I think this could end up spiraling into a big populist issue with no clear response,” Gottlieb said. “I suspect that’s why the Democrats are pushing on it. Republicans are probably going to end up being vulnerable because they are not unifying behind a core set of principles and polices.”
In the Senate, the only Republican who has taken action on drug pricing issues, Susan Collins of Maine, is also focusing on so-called bad actors, rather than on the high costs of innovative therapies.
Along with Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, she is probing Turing, Valeant and two other companies known for buying existing drugs and then exponentially hiking the prices.
Collins told POLITICO it is “premature to settle on policy,” but that she wants to make sure any solutions “do not stifle innovation and R&D.” She said she expected widespread bipartisan interest in her investigation.
On the House side, Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) recently acquiesced to Democrats' importunings to hold a hearing on the tactics used by Turing and Valeant, six months after their initial request for an investigation.
Most observers say Republicans will have to eventually come up with their own plan to address a key pocketbook issue for voters still struggling in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
“If they don’t, it’s going to be to their detriment,” said Chris Jennings, a Democratic veteran of Washington’s health care battles. “They can’t just not engage on this front.”
They blame skyrocketing costs on over-regulation and bad actors, but offer consumers little hope of relief.
By Paul Demko and Sarah Karlin
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio blamed skyrocketing drug costs on “pure profiteering” by drug companies at a private campaign event in New Hampshire.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson complained in Iowa that “the same drug that costs 60 dollars here for a pill, you can go to another country and get it for a quarter.”
And billionaire businessman Donald Trump said it was “disgusting” that Turing Pharmaceuticals had imposed a 5,000 percent price hike on a drug relied on by HIV patients.
What the 2016 GOP presidential candidates don’t say is that Medicare should negotiate drug prices or that the government should limit drug maker’s profits, steps that might dramatically shake up the marketplace. For the most part, they’re not even making modest suggestions to stem rising costs, focusing instead on hammering a few headline-making companies that they portray as bad actors.
Even as they try to address an issue that polls show is voters’ No. 1 health concern, the candidates are caught in the box of Republican free market orthodoxy — and also, of long-standing relationships with the pharmaceutical industry, a lobbying powerhouse on the Hill. In the 2012 election cycle, more than 60 percent of PhRMA’s spending went toward Republican candidates, compared to 25 percent of contributions to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
“Republicans are darned if they do and darned if they don't,” said Dean Clancy, a conservative health policy analyst and former White House and congressional staffer, now consulting for Adams Auld LLC. “If they oppose price controls, they look like they're in the pocket of the drug companies. If they endorse competitive reforms, they potentially risk the ire, not just of the drug makers, but also of insurers and patients. What I think they really want is to find a way to lay the blame on Obamacare.”
As a result, most have sought to ride the wave of populist anger by blaming the government for overzealous regulation, in addition to castigating the pricing outliers.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has called for modernizing the FDA’s “regulatory morass” — even though the agency has gone through a few rounds of congressionally-mandated overhauls and now approves drugs faster than most other developed countries, where many prescriptions are lower cost.
And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called for aggressive prosecution of price-gougers during a recent presidential debate, but scoffed at more aggressive Democratic proposals. “Does anybody out there think that giving Washington, D.C., the opportunity to run the pharmaceutical industry is a good idea?” he asked at the CNBC debate in Colorado.
In fact, polls suggest that many people do support some government intervention. A recent survey from the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing found 90 percent of likely Iowa voters believe it’s important for the candidates to address high drug costs and almost 70 percent said the government should ensure drug price increases are limited.
More Republicans were angry about drug prices than about Obamacare, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found. Republicans are also part of the huge majorities that back strong government measures to make drugs affordable, for instance, supporting Medicare negotiations over prices (83 percent) and capping what companies can charge for certain products (76 percent).
The GOP candidates’ reticence stands in stark contrast to Democrats, who have offered aggressive plans to bring down drug costs. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both want to attack prices through greater government intervention in the marketplace. Those ideas may ultimately prove politically problematic, but they acknowledge drug spending as a central pocketbook concern for voters.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, held an unusual public forum recently that brought together government officials, drugmakers and health insurers to brainstorm possible solutions and build a political case for a new approach.
As the election draws closer, all signs are the pressure on Republicans to address the issue will only grow.
Karen Ignagni, recently departed CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, compared the rising anxiety over drug costs to the debate about access to health care that simmered during the 2008 presidential cycle. That discussion forced presidential contenders on both sides of the aisle to offer significant proposals to address the issue and ultimately led to passage of the Affordable Care Act.
“We have reached a fork in the road where this issue now has been squarely teed up for the political dialogue,” Ignagni said. “Consumers and employers and public sector purchasers are focused laser-like on affordability.”
But there’s little indication that Republicans, on the campaign trial or on the Hill, have concrete solutions to address constituents’ concerns. Some on the right worry this could quickly become a liability.
“I think politically [Republicans] are in a challenging spot,” said Scott Gottlieb, a fellow at the free market-focused American Enterprise Institute who previously held senior policy positions at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration.
Republicans are starting to discuss the drug price issues, but without a set of policy solutions to back them up, he said.
“In the absence of a defined set of policies I think this could end up spiraling into a big populist issue with no clear response,” Gottlieb said. “I suspect that’s why the Democrats are pushing on it. Republicans are probably going to end up being vulnerable because they are not unifying behind a core set of principles and polices.”
In the Senate, the only Republican who has taken action on drug pricing issues, Susan Collins of Maine, is also focusing on so-called bad actors, rather than on the high costs of innovative therapies.
Along with Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, she is probing Turing, Valeant and two other companies known for buying existing drugs and then exponentially hiking the prices.
Collins told POLITICO it is “premature to settle on policy,” but that she wants to make sure any solutions “do not stifle innovation and R&D.” She said she expected widespread bipartisan interest in her investigation.
On the House side, Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) recently acquiesced to Democrats' importunings to hold a hearing on the tactics used by Turing and Valeant, six months after their initial request for an investigation.
Most observers say Republicans will have to eventually come up with their own plan to address a key pocketbook issue for voters still struggling in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
“If they don’t, it’s going to be to their detriment,” said Chris Jennings, a Democratic veteran of Washington’s health care battles. “They can’t just not engage on this front.”
Rubio pivots
Marco Rubio pivots to his next stage
The Florida senator's focus is finally shifting from political influencers to the voters themselves.
By Shane Goldmacher
In near freezing weather, Marco Rubio kicked off the next phase of his presidential campaign in an unheated barn that was so packed that many could only hear the Florida senator they had come to see.
“This election,” Rubio told them, “must be a turning of a page.”
The Thanksgiving holiday marked a page-turning of sorts for Rubio’s campaign, as well. After months of jostling behind the scenes with Jeb Bush and the rest of the 2016 field in the invisible primary for donors, endorsements, money and momentum, Rubio is pivoting toward a more public-facing campaign. His focus is finally shifting from political influencers to the voters themselves.
He blitzed through New Hampshire on Monday, will campaign in South Carolina on Tuesday and then fly to Alabama, which votes on March 1 and where he will hold a rally, his first public event there this cycle. Rubio began to pick up the pace just before Thanksgiving, spending more time in Iowa just before the holiday — five straight days — than he had in the entire first six months of 2015. He’ll be back again in New Hampshire later this week, too.
The aggressive public travel schedule is being paired with a flood of new television ads. This week, his campaign blankets the Iowa and New Hampshire airwaves in full force for the first time — more than $700,000 in TV ads across the two states. His super PAC, meanwhile, released its first ad of the campaign on Monday.
It’s the clearest signal yet that the low-profile period of Rubio’s campaign is over, as his campaign terrain shifts from boardrooms to barns like the one in Rye. The senator’s advisers believe much of the 2016 race is being defined by free media coverage and, with just over two months until voting begins, Rubio’s team wants such coverage to pair with his ads, especially in the early-voting states.
“We can be the authors of the greatest chapter in the amazing story of America,” Rubio declared at a “No BS BBQ,” hosted by former Sen. Scott Brown on Monday.
Fueled by his discipline, speechmaking skills and solid debate performances, Rubio has been gaining momentum with the Republican political class — among donors and on Capitol Hill. Rubio rolled out 10 congressional endorsements in November, compared to three for Ted Cruz and one for Jeb Bush last month. No other candidate announced any. (Bush still has far more congressional endorsements overall.)
Rep. Darrell Issa, the former House Oversight Committee chairman who antagonized the Obama administration, became the latest Rubio endorser on Monday. And within hours, businessman John Rakolta, a national finance co-chairman for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, was backing him, too. Rakolta, who is organizing a Michigan fundraiser for Rubio next week, follows closely behind two influential billionaire political financiers, Paul Singer and Frank Vandersloot, supporting Rubio.
The challenge now for Rubio is translating his increasing insider support to the broader electorate, where he has yet to top any national or early-state polls. Even with his growing favor among mainstream Republicans, Rubio is eager not to be pigeonholed as a candidate of an unpopular Republican establishment. “My intention is to unify the Republican Party,” he said Monday when asked how he would motivate conservatives who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 to vote.
Rubio has clashed with Cruz in recent weeks over his conservative credentials, as Cruz has pegged Rubio as a “moderate.” They continued to jab at each other from afar on Monday. Rubio attacked Cruz on Fox News for harming American security with his vote to limit the government’s collection of Americans’ metadata. Cruz hammered Rubio over his “longtime support of amnesty” on the “Hugh Hewitt Show.”
The pro-Rubio super PAC’s first ads, meanwhile, try to cast the Florida senator as a political outsider. “Don’t just send the establishment a message, send them a conservative president,” the narrator says in the group’s ad.
With interest in his candidacy peaking, Rubio’s pivot to a more public-facing campaign is well-timed. The parking lot at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall where he held his first event in Laconia overflowed into the Dollar Tree lot next door. One woman, Karen Fogg of Belmont, pulled off the road as soon as she saw people waving Marco Rubio signs, in hopes he might be there. Others, like Steven and Patty Giguere, had been scouring political websites for months in hopes of a convenient Rubio New Hampshire sighting — there weren’t many — and jumped at the chance to see him in person.
Not all went smoothly for Rubio on Monday. He was nearly rear-ended on the highway on the way to airport. His flight to New Hampshire got him in late. And so he showed up to the roughly 200-person VFW crowd more than an hour tardy. He had to open with an apology and delivered an unusually scattershot speech.
But by evening he had found his rhythm, as he spoke fluently about tax policy, education and foreign affairs. In the wake of the terror attack in Paris, Rubio has further emphasized national security in his stump speech, saying he wanted to restore the federal government to “its constitutionally limited role, which is primarily to keep our nation safe.” And he issued a harsh warning about the Islamic State and the current “civilizational struggle.”
“They’re not going to be contained. They’re not going to self-implode. They’re not going to go into another line of work,” Rubio said.
“The earlier part of year here we really didn’t see much of Marco Rubio and people did say things to me,” said Alan Glassman, chairman of the Belknap County Republican Party, and a member of the New Hampshire GOP’s executive committee. “They said, ‘When are we ever going to get Rubio here, like in Belknap County, or whatever.’ And you can see, here we are, it’s the last day of November and we’ve got Rubio now in Belknap County. So it took some time.”
About 50 miles from Rubio’s event, Gov. Chris Christie was busy setting a standard Rubio will find hard to meet: The New Jersey governor was holding his 36th town hall in the state — more town halls than Rubio has had total events, according to New England Cable News’ candidate tracker. Christie has parlayed his intensely New Hampshire-centric campaign into several key endorsements, including the Union Leader newspaper this past weekend.
Christie has gone all-in on New Hampshire, as has Ohio Gov. John Kasich and, increasingly, Bush. Other Rubio’s rivals have focused on Iowa. But the Florida senator has yet to pick a single state on which to stake his White House bid — spreading himself across Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and even Nevada.
Few say it’s too late for Rubio to target New Hampshire — if he’s determined to win here. Jodi Lavoie-Carnes, vice chairwoman of the Strafford County Republican Party, said Rubio is exactly where he needs to be, within striking distance.
“You want to be Seabiscuit,” she said, “right with the pack.”
The Florida senator's focus is finally shifting from political influencers to the voters themselves.
By Shane Goldmacher
In near freezing weather, Marco Rubio kicked off the next phase of his presidential campaign in an unheated barn that was so packed that many could only hear the Florida senator they had come to see.
“This election,” Rubio told them, “must be a turning of a page.”
The Thanksgiving holiday marked a page-turning of sorts for Rubio’s campaign, as well. After months of jostling behind the scenes with Jeb Bush and the rest of the 2016 field in the invisible primary for donors, endorsements, money and momentum, Rubio is pivoting toward a more public-facing campaign. His focus is finally shifting from political influencers to the voters themselves.
He blitzed through New Hampshire on Monday, will campaign in South Carolina on Tuesday and then fly to Alabama, which votes on March 1 and where he will hold a rally, his first public event there this cycle. Rubio began to pick up the pace just before Thanksgiving, spending more time in Iowa just before the holiday — five straight days — than he had in the entire first six months of 2015. He’ll be back again in New Hampshire later this week, too.
The aggressive public travel schedule is being paired with a flood of new television ads. This week, his campaign blankets the Iowa and New Hampshire airwaves in full force for the first time — more than $700,000 in TV ads across the two states. His super PAC, meanwhile, released its first ad of the campaign on Monday.
It’s the clearest signal yet that the low-profile period of Rubio’s campaign is over, as his campaign terrain shifts from boardrooms to barns like the one in Rye. The senator’s advisers believe much of the 2016 race is being defined by free media coverage and, with just over two months until voting begins, Rubio’s team wants such coverage to pair with his ads, especially in the early-voting states.
“We can be the authors of the greatest chapter in the amazing story of America,” Rubio declared at a “No BS BBQ,” hosted by former Sen. Scott Brown on Monday.
Fueled by his discipline, speechmaking skills and solid debate performances, Rubio has been gaining momentum with the Republican political class — among donors and on Capitol Hill. Rubio rolled out 10 congressional endorsements in November, compared to three for Ted Cruz and one for Jeb Bush last month. No other candidate announced any. (Bush still has far more congressional endorsements overall.)
Rep. Darrell Issa, the former House Oversight Committee chairman who antagonized the Obama administration, became the latest Rubio endorser on Monday. And within hours, businessman John Rakolta, a national finance co-chairman for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, was backing him, too. Rakolta, who is organizing a Michigan fundraiser for Rubio next week, follows closely behind two influential billionaire political financiers, Paul Singer and Frank Vandersloot, supporting Rubio.
The challenge now for Rubio is translating his increasing insider support to the broader electorate, where he has yet to top any national or early-state polls. Even with his growing favor among mainstream Republicans, Rubio is eager not to be pigeonholed as a candidate of an unpopular Republican establishment. “My intention is to unify the Republican Party,” he said Monday when asked how he would motivate conservatives who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 to vote.
Rubio has clashed with Cruz in recent weeks over his conservative credentials, as Cruz has pegged Rubio as a “moderate.” They continued to jab at each other from afar on Monday. Rubio attacked Cruz on Fox News for harming American security with his vote to limit the government’s collection of Americans’ metadata. Cruz hammered Rubio over his “longtime support of amnesty” on the “Hugh Hewitt Show.”
The pro-Rubio super PAC’s first ads, meanwhile, try to cast the Florida senator as a political outsider. “Don’t just send the establishment a message, send them a conservative president,” the narrator says in the group’s ad.
With interest in his candidacy peaking, Rubio’s pivot to a more public-facing campaign is well-timed. The parking lot at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall where he held his first event in Laconia overflowed into the Dollar Tree lot next door. One woman, Karen Fogg of Belmont, pulled off the road as soon as she saw people waving Marco Rubio signs, in hopes he might be there. Others, like Steven and Patty Giguere, had been scouring political websites for months in hopes of a convenient Rubio New Hampshire sighting — there weren’t many — and jumped at the chance to see him in person.
Not all went smoothly for Rubio on Monday. He was nearly rear-ended on the highway on the way to airport. His flight to New Hampshire got him in late. And so he showed up to the roughly 200-person VFW crowd more than an hour tardy. He had to open with an apology and delivered an unusually scattershot speech.
But by evening he had found his rhythm, as he spoke fluently about tax policy, education and foreign affairs. In the wake of the terror attack in Paris, Rubio has further emphasized national security in his stump speech, saying he wanted to restore the federal government to “its constitutionally limited role, which is primarily to keep our nation safe.” And he issued a harsh warning about the Islamic State and the current “civilizational struggle.”
“They’re not going to be contained. They’re not going to self-implode. They’re not going to go into another line of work,” Rubio said.
“The earlier part of year here we really didn’t see much of Marco Rubio and people did say things to me,” said Alan Glassman, chairman of the Belknap County Republican Party, and a member of the New Hampshire GOP’s executive committee. “They said, ‘When are we ever going to get Rubio here, like in Belknap County, or whatever.’ And you can see, here we are, it’s the last day of November and we’ve got Rubio now in Belknap County. So it took some time.”
About 50 miles from Rubio’s event, Gov. Chris Christie was busy setting a standard Rubio will find hard to meet: The New Jersey governor was holding his 36th town hall in the state — more town halls than Rubio has had total events, according to New England Cable News’ candidate tracker. Christie has parlayed his intensely New Hampshire-centric campaign into several key endorsements, including the Union Leader newspaper this past weekend.
Christie has gone all-in on New Hampshire, as has Ohio Gov. John Kasich and, increasingly, Bush. Other Rubio’s rivals have focused on Iowa. But the Florida senator has yet to pick a single state on which to stake his White House bid — spreading himself across Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and even Nevada.
Few say it’s too late for Rubio to target New Hampshire — if he’s determined to win here. Jodi Lavoie-Carnes, vice chairwoman of the Strafford County Republican Party, said Rubio is exactly where he needs to be, within striking distance.
“You want to be Seabiscuit,” she said, “right with the pack.”
Do-nothing congress to do something...
Congress actually set to pass bills — lots of them
Get ready for a legislative gusher to end the year.
By Jake Sherman
It's become as certain as cold Thanksgiving leftovers, Christmas lights and cheap holiday parties with bad booze.
The legislative onslaught is about to begin.
As the calendar turns to December, Congress is about to encounter a legislative avalanche, ensuring the next 18 days will be filled with action on issues from education to transportation, from taxes to refugees.
And as if on cue — and seemingly out of nowhere — Capitol Hill is snapping into action. Bipartisan compromises are set to hit the floor. Hopes are flickering that a bottleneck of stalled nominations will finally open. And crises are likely to be averted, at least if Republican leaders in both chambers have their way.
Top lawmakers and aides are bullish about avoiding calamity: A government shutdown looks unlikely, they say, and the debt ceiling is already off the docket thanks to John Boehner.
Some of the bills they plan to take up before gaveling out for 2015 are a reaction to current events. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said his chamber is likely to move to overhaul a program that allows some foreign travelers to remain in the United States for three months without a visa. It’s just one of the legislative responses to the Syrian refugee crisis and terror attacks in Paris.
On top of that, two House chairmen are looking to notch legislative landmarks. The House plans a vote this week on a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — a long-stalled rewrite of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. House Education Chairman John Kline of Minnesota, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, is pressing to get it done.
A five- or six-year highway bill could also come to a vote as soon as this week, clearing an issue that has long bedeviled Congress. It would be a major victory for House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and McCarthy.
A massive, several hundred-billion-dollar package of business-targeted tax breaks known as “extenders” is also working its way through the back rooms of Capitol Hill, and could come up before Dec. 11, several aides said Monday.
The Senate, meanwhile, also has its work cut out for it. The chamber cleared a new director, Gayle Smith, for the U.S. Agency for International Development Monday evening, and was ready to begin approving nearly two-dozen State Department nominees.
Not to mention, the Senate is poised to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
All of this activity, of course, is in addition to passing a government-funding bill before Dec. 11. Top Democrats and Republicans worked over Thanksgiving to hash out the details of a yearlong “omnibus,” which would keep the government open until the end of September 2016.
Though some lawmakers want to use the must-pass budget to push for their pet policies, there does not at this point appear to be the kind of mass movement that could provoke a closure. Ryan can promise this is the last time Congress will govern in this deadline-driven manner, that he's simply cleaning up Boehner's scraps.
Get ready for a legislative gusher to end the year.
By Jake Sherman
It's become as certain as cold Thanksgiving leftovers, Christmas lights and cheap holiday parties with bad booze.
The legislative onslaught is about to begin.
As the calendar turns to December, Congress is about to encounter a legislative avalanche, ensuring the next 18 days will be filled with action on issues from education to transportation, from taxes to refugees.
And as if on cue — and seemingly out of nowhere — Capitol Hill is snapping into action. Bipartisan compromises are set to hit the floor. Hopes are flickering that a bottleneck of stalled nominations will finally open. And crises are likely to be averted, at least if Republican leaders in both chambers have their way.
Top lawmakers and aides are bullish about avoiding calamity: A government shutdown looks unlikely, they say, and the debt ceiling is already off the docket thanks to John Boehner.
Some of the bills they plan to take up before gaveling out for 2015 are a reaction to current events. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said his chamber is likely to move to overhaul a program that allows some foreign travelers to remain in the United States for three months without a visa. It’s just one of the legislative responses to the Syrian refugee crisis and terror attacks in Paris.
On top of that, two House chairmen are looking to notch legislative landmarks. The House plans a vote this week on a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — a long-stalled rewrite of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. House Education Chairman John Kline of Minnesota, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, is pressing to get it done.
A five- or six-year highway bill could also come to a vote as soon as this week, clearing an issue that has long bedeviled Congress. It would be a major victory for House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and McCarthy.
A massive, several hundred-billion-dollar package of business-targeted tax breaks known as “extenders” is also working its way through the back rooms of Capitol Hill, and could come up before Dec. 11, several aides said Monday.
The Senate, meanwhile, also has its work cut out for it. The chamber cleared a new director, Gayle Smith, for the U.S. Agency for International Development Monday evening, and was ready to begin approving nearly two-dozen State Department nominees.
Not to mention, the Senate is poised to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
All of this activity, of course, is in addition to passing a government-funding bill before Dec. 11. Top Democrats and Republicans worked over Thanksgiving to hash out the details of a yearlong “omnibus,” which would keep the government open until the end of September 2016.
Though some lawmakers want to use the must-pass budget to push for their pet policies, there does not at this point appear to be the kind of mass movement that could provoke a closure. Ryan can promise this is the last time Congress will govern in this deadline-driven manner, that he's simply cleaning up Boehner's scraps.
Auriga
Rich in star clusters and nebulae, the ancient constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga) rides high in northern winter night skies. Composed from narrow and broadband filter data and spanning nearly 8 Full Moons (4 degrees) on the sky, this deep telescopic view shows off some of Auriga's celestial bounty. The field includes emission region IC 405 (top left) about 1,500 light-years distant. Also known as the Flaming Star Nebula, its red, convoluted clouds of glowing hydrogen gas are energized by hot O-type star AE Aurigae. IC 410 (top right) is significantly more distant, some 12,000 light-years away. The star forming region is famous for its embedded young star cluster, NGC 1893, and tadpole-shaped clouds of dust and gas. IC 417 and NGC 1931 at the lower right, the Spider and the Fly, are also young star clusters embedded in natal clouds that lie far beyond IC 405. Star cluster NGC 1907 is near the bottom edge of the frame, just right of center. The crowded field of view looks along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, near the direction of the galactic anticenter.
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