Despite rhetoric from the Right, implementing stricter regulations on business is popular with the American people, a new, independent poll finds. Even many self-styled “tea party” activists support tighter business controls in several areas. A new Harris Poll finds that among those who favor change, many more people support stricter rather than less strict regulation of business. However, this overall view is based on different attitudes to regulation, depending on who or what is being regulated, the pollsters add....
Monthly Archives: June 2010
How Many Democrats Will Join In Thursday’s ‘$47 Billion Giveaway To Big Oil’?
It’s rare indeed for President Obama to threaten to veto legislation coming from a Congress controlled by his fellow Democrats. But that’s just what the White House says it plans to do with a so-called “disapproval resolution” scheduled to come up in the Senate Thursday. The bill was authored by a Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and is derided by the spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “a $47 billion giveaway to big oil companies.” But...
Responsible Companies Try Wriggling Out of Paying Oil Spill Costs
The companies responsible for the ongoing Gulf Coast oil spill have begun looking for ways to duck paying costs associates with the disaster. Transocean Ltd, the company which owned the offshore rig known as Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in April and caused what has become the worst oil spill in U.S. history, allegedly is trying to hide behind an obscure, century-and-a-half old law to avoid paying damages. Meanwhile, President Obama last week specifically called out BP, the energy giant...
Unemployment Benefits For Millions Once Again Hung Up in The Senate
For the third time in as many months, unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans could begin running out if the Senate doesn’t act. Emergency unemployment compensation expired this past Wednesday, a Pennsylvania state official warns. Without immediate Senate attention to the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010, hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians will be left without any supplemental income while they seek new work, according to Pennsylvania Labor & Industry Secretary Sandi Vito. Millions of...
Republicans Keep Hoping To Turn White House Primary Contacts Into Scandal, Despite Mounting Evidence To The Contrary
House Republicans continue to demand that President Obama “come clean” about contacts on his behalf with candidates in Democratic primary races despite the facts that White House officials have already answered exhaustive questioning on the subject, and even a former top Bush administration lawyer finds little to indicate real scandal. House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio Thursday signaled his support for efforts of several other GOP colleagues to keep the issue alive, in which Obama has come under...
John Kerry: Obama’s Backing In Pittsburgh Is ‘Just What We Needed’ To Pass A Climate Bill
President Obama’s vocal support to enact new comprehensive energy and climate legislation will help pass the bill currently before the Senate, according to a chief architect of that legislation. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Wednesday emailed his network of supporters to alert them to remarks that the president delivered at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. During a wide-ranging speech on the economy and his reform agenda broadly, Obama specifically touched on the need to enact legislation to move...
Obama’s Action Will Establish Same-Sex Benefits As ‘Litmus Test’ Of Desirable Employment
President Obama’s decision Wednesday to extend benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees will establish such benefits as a “litmus test for determining high quality employers,” according to the manager of the federal workforce. The president’s decision to extend benefits to the gay partners of civilian federal workers comes as he and Democrats in Congress are moving ahead with legislation to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military. Repeal of the policy would mean gays could,...
Capitol Idea: Maybe Obama Should Have Been More Like Bush After Katrina
I could accept that the federal government has done everything it can about the Gulf Coast oil spill, I just can’t say the same about Barack Obama. I believe the president has been truthful, and that everything he said last Thursday in his East Room news briefing probably is accurate, right up to and including the fact that the federal government, not BP, has been “in charge” of the response. But there’s the problem: Obama shouldn’t have had to...
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