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Monthly archive

May 2016

Cuba Imports U.S. Rice for the First Time in Years

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The first shipment in years of US rice to Cuba arrived on the island amid a trade delegation led by Gov. Jay Nixon (D-Mo.). Twenty tons of the commodity earlier this week reached the Port of Mariel, near Havana, courtesy of the Missouri-based Martin Rice Company. Cuban trade minister Maria de la Luz B’Hamel called the gift “a symbol on the start of lasting relationships that could be strengthened with all US agricultural producers,” according to a Cuban state news report published Monday. The US…

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Burying Heads in the Sand: Lawmakers Crippling Their Own Information Source

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A research service on Capitol Hill dedicated to keeping Members of Congress up-to-date on policy issues and statistical analyses is again being starved of funding. The $107.9 million proposed for the 2017 budget of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) wouldn’t even cover the agency’s current staffing costs, two Democratic lawmakers stated last week. The House Appropriations Committee approved of the funding level on May 17, in a mark-up vote. CRS had asked for more investment to hire “two defense policy staff, five health policy staff, three education…

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Discontent Index Slides Again in February, Pushed By Lower Transportation Costs

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The District Sentinel Discontent Index fell slightly in February, dropping to 97.71 from 98.04 in January. The movement was driven by marginal declines in Consumer Discontent and Housing Discontent. The former was down on lower serious delinquency rates for FHA-backed mortgages, while the latter decreased due to lower transportation costs—a consequence of falling energy prices. Labor Discontent, meanwhile, was only down 0.03 points. Although underemployment and labor force participation were both on the rise in February, increased strike activity kept the Discontent Index subcomponent high. Major…

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Paul Ryan Calls Legislative Push to Protect LGBT Workers “Sabotage”

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The Speaker of the House is threatening to lock down the amendment process after Democrats seized on annual spending bills to ensure protections for gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans. Briefing reporters Thursday just minutes after an energy and water appropriations bill failed on the House floor, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) accused the legislative minority of “sabotaging” the process. More than half of Ryan’s GOP caucus voted down the spending measure after Democrats on Wednesday night succeeded in affixing an amendment to the legislation that would…

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GOP Senator Tries to Expand Surveillance Powers in Privacy Bill That Passed House 419-0

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Senate Republicans are holding up unusually popular email privacy legislation in order to attach a number of proposals to the bill—one of which would expand federal surveillance powers. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday delayed holding a previously-scheduled vote on the ECPA Amendments Act. The proposal passed the House late last month by a 419-0 margin. Currently, federal law enforcement officials only need a subpoena from a judge to gain access to emails that are more than six months old. The ECPA Amendments Act would…

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Treasury Doesn’t Rush to Use Cyber Order Issued After North Korea-Sony Affair

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The Obama administration last year reported not using expanded cybersecurity powers authorized by the White House, six months after the decree was made. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew said in October that the department had not designated any “entities or individuals” under the rule. Lew made the declaration in a regular update to Congress reported on Wednesday by Steven Aftergood, a transparency activist and national security researcher with the Federation of American Scientists. President Obama issued Executive Order 13694 on April 1, 2015, in…

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State I.G., Not Sick of Hearing About the Damn Emails, Finds Clinton Broke Rules

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A watchdog report leaked to news outlets on Wednesday concluded that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated the Federal Records Act by improperly using a personal email server during her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat. The State Department Inspector General’s 83-page probe criticized the current Democratic presidential frontrunner for not properly reporting official government emails that were sent and received through the private server. “Secretary Clinton should have preserved any federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing…

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Government Spending Billions to Maintain Obsolete 50-Year-Old I.T. Systems

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A master database of taxpayer account information used by the Department of Treasury is stored on technology that is more than a half-century-old, according to an audit released by a federal watchdog. That’s just one example noted in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report disclosed Wednesday on aging information technology systems still in use by federal agencies. GAO warned that such IT systems are growing increasingly obsolete, less secure, and more costly to maintain. Included among the aging infrastructure is a 53-year-old IBM computing system used…

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C.F.T.C. Slaps Citibank with $425 million in Rate-Rigging Fines

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Citibank added $175 million to its LIBOR-fixing legal bills after agreeing to settle charges with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The bank was also fined $250 million by the regulator for manipulating an interest rate indicator called ISDAFix between 2007-2012. The two regularly-published gauges are used to price financial commodities around the world. LIBOR, the London Inter-Bank Offering Rate, is what banks charge each other for short-term loans. It influences the cost of over $300 trillion in financial services. Citibank, in one instance, fudged the…

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NLRB Asks Judge to Stop Striking Verizon Workers’ Protests at Scab Hotels

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Federal regulators are seeking an injunction to stop striking Verizon workers from demonstrating at New England hotels where replacements are being housed. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is accusing the union members of being noisy and “confrontational” at the premises of various hotels, in an apparent violation of labor laws on secondary boycotts. “The union locals’ ‘confrontational’ and ‘highly disruptive’ picketing has included allegedly shouting to hotel guests that they were staying with ‘scabs’ at bedbug-infested hotels,” according to an NLRB motion filed Monday…

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Saudi Arabia Lobbying Congress Amid Fresh Calls to Release the 28 Pages

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Consultants representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been spotted making the rounds on Capitol Hill and passing around literature to promote the country’s record fighting terrorism. The lobbying push comes amid renewed scrutiny over the Saudi government’s role in the 9/11 terror attacks, and whether the country can be sued by families of the victims. “The effort here is to display how the Saudis are working lockstep with the US on the financial, operational and ideological fronts in countering extremism and fighting terror,” one…

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