Bravo, President Obama

Dear Friends,

A few days ago at dinner with some friends I was roundly criticized for never writing about the good things that President Obama does.  The criticism was, of course, well founded, and I will try to improve in order to present a clearer picture of how President Obama is doing.

There are two very obvious great things that President Obama has done recently to make the lives of American workers better.  The first is that he now supports raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and tying it to inflation.  Learn more here.  By executive order, he also raised the minimum wage of federal contract workers to $10.10.  Learn more here.

$10.10 translates to about $21,000 for a 40 hour per week 52 week worker.  So this increase in the minimum wage is not sufficient, it is, however, a long overdue and important step in the right direction.

The second great thing that President Obama has done lately to make the lives of American workers better is to direct the Labor Department to issue new rules to increase the eligibility for overtime pay.    The general rule is that supervisors and management personnel are exempt from the requirement to pay overtime pay.  Unfortunately, in practice, millions of American workers who should receive overtime pay do not because their employer can claim that they are "supervisors".  Fortunately, there is also a provision that says if the worker makes less than a certain amount per week, that worker must be paid overtime pay if she/he works more than 40 hours in a week.  The weekly amount set in 1975 if adjusted for inflation would now be $980 per week.  Unfortunately, the current amount is $455 a week set by the Bush Administration in 2004.  If that amount were increased by inflation it would now be $560 a week.

President Obama has not yet said what that weekly pay amount should be, but he has started a process that should lead to an increase.  I hope that President Obama is aggressive and gets the level back to where it would have been if the 1975 level had tied to inflation.  A worker making less than about $50,000 a year should be eligible for overtime pay.  You can learn more here.

President Obama does many good things, and we should keep them in mind as we consider how he is doing as President.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Another Human Rights Failure

Dear Friends,

I am not sure why I am continually surprised by some of President Obama's actions.  Nevertheless an article in The New York Times this morning by Charlie Savage entitled, "U.S., Rebuffing U.N., Maintains Stance That Rights Treaty Does Not Apply Abroad" (here) surprised me.  It details yet another human rights failure by President Obama.

The Clinton and Bush Administrations took the position that the United Nations International Convention on Civil and Political Rights only obligates a country with respect to actions within its own borders and not overseas.  The Clinton Administration announced this position with respect to the United States intercepting Haitian refugees in international waters. The Bush Administration took this position with respect to it torture and rendition policies.  In President Obama's first term, there was hope that the United States would join the world community by repudiating the position taken by Presidents Clinton and Bush.

Harold Koh, the State Department legal advisor in President Obama's first term wrote a memo concluding that the position of the United States was legally untenable.  Mr. Koh's legal position is consistent with that of most of the rest of the world and certainly that taken by the United Nations.  After acknowledging that the position was under review, President Obama has now decided to continue to take this position.

Two paragraphs from The New York Times article with comments from human rights advocates say it all with respect to President Obama's words and actions contradicting each other.

“Whereas the Bush administration scorned human rights, President Obama claimed to usher in a new day in which human rights would be embraced,” said Margaret Huang, a deputy executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A. “Now the cosmetics have changed, but the failure of leadership is the same.”

Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program, said the Obama administration’s position both “keeps the U.S. as an outlier in the world.” 

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

President Obama's CIA

Dear Friends,

The saying that the cover-up can be worse than the crime is very often true.  In the case of the torture and rendition policies of the United States under President Bush, it is hard to imagine that the cover-up could be worse than the horrific immoral and illegal activities that were conducted in our name by President Bush.  For reasons that defy all logic and understanding President Obama has refused to take any action to hold President Bush and members of his administration accountable for their actions.  At first, President Obama's inaction seemed like just another example of his unwillingness to confront Republicans because he thought he could get their support for some of the things he wanted to accomplish.  If there were ever any doubt that this approach was foolhardy, those doubts have been thoroughly erased by now.

Unfortunately, it now appears that President Obama has not only failed to hold members of the Bush administration accountable for their illegal acts, but he is at the least condoning an ongoing cover-up of the CIA torture and rendition activities and at worst is participating in that cover-up.  Before addressing the current cover-up by the CIA.  I want to remind you of the destruction of the torture tapes by the CIA.  Here is a quote from an article in The New York Times on March 2, 2009 by Mark Mazzetti (here)

WASHINGTON — The government on Monday revealed for the first time the extent of the destruction of videotapes in 2005 by the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that agency officers destroyed 92 videotapes documenting the harsh interrogations of two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. detention.

The arrogance and audacity of the CIA in illegally destroying evidence of torture caused quite a stir when it happened.  If you have forgotten I would recommend an article by Glen Greenwald in The Guardian (here) entitled appropriately "The CIA's impunity on torture tapes".  Mr. Greenwald discusses an op-ed piece written by Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean, the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission in The New York Times.  Mr. Greenwald says it all better than I could.

What triggered this duo's uncharacteristic accusatory outburst was the revelation that the CIA had purposely destroyed numerous videos of interrogation sessions it had conducted with al-Qaida operatives (destroyed were 92 videos, showing hundreds of hours of interrogations). The 9/11 Commission had repeatedly demanded, with the force of law behind it, that all such interrogation materials be provided to it. Numerous courts presiding over lawsuits relating to torture allegations against the CIA had also ordered that any such videos be produced.
But with those orders pending, the CIA destroyed the very evidence it was legally compelled to preserve. With at least the knowledge, if not direction, of White House officials, they did so almost certainly with the intent of preventing the world from seeing how they treated detainees in their custody – with torture – but the effect was to prevent the 9/11 Commission and multiple courts from learning what al-Qaida operatives said (or did not say) about 9/11 and other matters under investigation.
That is why the CIA's actions were so clearly criminal: destroying evidence one knows is relevant to a lawful investigation or a judicial proceeding is the very essence of "obstruction of justice". Individuals are routinely prosecuted and imprisoned in the US for such acts in far less serious cases. So egregious and deliberate was the CIA's criminality – purposely destroying evidence relevant to the most significant terrorist attack in history on US soil – that not even Hamilton and Kean were willing to paper over it.
Despite all that, there have been no legal consequences whatsoever for the crimes of these CIA officials. Last November, the Obama justice department – following the administration's all-too-familiar pattern of shielding Bush-era crimes from acountability – announced it was closing its criminal investigation into the matter with no charges filed. And this week, a federal judge, whose own order to produce these videos had been violated by the CIA, decided that he would not even impose civil sanctions or issue a finding of contempt because, as he put it, new rules issued by the CIA "should lead to greater accountability within the agency and prevent another episode like the videotapes' destruction".

So with this history in mind, consider the current conflict between President Obama's CIA and the Senate.  Many reporters and commentators refer to the current dispute as one between Senator Feinstein (D. CA.) and the CIA.  That characterization is encouraged by President Obama who claims it would be inappropriate for him to get involved in a dispute between them.  President Obama (remember, he is the Constitutional Law professor) seems to have forgotten that he is the head of the Executive Branch of the United States government.  The CIA is part of the Executive Branch and hence reports to President Obama.  In fact, John Brennan the Director to the CIA was appointed by President Obama.  On the other side is the Legislative Branch of the Untied States government in this case represented by Senator Feinstein as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the committee charged with oversight of the CIA.  So this is a dispute between the Executive Branch of the government lead by President Obama and the legislative branch in its efforts (feeble as they often are) to oversee the operations of the CIA.  President Obama does not have the right to sit on the sidelines.  He is the leader of the Executive Branch.

The New York Times editorial board has summarized the situation very well in its editorial a couple of days ago entitled "The C.I.A. Torture Cover-Up" (here).  I urge you to read it.  In case you do not read the full editorial, below are the first and last paragraphs of the editorial which contain a good summary (but the stuff in between is great too).

It was outrageous enough when two successive presidents papered over the Central Intelligence Agency’s history of illegal detention, rendition, torture and fruitless harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. Now the leader of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, has provided stark and convincing evidence that the C.I.A. may have committed crimes to prevent the exposure of interrogations that she said were “far different and far more harsh” than anything the agency had described to Congress. 

The lingering fog about the C.I.A. detentions is a result of Mr. Obama’s decision when he took office to conduct no investigation of them. We can only hope he knows that when he has lost Dianne Feinstein, he has no choice but to act in favor of disclosure and accountability. 

President Obama would like us to believe that he is cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee and that he is a neutral observer in a dispute between the CIA and Senator Feinstein.  Unfortunately, President Obama's public stance on the issue is completely contradicted by the actions that he and the White House staff are taking.  On March 12, the website McClatchyDC published a report by Jonathan Landay, Ali Watkins and Marisa Taylor entitled, "White House withholds thousands of documents from Senate CIA probe, despite vows of help" (here).  The first paragraph reads as follows:

The White House has been withholding for five years more than 9,000 top-secret documents sought by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the now-defunct CIA detention and interrogation program, even though President Barack Obama hasn’t exercised a claim of executive privilege.

The complete disregard for human and civil rights exhibited by President Bush and his administration  has been roundly criticized including by President Obama.  Unfortunately, the lesson to be learned is that if you are a high government official you can violate the human rights of others who are not powerful and you can engage in illegal activities to cover-up what you have done, but you will never be held accountable for your actions.  President Obama should be teaching a better lesson to the American people and to the world.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/03/12/221033/despite-vows-of-help-white-house.html#storylink=cpy