Why universal background checks can’t get through Senate

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President Barack Obama Weekly Address April 20, 2013 (Video/Transcript)

Weekly Address
The White House
April 20, 2013

On Monday, an act of terror wounded dozens and killed three innocent people at the Boston Marathon.

But in the days since, the world has witnessed one sure and steadfast truth: Americans refuse to be terrorized.

Ultimately, that’s what we’ll remember from this week.  That’s what will remain.  Stories of heroism and kindness; resolve and resilience; generosity and love.

The brave first responders – police officers, firefighters, EMTs, and National Guard – who ran toward danger to help their fellow citizens.

The race volunteers, spectators, and exhausted runners who rushed to help, including troops and veterans who never expected to see such scenes on the streets of America. 

The determined doctors and nurses at some of the world’s best hospitals, who have toiled day and night to save so many lives.

The big-hearted people of Boston – residents, priests, shopkeepers – who carried victims in their arms; delivered water and blankets; lined up to give blood; opened their homes to total strangers. 

And the heroic federal agents and police officers who worked together throughout the week, often at great risk to themselves, to keep our communities safe.  As a country, we are eternally grateful for the profound sacrifices they make in the line of duty – sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice to defend the people they’ve sworn to protect.

If anyone wants to know who we are; what America is; how we respond to evil and terror – that’s it.  Selflessly.  Compassionately.  And unafraid. 

Through days that would test even the sturdiest of souls, Boston’s spirit remains undaunted.  America’s spirit remains undimmed.  Our faith in each other, our love for this country, our common creed that cuts across whatever superficial differences we may have – that’s what makes us strong.  That’s why we endure.

In the days to come, we will remain vigilant as a nation.  And I have no doubt the city of Boston and its surrounding communities will continue to respond in the same proud and heroic way that they have thus far – and their fellow Americans will be right there with them every step of the way.  May God bless the people of Boston and the United States of America.

Fertilizer trade group opposed stricter security rules

Source:The Center for Public Integrity
 
Like many, the Fertilizer Institute, a trade group, has extended its condolences to the people of West, Texas, where a blast at a fertilizer plant Wednesday evening killed at least a dozen and injured about 200.

The Washington-based institute, however, has lobbied against legislation that would require high-risk chemical facilities – including some of its members – to consider using safer substances and processes to lower the risk of catastrophic accidents and make such facilities less inviting to terrorists.

Senate records show that the institute has spent $7.4 million on lobbying since 2006, some of it in opposition to legislation like a 2009 bill that passed the House but never became law.
A spokeswoman for the institute did not respond to requests for comment Friday from the Center for Public Integrity. The organization says on its website that it supports existing rules enforced by the Department of Homeland Security and opposes any expansion of the rules “to mandate inherently safer technologies.”

In a 2011 letter to the chairman and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, the institute and nine other groups maintained that “America’s agricultural industry has limited resources available to address all security related matters and it is very important that those resources are spent wisely to coincide with the appropriate level of risk for each particular facility…”

The groups said they supported continuation of the Homeland Security Department’s Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, begun in 2007, and “oppose any federal requirement to use inherently safer technology (IST)… If an IST requirement is put in place for the nation’s agricultural industry it could jeopardize the availability of lower-cost sources of fertilizers or certain agricultural pesticides used by farmers and ranchers.”

(An example of IST: Replacing poisonous chlorine gas at a water treatment plant with ultraviolet light).

CFATS sets broad security standards for chemical facilities and requires them to prepare “vulnerability assessments,” which are reviewed by federal regulators.

Environmentalists, worker advocates and others say the program is riddled with loopholes. It bars the Homeland Security Department, for example, from requiring any “particular security measure,” exempts thousands of facilities and doesn’t allow for unannounced inspections.
A September 2012 report by the Government Accountability Office raised questions about the department’s management of CFATS, pointing to an internal memo in 2011 that claimed the program suffered from “a lack of planning, poor internal controls, and a workforce whose skills were inadequate to fulfill the program’s mission…”

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., has introduced legislation again this year to close the CFATS loopholes. Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace, argues that the Environmental Protection Agency already has the power to do so.

The EPA should steer chemical companies “toward disaster prevention rather than risk management by giving facilities a requirement to reduce the consequences of a catastrophe like [the Texas explosion],” Hind said. “They would be free to choose how they reduced those consequences.”

In the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the EPA drafted legislation along the lines of what Hind described. The Bush White House shot it down.

Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA’s administrator at the time, joined others last year in urging the agency to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to address shortcomings in CFATS, saying “millions of Americans [are] at risk.”

An EPA spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

It’s unclear whether West Fertilizer Co., the plant that blew up this week, is among the 4,458 facilities nationwide that the Homeland Security Department considers high-risk.
The company stored anhydrous ammonia, a toxic gas that becomes flammable under certain conditions. More than 10.5 billion pounds of the chemical is kept at 7,378 facilities nationwide, according to data compiled by The Right-to-Know Network, a project of the nonprofit Center for Effective Government.

The West plant also stored ammonium nitrate, which can explode spectacularly if combined with fuel and set aflame. The compound was used by domestic terrorists to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and all but wiped out Texas City, Texas, in a port accident in 1947.

Texas Plant May Not Have Been Inspected in Years, Despite Risks

A 2011 report highlighted hazards at the fertilizer plant, including tens of thousands of pounds of anhydrous ammonia.

—By Sydney Brownstone, Hannah Levintova, and Jaeah Lee 

Source: Mother Jones 

As the news of the deadly explosion at the West Fertilizer Company plant in West, Texas, has unfolded, journalists and observers wasted no time in wondering if anyone could have seen this catastrophe coming.

The Dallas Morning News reported that the West facility had claimed in an emergency planning report that an explosion of the kind that happened Wednesday would be virtually impossible. However, further analysis of this report shows that it contained other red flags about potential hazards and shoddy equipment. The plant's June 2011 risk management plan (RMP), filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, identified several potential hazards, including equipment failure; toxic release; overpressure, corrosion, or overfilling of equipment; an earthquake; or a tornado.

The report asserted that the worst-case scenario for the plant "would be the release of the total contents of a storage tank released as a gas over 10 minutes." It reported no flammable material on site, despite listing 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia at the plant.

In a list of its regulated substances and thresholds, the EPA classifies anhydrous ammonia as toxic, but not flammable. OSHA considers anhydrous ammonia a flammable gas, as do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Fire Protection Association gives anhydrous ammonia a flammability rating of 1 (0 being the lowest, 4 the highest), likely because it requires a high concentration and strong ignition source to catch fire.
It's unclear if the EPA conducted any follow up in response to the potential hazards listed in plant's 2011 risk report. The safety inspector listed on the report was an employee of Security Truck Services, a transporter of anhydrous ammonia located in Baytown, Texas. The EPA and Security Truck Services have not yet responded to requests for comment on the inspection process.
In response to the West explosion, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) reports that it has pursued seven investigations of the fertilizer plant since 2002, both routine and in response to complaints. The last recorded investigation occurred in 2007, 10 months after the agency dealt with an odor complaint.

The Texas Tribune notes that this probably means the facility hadn't been inspected in the past five years. This would be consistent with a steep decline in the TCEQ's investigations in the past few years. The agency's last annual enforcement report showed that the number of complaints investigated has plummeted by 20 percent since 2007, though it is unclear it has been receiving fewer complaints. Its total number of investigations has fallen by more than 7 percent since 2007. Since 2008, the agency's operating budget has been slashed by nearly 40 percent. The TCEQ has not responded to a request for comment on its investigations and whether it was familiar with the West plant's 2011 risk report.

Turning to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for information on the plant's safety record turns up little. The plant's last OSHA inspection was in 1985—not surprising considering that it would take the short-staffed agency 98 years for the agency to inspect each of the state's workplaces. (It would take 130 years for OSHA to inspect every workplace in the United States.)

Pushing for reform

 

  Source:Al Jazeera

We examine Obama's efforts to reform gun control legislation, immigration laws and cybersecurity regulations.

This has been an important week for three key issues in Washington.

On Wednesday, April 17, the US Senate voted to reject a bipartisan plan to expand background checks for gun buyers drawing the anger of President Barack Obama, and relatives of victims of last December's Newtown mass shooting.

The proposal that was defeated by just six votes would have extended background checks to online and gun show sales, but it did not require checks for gun sales between family members or friends. It also pledged to keep the government from creating a federal registry of gun owners.

"President Obama is just the latest in a long line of democratic presidents, that have run afoul of the NRA, and been burned .... So this is not unfamiliar territory, we knew that President Obama was taking a bold step by pushing for gun control laws that were going to be hard to adopt, it turns out that his strategy for overcoming that resistance wasn't  good enough."
- Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor 

On Tuesday, April 16, the so-called Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of senators, published their immigration bill that they say will put millions of undocumented immigrants on a 13-year pathway to US citizenship and strengthen border security.

Although it creates a path to citizenship, it comes at a cost, with applicants having to pay more than $2,000 in fines and fees. No one, however, who entered the country after December 31, 2011, would be able to apply.

And the path to citizenship will be enacted only if various border security "triggers" are met. They include proving that the US-Mexico border has been secured, and that 90 percent of those crossing without required papers were being turned back, finally the bill proposes spending an initial $4.5bn on increased security measures including the use of drones.
On Thursday, April 18, the House of Representatives voted to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

CISPA allows internet service providers and telecoms companies and the US government to share information, and it would also grant businesses legal immunity for violating an individual's privacy so long as they acted "in good faith."

"The political dynamics are different. With guns you had the NRA 100 percent against absolutely anything … whereas immigration, Republicans want  to get something done, the Chamber of Commerce is on board, and a lot of other conservative organisations will like it if their movement was not called racist anymore so they have some incentives to actually get something done." 
- Ryan Grim, the Washington bureau chief for the Huffington Post

The stated aim of the law is to help the US government investigate cyber threats and protect the security of networks against attack.

But civil liberties advocates argue that it will give the federal government unprecedented powers to access the data of Americans.

And critics argue the language of the bill is vague, opening up the possibility that innocuous online activities could be presented as cybersecurity threats and shared with the government.
So where are the new reforms heading? And what impact will they have on American society?
Inside Story Americas, with presenter Shihab Rattansi, discusses with guests: Ryan Grim, the Washington bureau chief for the Huffington Post; Adam Winkler, a professor of law at UCLA and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America; Sarahi Uribe, the national campaign coordinator for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network; and Holmes Wilson, the co-founder and co-director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group.

"The intend of CISPA is to make it easier for companies to share information on security vulnerabilities with each other and with the government, which is great. The problem is they didn't include any requirement. The companies strip out people's personal information before they share it with the government. So we are talking your emails, your personal messages, your text messages, your photos, your real time location if you have a cellphone. All of this could be shared with the government, and they can use it without a warrant."

On Meeting Our Meat

Going undercover at a slaughterhouse in an age of agribusiness gag laws

By Ted Conover
Source: Harper’s Magazine

I eat meat. Always have. I’ve tried a couple of times to stop, but have never done more than cut back: I miss it too much.

Given its intimate connection to my body and my health, I’m interested in how meat is made. This seems natural enough in an age in which farmers and feedlots and meat companies fill animals with hormones and antibiotics, and grow animals in factories in order to maximize production.

But the producers of meat apparently worry that if we know how it’s made we’ll eat less of it. They make it all but impossible for journalists and members of the general public to visit production facilities, be they poultry plants, pork factories, or beef slaughterhouses. Animal-rights groups, dissatisfied with this secrecy, have made it their business to send operatives inside with hidden cameras, to devastating effect.

So I decided to find work in a beef slaughterhouse, an experience I write about in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine. Before I set out, I touched base with the Humane Society of the United States, PETA, and Mercy for Animals to learn about their investigations. I asked: How did you pick the farms or plants you went to? Had you heard complaints?

In each case, the answer was that they hadn’t targeted anyplace in particular; they’d just gone where they thought they could get hired. “We have never found a facility where there wasn’t abuse,” Nathan Runkle, the founder of Mercy For Animals, told me. “Finding it is not the issue. Our challenge is just to have a camera there when it happens.”

I thought I might gain a broader view by getting a job not simply as a company line worker but as a federal meat inspector. The Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) of the USDA oversees live slaughter, and it hires inspectors on the basis of either experience in the industry (often factory work, including quality control) or education, specifically a four-year college degree with sufficient math and science credits. After reviewing my transcript, the FSIS said I was short some credits, so I enrolled in a distance-learning math course at the University of Illinois, completed it five months later (B+!), and reapplied.

During the two years I waited to get a job, I watched with growing alarm the rise of so-called ag-gag laws. This class of laws, promoted by agribusiness in farm states, criminalizes the unauthorized recording of video or photographs inside a production facility. Their passage (in six states so far, with seven others considering them) has been accompanied by rhetoric denouncing the terrorism of  “extremist vegans” who would destroy the industry. In other words, in lieu of cleaning its house, the meat industry has elected to kill the messenger.

Though recording video was not my goal, I was nevertheless concerned as a writer. Some of the laws go beyond video and photography: proposed legislation in Arkansas would have made it illegal for anyone but law-enforcement personnel to “collect evidence into alleged claims of criminal conduct involving an animal.” (Whether such laws would be constitutional or enforceable remains to be seen.)

Nebraska, where I was finally hired in October 2012, is considering an ag-gag law but has not yet passed one, so my research was unaffected. But what about the next journalist? What about the next activist? With the underlying problems at slaughterhouses left unaddressed, undercover investigations won’t stop, which means that before long some idealistic person will be charged with a felony and become a martyr to the cause of safe, humanely produced food. And that should very much focus meat-eating Americans on the question of what’s so wrong with our food that the industry would promote draconian laws to keep its practices hidden from view.

President Obama Speaks at an Interfaith Prayer Service in Boston

Remarks by the President at Interfaith Service in Boston, MA

Cathedral of The Holy Cross

Boston, Massachusetts

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Boston!

Scripture tells us to “run with endurance the race that is set before us.”  Run with endurance the race that is set before us.

On Monday morning, the sun rose over Boston.  The sunlight glistened off the Statehouse dome.  In the Common and the Public Garden, spring was in bloom.  On this Patriot’s Day, like so many before, fans jumped onto the T to see the Sox at Fenway.  In Hopkinton, runners laced up their shoes and set out on a 26.2-mile test of dedication and grit and the human spirit.  And across this city, hundreds of thousands of Bostonians lined the streets -- to hand the runners cups of water and to cheer them on.

It was a beautiful day to be in Boston -- a day that explains why a poet once wrote that this town is not just a capital, not just a place.  Boston, he said, “is the perfect state of grace.”  (Applause.)

And then, in an instant, the day’s beauty was shattered.  A celebration became a tragedy.  And so we come together to pray, and mourn, and measure our loss.   But we also come together today to reclaim that state of grace -- to reaffirm that the spirit of this city is undaunted, and the spirit of this country shall remain undimmed.

To Governor Patrick; Mayor Menino; Cardinal O’Malley and all the faith leaders who are here; Governors Romney, Swift, Weld and Dukakis; members of Congress; and most of all, the people of Boston and the families who’ve lost a piece of your heart.  We thank you for your leadership.  We thank you for your courage.  We thank you for your grace.

I’m here today on behalf of the American people with a simple message:  Every one of us has been touched by this attack on your beloved city.  Every one of us stands with you.
Because, after all, it’s our beloved city, too.  Boston may be your hometown, but we claim it, too.  It’s one of America’s iconic cities.  It’s one of the world’s great cities.  And one of the reasons the world knows Boston so well is that Boston opens its heart to the world.

Over successive generations, you’ve welcomed again and again new arrivals to our shores -- immigrants who constantly reinvigorated this city and this commonwealth and our nation.  Every fall, you welcome students from all across America and all across the globe, and every spring you graduate them back into the world -- a Boston diaspora that excels in every field of human endeavor.  Year after year, you welcome the greatest talents in the arts and science, research -- you welcome them to your concert halls and your hospitals and your laboratories to exchange ideas and insights that draw this world together.

And every third Monday in April, you welcome people from all around the world to the Hub for friendship and fellowship and healthy competition -- a gathering of men and women of every race and every religion, every shape and every size; a multitude represented by all those flags that flew over the finish line.

So whether folks come here to Boston for just a day, or they stay here for years, they leave with a piece of this town tucked firmly into their hearts.  So Boston is your hometown, but we claim it a little bit, too.  (Applause.)

I know this because there’s a piece of Boston in me.  You welcomed me as a young law student across the river; welcomed Michelle, too.  (Applause.)  You welcomed me during a convention when I was still a state senator and very few people could pronounce my name right.

(Laughter.)

Like you, Michelle and I have walked these streets.  Like you, we know these neighborhoods.  And like you, in this moment of grief, we join you in saying -- “Boston, you’re my home.”  For millions of us, what happened on Monday is personal.  It’s personal.

Today our prayers are with the Campbell family of Medford.  They're here today.  Their daughter, Krystle, was always smiling. Those who knew her said that with her red hair and her freckles and her ever-eager willingness to speak her mind, she was beautiful, sometimes she could be a little noisy, and everybody loved her for it.  She would have turned 30 next month.  As her mother said through her tears, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Our prayers are with the Lu family of China, who sent their daughter, Lingzi, to BU so that she could experience all this city has to offer.  She was a 23-year-old student, far from home. And in the heartache of her family and friends on both sides of a great ocean, we’re reminded of the humanity that we all share.

Our prayers are with the Richard family of Dorchester -- to Denise and their young daughter, Jane, as they fight to recover. And our hearts are broken for 8-year-old Martin -- with his big smile and bright eyes.  His last hours were as perfect as an 8-year-old boy could hope for -- with his family, eating ice cream at a sporting event.  And we’re left with two enduring images of this little boy -- forever smiling for his beloved Bruins, and forever expressing a wish he made on a blue poster board:  “No more hurting people.  Peace.”

No more hurting people.  Peace.

Our prayers are with the injured -— so many wounded, some gravely.  From their beds, some are surely watching us gather here today.  And if you are, know this:  As you begin this long journey of recovery, your city is with you.  Your commonwealth is with you.  Your country is with you.  We will all be with you as you learn to stand and walk and, yes, run again.  Of that I have no doubt.  You will run again.  (Applause.)  You will run again. (Applause.)

Because that’s what the people of Boston are made of.  Your resolve is the greatest rebuke to whoever committed this heinous act.  If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us, to shake us from those values that Deval described, the values that make us who we are, as Americans -- well, it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it.  (Applause.)

  Not here in Boston.  Not here in Boston.  (Applause.)

You’ve shown us, Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what’s good.  In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion.  In the face of those who would visit death upon innocents, we will choose to save and to comfort and to heal.  We’ll choose friendship.  We’ll choose love.
Scripture teaches us, “God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”  And that’s the spirit you’ve displayed in recent days.

When doctors and nurses, police and firefighters and EMTs and Guardsmen run towards explosions to treat the wounded -- that’s discipline.

When exhausted runners, including our troops and veterans -- who never expected to see such carnage on the streets back home  -- become first responders themselves, tending to the injured -- that’s real power.

When Bostonians carry victims in their arms, deliver water and blankets, line up to give blood, open their homes to total strangers, give them rides back to reunite with their families -- that’s love.

That’s the message we send to those who carried this out and anyone who would do harm to our people.  Yes, we will find you.  And, yes, you will face justice.  (Applause.)  We will find you. We will hold you accountable.  But more than that; our fidelity to our way of life -- to our free and open society -- will only grow stronger.  For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but one of power and love and self-discipline.

Like Bill Iffrig, 78 years old -- the runner in the orange tank top who we all saw get knocked down by the blast -- we may be momentarily knocked off our feet, but we’ll pick ourselves up. We’ll keep going.  We will finish the race.  (Applause.)

  In the words of Dick Hoyt, who’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, in 31 Boston Marathons -- “We can’t let something like this stop us.”  (Applause.)  This doesn’t stop us.  (Applause.)

And that’s what you’ve taught us, Boston.  That’s what you’ve reminded us -- to push on.  To persevere.  To not grow weary.  To not get faint.  Even when it hurts.  Even when our heart aches.  We summon the strength that maybe we didn’t even know we had, and we carry on.  We finish the race.  (Applause.)  We finish the race.  (Applause.)

And we do that because of who we are.  And we do that because we know that somewhere around the bend a stranger has a cup of water.  Around the bend, somebody is there to boost our spirits.  On that toughest mile, just when we think that we’ve hit a wall, someone will be there to cheer us on and pick us up if we fall.  We know that.  (Applause.)

And that’s what the perpetrators of such senseless violence -- these small, stunted individuals who would destroy instead of build, and think somehow that makes them important -- that’s what they don’t understand.  Our faith in each other, our love for each other, our love for country, our common creed that cuts across whatever superficial differences there may be -- that is our power.  That’s our strength.

That’s why a bomb can’t beat us.  That’s why we don’t hunker down.  That’s why we don’t cower in fear.  We carry on.  We race. We strive.  We build, and we work, and we love -- and we raise our kids to do the same.  And we come together to celebrate life, and to walk our cities, and to cheer for our teams.  When the Sox and Celtics and Patriots or Bruins are champions again -- to the chagrin of New York and Chicago fans -- (laughter) -- the crowds will gather and watch a parade go down Boylston Street.  (Applause.)

And this time next year, on the third Monday in April, the world will return to this great American city to run harder than ever, and to cheer even louder, for the 118th Boston Marathon.  (Applause.)  Bet on it.  (Applause.)

Tomorrow, the sun will rise over Boston.  Tomorrow, the sun will rise over this country that we love.  This special place.  This state of grace.

Scripture tells us to “run with endurance the race that is set before us.”  As we do, may God hold close those who’ve been taken from us too soon.  May He comfort their families.  And may He continue to watch over these United States of America.  (Applause.)

President Obama Speaks on Common-Sense Measures to Reduce Gun Violence (Video/Transcript)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: A few months ago, in response to too many tragedies, including the shootings of a United States congresswoman, Gabby Giffords, who’s here today, and the murder of 20 innocent schoolchildren and their teachers, this country took up the cause of protecting more of our people from gun violence. Families that know unspeakable grief summoned the courage to petition their elected leaders, not just to honor the memory of their children but to protect the lives of all of our children.

A few minutes ago a minority in the United States Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms, even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery. By now it’s well- known that 90 percent of the American people support universal background checks that make it harder for a dangerous person to buy a gun. We’re talking about convicted felons, people convicted of domestic violence, people with a severe mental illness.

Ninety percent of Americans support that idea. Most Americans think that’s already the law. And a few minutes ago, 90 percent of Democrats in the Senate voted for that idea. But it’s not going to happen, because 90 percent of Republicans in the Senate just voted against that idea.
A majority of senators voted yes to protecting more of our citizens with smarter background checks. But by this continuing distortion of Senate rules, a minority was able to block it from moving forward. I’m going to speak plainly and honestly about what’s happened here, because the American people are trying to figure out, how can something have 90 percent support and yet not happen?

We had a Democrat and a Republican — both gun owners, both fierce defenders of our second amendment with A grades from the NRA come together and work together to write a common-sense compromise on background checks. And I want to thank Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey for their courage in doing that. That was not easy given their traditional strong support for second amendment rights.

As they said, nobody could honestly claim that the package they put together infringed on our second amendment rights. All it did was extend the same background check rules that already apply to guns purchased from a dealer to guns purchased at gun shows or over the Internet. So 60 percent of guns are already purchased through a background check system.

This would have covered a lot of the guns that are currently outside that system.

Their legislation showed respect for gun owners, and it showed respect for the victims of gun violence.

And Gabby Giffords, by the way, is both. She’s a gun owner and a victim of gun violence. She is a Westerner and a moderate, and she supports these background checks.

In fact, even the NRA used to support expanded background checks. The current leader of the NRA used to support these background checks.

So while this compromise didn’t contain everything I wanted or everything that these families wanted, it did represent progress. It represented moderation and common sense. That’s why 90 percent of the American people supported it.

But instead of supporting this compromise, the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. They claimed that it would create some sort of “Big Brother” gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. This legislation in fact outlawed any registry, plain and simple, right there in the text. But that didn’t matter. And unfortunately, this pattern of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose, because those lies upset an intense minority of gun owners, and that in turn intimidated a lot of senators.

And I talked to several of these senators over the past few weeks, and they’re all good people. I know all of them were shocked by tragedies like Newtown. And I also understand that they come from states that are strongly pro-gun, and I have consistently said that there are regional differences when it comes to guns and that both sides have to listen to each other.

But the fact is, most of these senators could not offer any good reason why we wouldn’t want to make it harder for criminals and those with severe mental illnesses to buy a gun. There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics. They worried that that vocal minority of gun-owners would come after them in future elections. They worried that the gun lobby would spend a lot of money and paint them as anti-Second Amendment. And obviously a lot of Republicans had that fear, but Democrats had that fear, too. And so they caved to the pressure, and they started looking for an excuse, any excuse, to vote no.

One common argument I heard was that this legislation wouldn’t prevent all future massacres. And that’s true. As I said from the start, no single piece of legislation can stop every act of violence and evil. We learned that tragically just two days ago. But if action by Congress could have saved one person, one child, a few hundred, a few thousand; if it could’ve prevented those people from losing their lives to gun violence in the future while preserving our Second Amendment rights, we had an obligation to try. And this legislation met that test. And too many senators failed theirs.

I’ve heard some say that blocking this step would be a victory. And my question is, a victory for who?

A victory for what?

All that happened today was the preservation of the loophole that lets dangerous criminals buy guns without a background check. That didn’t make our kids safer. Victory for not doing something that 90 percent of Americans, 80 percent of Republicans, the vast majority of your constituents wanted to get done? It begs the question, who are we here to represent?

I’ve heard folks say that having the families of victims lobby for this legislation was somehow misplaced. A prop, somebody called them. Emotional blackmail, some outlets said. Are they serious? Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don’t have a right to weigh in on this issue? Do we think their — their emotions, their loss is not relevant to this debate?

So all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington. But this effort is not over. I want to make it clear to the American people: We can still bring about meaningful changes that reduce gun violence so long as the American people don’t give up on it.

Even without Congress, my administration will keep doing everything it can to protect more of our communities. We’re going to address the barriers that prevent states from participating in the existing background check system. We’re going to give law enforcement more information about lost and stolen guns so it can do its job.

We’re going to help to put in place emergency plans to protect our children in their schools.
But we can do more if Congress gets its act together. And if this Congress refuses to listen to the American people and pass common-sense gun legislation, then the real impact is going to have to come from the voters.

To all the people who supported this legislation, law enforcement and responsible gun owners, Democrats and Republicans, urban moms, rural hunters, whoever you are, you need to let your representatives in Congress know that you are disappointed and that if they don’t act this time, you will remember come election time.

To the wide majority of NRA households who supported this legislation, you need to let your leadership and lobbyists in Washington know they didn’t represent your views on this one.
The point is, those who care deeply about preventing more and more gun violence will have to be as passionate and as organized and as vocal as those who blocked these common-sense steps to help keep our kids safe. Ultimately, you outnumber those who argued the other way.

But they’re better organized, they’re better financed, they’ve been at it longer and they make sure to stay focused on this one issue during election time. And that’s the reason why you can have something that 90 percent of Americans support and you can’t get it through the Senate or the House of Representatives.

So to change Washington, you, the American people, are going to have to sustain some passion about this.

And when necessary, you’ve got to send the right people to Washington.

And that requires strength, and it requires persistence. And that’s the one thing that these families should have inspired in all of us. I still don’t know how they have been able to muster up the — the strength to — to do what they’ve been doing over the last several weeks, the last several months. And I see this as just round one.

And when Newtown happened, I met with these families and I spoke to the community, and I said something must be different right now. We’re going to have to change. And that’s what the whole country said. Everybody talked about how we were going to change something to make sure this didn’t happen again, just like everybody talked about how we needed to do something after Aurora. Everybody talked about we need to change something after Tucson.

And I’m assuming that the emotions that we’ve all felt since Newtown, the emotions that we’ve all felt since Tucson and Aurora and Chicago, the pain we share with these families and families all across the country who’ve lost a loved one to gun violence, I’m assuming that’s not a temporary thing. I’m assuming our expressions of grief and our commitment to do something different to prevent these things from happening are not empty words. I believe we’re going to be able to get this one. Sooner or later we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it, and so the American people.

Thank you very much, everybody.

White House Hangout: Vice President Biden and Mayors on Reducing Gun Violence (Video)

The Secret of the Seven Sisters Episode 1 & 2 (Video)

A four-part series that reveals how a secret pact formed a cartel that controls the world's oil.
Source: Al Jazeera
On August 28, 1928, in the Scottish highlands, began the secret story of oil.

Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle - a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman.

The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship owner and painted Shell salesman and together the two men founded Royal Dutch Shell.

The American was Walter C. Teagle and he represents the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller at the age of 31 - the future Exxon. Oil wells, transport, refining and distribution of oil - everything is controlled by Standard oil.

The Englishman, Sir John Cadman, was the director of the Anglo-Persian oil Company, soon to become BP. On the initiative of a young Winston Churchill, the British government had taken a stake in BP and the Royal Navy switched its fuel from coal to oil. With fuel-hungry ships, planes and tanks, oil became "the blood of every battle".

The new automobile industry was developing fast, and the Ford T was selling by the million. The world was thirsty for oil, and companies were waging a merciless contest but the competition was making the market unstable.

That August night, the three men decided to stop fighting and to start sharing out the world's oil. Their vision was that production zones, transport costs, sales prices - everything would be agreed and shared. And so began a great cartel, whose purpose was to dominate the world, by controlling its oil.

Four others soon joined them, and they came to be known as the Seven Sisters -  - the biggest oil companies in the world.

Episode 1 - Desert Storms

 

 In the first episode, we travel across the Middle East, through both time and space.

"We waged the Iran-Iraq war and I say we waged it, because one country had to be used to destroy the other. As they already benefit from the oil bonanza, and they’re building up financal reserves, from time to time they have to be bled."

- Xavier Houzel, an Oil trader

Throughout the region's modern history, since the discovery of oil, the Seven Sisters have sought to control the balance of power.

They have supported monarchies in Iran and Saudi Arabia, opposed the creation of OPEC, profiting from the Iran-Iraq war, leading to the ultimate destruction of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

The Seven Sisters were always present, and almost always came out on top.
Since that notorious meeting at Achnacarry Castle on August 28, 1928, they have never ceased to plot, to plan and to scheme.

Episode 2 – The Black El Dorado

 

At the end of the 1960s, the Seven Sisters, the major oil companies, controlled 85 percent of the world's oil reserves. Today, they control just 10 percent.

New hunting grounds are therefore required, and the Sisters have turned their gaze towards Africa. With peak oil, wars in the Middle East, and the rise in crude prices, Africa is the oil companies' new battleground.

"Everybody thought there could be oil in Sudan but nobody knew anything. It was revealed through exploration by the American company Chevron, towards the end of the 70s. And that was the beginning of the second civil war, which went on until 2002. It lasted for 19 years and cost a million and a half lives and the oil business was at the heart of it."
- Gerard Prunier, a historian

But the real story, the secret story of oil, begins far from Africa.
In their bid to dominate Africa, the Sisters installed a king in Libya, a dictator in Gabon, fought the nationalisation of oil resources in Algeria, and through corruption, war and assassinations, brought Nigeria to its knees.

Oil may be flowing into the holds of huge tankers, but in Lagos, petrol shortages are chronic.
The country's four refineries are obsolete and the continent's main oil exporter is forced to import refined petrol - a paradox that reaps fortunes for a handful of oil companies.
Encouraged by the companies, corruption has become a system of government - some $50bn are estimated to have 'disappeared' out of the $350bn received since independence.
But new players have now joined the great oil game.

China, with its growing appetite for energy, has found new friends in Sudan, and the Chinese builders have moved in. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir is proud of his co-operation with China - a dam on the Nile, roads, and stadiums.

In order to export 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields in the South - China financed and built the Heglig pipeline connected to Port Sudan - now South Sudan's precious oil is shipped through North Sudan to Chinese ports.

In a bid to secure oil supplies out of Libya, the US, the UK and the Seven Sisters made peace with the once shunned Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, until he was killed during the Libyan uprising of 2011, but the flow of Libyan oil remains uninterrupted.

In need of funds for rebuilding, Libya is now back to pumping more than a million barrels of oil per day. And the Sisters are happy to oblige.

Weekly Address April 13, 2013 (Video/Transcript)

Weekly Address: Sandy Hook Victim’s Mother Calls for Commonsense Gun Responsibility Reforms

Remarks of Francine Wheeler The President’s Weekly Address

Hi. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not the President. I’m just a citizen. And as a citizen, I’m here at the White House today because I want to make a difference and I hope you will join me.
My name is Francine Wheeler. My husband David is with me. We live in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

David and I have two sons. Our older son Nate, soon to be 10 years old, is a fourth grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Our younger son, Ben, age six, was murdered in his first-grade classroom on December 14th, exactly 4 months ago this weekend.

David and I lost our beloved son, but Nate lost his best friend. On what turned out to be the last morning of his life, Ben told me, quite out of the blue, “ I still want to be an architect, Mama, but I also want to be a paleontologist, because that’s what Nate is going to be and I want to do everything Nate does.”

Ben’s love of fun and his excitement at the wonders of life were unmatched His boundless energy kept him running across the soccer field long after the game was over. He couldn’t wait to get to school every morning. He sang with perfect pitch and had just played at his third piano recital. Irrepressibly bright and spirited, Ben experienced life at full tilt.

Until that morning. 20 of our children, and 6 of our educators – gone. Out of the blue.

I’ve heard people say that the tidal wave of anguish our country felt on 12/14 has receded. But not for us. To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday. And in the four months since we lost our loved ones, thousands of other Americans have died at the end of a gun. Thousands of other families across the United States are also drowning in our grief.

Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy.

Sometimes, I close my eyes and all I can remember is that awful day waiting at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Firehouse for the boy who would never come home – the same firehouse that was home to Ben’s Tiger Scout Den 6. But other times, I feel Ben’s presence filling me with courage for what I have to do – for him and all the others taken from us so violently and too soon.

We have to convince the Senate to come together and pass commonsense gun responsibility reforms that will make our communities safer and prevent more tragedies like the one we never thought would happen to us.

When I packed for Washington on Monday, it looked like the Senate might not act at all. Then, after the President spoke in Hartford, and a dozen of us met with Senators to share our stories, more than two-thirds of the Senate voted to move forward.

But that’s only the start. They haven’t yet passed any bills that will help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. And a lot of people are fighting to make sure they never do.
Now is the time to act. Please join us. You can talk to your Senator, too. Or visit WhiteHouse.gov to find out how you can join the President and get involved.

Help this be the moment when real change begins. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Wealthy supporters fuel Obama nonprofit

Donors include presidential campaign bundlers

Source: The Center for Public Integrity

Sixteen people accounted for nearly a quarter of the $4.8 million collected by Organizing for Action, the self-described "grassroots" nonprofit group affiliated with President Barack Obama that was created to push the White House’s policy agenda.

About 109,000 people gave money to the nonprofit from January through March, Organizing for Action announced today.

Donors from California ($568,215), New York ($363,893), New Jersey ($221,737), Florida ($84,010) and Massachusetts ($75,975) gave the most, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.

The top donor by far was Philip Munger of New York City who gave $250,000. Munger is a philanthropist, academic and long-time contributor to Democratic causes.

Next were John Goldman of Atherton, Calif., and Nicola M. Miner of San Francisco who both gave $125,000. Goldman is former chairman of Willis Insurance Service of California, Inc. a U.S. branch of a global insurance brokerage firm. Miner is the daughter of Bob Miner, co-founder of Oracle Corp. and wife of John Mailer Anderson, a novelist and screenwriter.
Of the top 16 donors, each who gave $50,000 or more, nine are Obama campaign bundlers — elite fundraisers credited with raising funds from well-connected friends, family members and associates, then delivering it in a "bundle." Organizing for Action bills itself as nonpartisan.
Among other top donors:

• Orin S. Kramer of Englewood, N.J. ($75,000): Chairman of hedge fund Kramer Spellman LP and former Clinton administration transition team adviser.
   
• Ryan Smith of Salt Lake City ($50,875): CEO of Qualtrics, a Utah company that produces Web-based software for surveys.
   
• Anthony P. Crabb of Healdsburg, Calif. ($50,000): Philanthropist and marriage equality advocate.
   
• Barbara Grasseschi of Healdsburg, Calif. ($50,000): Bundler who raised at least $200,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts and is married to Crabb.
   
• John Morgan of Orlando, Fla. ($50,000): Partner at Morgan & Morgan, the Florida law firm that employs former Gov. and Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist. Morgan is also a campaign bundler who raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts.
   
• Laura Debonis of Boston ($50,000): Former director of the Google Books Library Project.
   
• William H. Freeman of Nashville, Tenn. ($50,000): Campaign bundler who raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts.
   
• Wayne Jordan of Oakland, Calif. ($50,000): Campaign bundler who raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts.
   
• Michael Kempner of East Rutherford, N.J. ($50,000): Campaign bundler who raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts.
   
• Charles H. Murphy III of Little Rock, Ark. ($50,000): Founder of Murphy Oil Corporation.
   
• S. Donald Sussman of Portland, Maine ($50,000): Prominent hedge fund investor.
   
• Andrew Tobias of New York City ($50,000): Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and gay rights activist. Also a bundler who raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts.
   
• Imaad Zuberi of El Monte, Calif. ($50,000): Campaign bundler who raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts.

About 60 percent of the group’s money appears to have come from donors who gave less than $250 and were not identified.
Although the group actively collects donors' employer and occupation information, it has declined to release such information publicly. Withholding such data complicates confirming the identities of donors with common names.
As a nonprofit organization, Organizing for Action is not required to release any information about its donors — unlike campaign committees or super PACs. And for weeks after its founding early this year, leaders offered no indication that it would.
After pressure from campaign finance reformers and others, the group relented and agreed to reveal some donor information. The group also reversed course on seeking corporate contributions. It also refuses lobbyist money, but accepts cash from unions.
The National Education Association is one union that donated early this year, giving the pro-Obama nonprofit $15,466.
Not all big-dollar Obama backers, however, have contributed to Organizing for Action.
For example, the four largest donors to the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action — James H. Simons, Fred Eychaner, Steve Mostyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg — were absent from Organizing for Action's donor list.
Reity O'Brien and John Dunbar contributed to this report.

 

The Crying Forest (video)

Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo follows the story of an activist who lived and died for the Amazon Rainforest.

 

Source:Al Jazeera 
 "I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment," said Ze Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, an Amazon rainforest activist, at an environmental conference in Manaus. Six months later Ze Claudio was dead - gunned down, alongside his wife Maria, on May 24, 2011 in a remote corner of the Brazilian Amazon.

Renowned for standing up to the illegal loggers and ranchers who have laid waste to the world's greatest tropical forest, Ze Claudio had long known he was a marked man.

Investigations into the assassination are ongoing, but few doubt he was killed because of this unflinching struggle in defence of the environment. After riddling his body with bullets, the gunmen cut off one of Jose Claudio's ears - proof, police say, that they had successfully completed their mission.

The news of Ze Claudio's sudden execution - widely publicised on social-networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook - transformed him into a martyr for the environmental movement, both in and outside of his native Brazil. At his wake, in the Amazon city of Maraba, admirers hung a handmade banner which read "The forest is crying".

Since 1996, at least 212 Amazonian activists have been murdered because of the battle to preserve nature or over of land disputes with wealthy loggers - an average of 12 a year.
Using a mixture of original footage and interviews as well as powerful archive images of Ze Claudio predicting his own execution, The Crying Forest examines the forces at work behind this brutal death foretold. The film follows Al Jazeera's Brazil correspondent Gabriel Elizondo as he travels through the Amazon region seeking to discover why Ze Claudio and Maria were killed, and by whom.

Elizondo, who covered the aftermath of the couple's murder for Al Jazeera, travels to the activist's former home, a rainforest settlement now abandoned by terrified family members and friends. He meets some of the region's "walking dead" - marked men and women who have been told they will die for standing up for the forest but who refuse to back down.

Release of offshore records draws worldwide response

Source: The Center for Public Integrity (ICIJ)
ICIJ’s investigative series on offshore secrecy – which draws from a cache of 2.5 million secret records – has ignited reactions around the globe.
In the few days since the initial release of stories by the ICIJ and its media partners across the world, public officials have issued statements, governments have launched investigations, and politicians and journalists have been debating the implications of the records and the reporting.
Among the reactions and responses:

• Canada's national revenue minister Gail Shea says the government may pursue the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in court to force it to share the offshore leaks records.
   
• French budget minister Bernard Cazeneuve joins the clamor from governments around the globe in urging ICIJ and its media partners to release the offshore tax haven files to them, to "aid justice and help them do their job".
   
• Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann says he is ready to make concessions on banking secrecy, to bring the nation in step with Switzerland and Luxembourg. "Austria should participate in talks on banking secrecy,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann declared to Die Presse.
   
• The European Commissioner for Taxation, Algirdas Šemeta, called for an automatic exchange of information between countries and a "tough common stance". "Recent developments,fuelled by the outcome of the Offshore Leaks, confirms the urgency for more and better action against tax evasion .... Now it is time to put words into action." He said he was "very pleased" to see many of the Member States reviewing where they stand on the issues and "intensifying their political will to act."
   
• The Swiss government has distinguised itself from other world governments by publicly stating it does not want access to the offshore leaks records. Finance minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said Switzerland has worked hard in recent years to curb fraud and tax evasion and that much of the activity pointed to in the leaked documents can be perfectly legal. She says the Swiss government does not want access to the data as "it was acquired illegally and Bern wants no part of that".
   
• The Philippine Presidential Commission on Good Government probe into the disclosure that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was a beneficiary of a secret offshore trust in the British Virgin Islands, will release its report within two weeks.  “We are duty bound to investigate and, depending upon informed preliminary findings, decide whether to pursue the matter,” said Andres Bautista, the chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, tasked with recovering the Marcos family’s alleged ill-gotten wealth.
   
• The president of the Association of German Banks denied that his group’s members had helped customers engage in tax evasion. “First in line are the individuals and the organizations that invest their money in tax oases,” Andreas Schmitz said."
   
• The Berne internal revenue service authorities announced they will re-open the Gunter Sachs case after ICIJ's revelations about the former Mr. Brigitte Bardot's intricate offshore scheme.
   
• In Canada, a Liberal senator urged his caucus colleague, Senator Pana Merchant, to answer questions in the wake of CBC News and ICIJ reports that she has been listed as beneficiary of an offshore trust created by her husband, a well-known class-action attorney. "We're all innocent until proven guilty in this country, but I want to hear her explanation," Senator Percy Downe told CBC News in an interview.
   
• In the Philippines, two lawmakers dismissed a report by an ICIJ media partner, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), that they had offshore holdings. Senator Manuel Villar said his offshore entity was a “1-dollar shell company” that he wasn’t required to report, because he hadn’t made any real investment in it. Villar said that he hadn’t conducted business with the British Virgin Islands company “because I decided to concentrate in the Philippines.” Congressman Joseph Victor ‘JV’ G. Ejercito suggested the story about him was politically motivated. “To the best of my knowledge, I have truthfully and accurately declared all my assets, liabilities, and net worth” on required disclosures forms for public officials, he said in a statement.
   
• Germany's Economics Minister Philipp Rösler urged the media to pass the data on to the government, stressing that tax evasion was a "criminal act." 

• Luxembourg's Finance Minister Luc Frieden says he is open to greater transparency of its banks in order to cooperate further with foreign tax authorities.
   
• The Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said an inquiry had been initiated by the authorities against individuals whose names figured in the global media report. “Yes. We have taken note of the names and inquiries have been put in motion in respect of the names that have been exposed,” he told a press conference.

• The Mongolian Deputy Speaker, Sangikav Bayartsogt, admitted to an "ethics failure" over his undeclared million-dollar Swiss bank account. He told a press conference: “It is true that there is 1,658 Euros or 2.9 million MNT in a Swiss bank account. I opened the account to trade in international stocks with three other acquaintances in 2008. My failure of responsibility is that I did not include the company in my declaration of income. I have admitted my ethic failure and I am ready to take responsibility."
   
• Philippine government officials said they will investigate evidence that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, a provincial governor and daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was the beneficiary of a secret BVI offshore trust.
   
• George Mavraganis, the Deputy Finance Minister of Greece announced that the Greek government is moving to address offshore-driven tax dodging. Greek members of parliament asked Mavraganis what he planned to do about the 103 offshore companies that ICIJ found hadn’t been registered with Greece’s tax authorities.
   
• George Sourlas from Greece’s Ministry of Justice said the revenue loss caused by offshore was huge. “By the actions of offshore companies in Greece, the revenue loss to the Greek government is in the order of 40% or more of the debt of our country,” Sourlas said. “The offshore companies cast a shadow at this time of great crisis, when some get rich and many get poor.”
   
• In France, President Francois Hollande denied knowledge of the offshore accounts held by his 2012 campaign manager, Jean-Jacques Augier, asserting that it’s up to the tax administration to monitor Augier’s private activities. Reports about Augier’s offshore dealings by Le Monde, the BBC and other ICIJ partners came in the wake of news about tax fraud charges against Hollande’s ex-budget Minister, Jerome Cahuzac.
   
• The office of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev asserted there was nothing unusual about the information in the leak – which showed that his two daughters were shareholders of three offshore companies. The statement said the President’s daughters “are grown up and have the right to do business.”  A spokesperson for Azersun – a holding company controlled by Hasan Gozal, a corporate mogul who was listed as the director of the daughters’ companies – said the report was biased and based on inaccurate information. “I regret that authority of Press Council doesn't go beyond Azerbaijan and there is no such institution worldwide to fight racketeer journalists,” the spokesman said.
   
• Ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez publicly defended his sons’ involvement in offshore business. Uribe stated that his sons Tomás and Jerónimo are entrepreneurs and “have participated in business dealings since they were children” and “they are not tax evaders.”
   
• In the UK, David Cameron is facing renewed pressure to take action over Britain’s entanglements within the offshore world. Lord Oakeshott, a senior Liberal Democrat said that the secrecy haven of the British Virgin Islands “stains the face of Britain.” Oakeshott and others are questioning whether Cameron will raise the issue in June of at the G8 summit of wealth nations. "How can David Cameron keep a straight face calling for the G8 to make big business pay tax when we let the BVI use British law and British protection to suck in billions in dirty money?" Oakeshott asked.
• German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble stated on public radio that he was “pleased”with the ICIJ reports. He went on to say, “I think that such things as have been made known will increase the pressure internationally, and we will be able to increase the cooperation with those who have been more reticent”, a sentiment reflected in Germany’s previous lobbying to stamp out tax avoidance.
  
• Canadian Federal Revenue Minister Gail Shea called the released of offshore banking information as “good news” for Canadians and bad news for tax evaders. Ms. Shea urged ICIJ or anyone else with information on tax cheats to come forward.
   
• Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, said: "Secrecy is no longer acceptable. We need to get rid of it. If the rules make it possible, then we'll change the rules.”

First Lady Michelle Obama Speaks at Meeting to Address Youth Violence (Video)

President Obama Announces the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget (video/transcript)

Remarks by the President Announcing the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget

Rose Garden

THE PRESIDENT:  Good morning, everybody.  Please, please have a seat.  Well, as President, my top priority is to do everything I can to reignite what I consider to be the true engine of the American economy:  a rising, thriving middle class.  That’s what I think about every day.  That’s the driving force behind every decision that I make.

And over the past three years, our businesses have created nearly 6.5 million new jobs.  But we know we can help them create more.  Corporate profits are at an all-time high.  But we have to get wages and incomes rising, as well.  Our deficits are falling at the fastest pace in years.  But we can do more to bring them down in a balanced and responsible way.

The point is, our economy is poised for progress -- as long as Washington doesn’t get in the way.  Frankly, the American people deserve better than what we’ve been seeing:  a shortsighted, crisis-driven decision-making, like the reckless, across-the-board spending cuts that are already hurting a lot of communities out there -- cuts that economists predict will cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs during the course of this year.

If we want to keep rebuilding our economy on a stronger, more stable foundation, then we’ve got to get smarter about our priorities as a nation.  And that’s what the budget I’m sending to Congress today represents -- a fiscally responsible blueprint for middle-class jobs and growth.
For years, the debate in this town has raged between reducing our deficits at all costs, and making the investments necessary to grow our economy.  And this budget answers that argument, because we can do both.  We can grow our economy and shrink our deficits.  In fact, as we saw in the 1990s, nothing shrinks deficits faster than a growing economy.  That’s been my goal since I took office.  And that should be our goal going forward.

At a time when too many Americans are still looking for work, my budget begins by making targeted investments in areas that will create jobs right now, and prime our economy to keep generating good jobs down the road.  As I said in my State of the Union address, we should ask ourselves three questions every day:  How do we make America a magnet for new jobs?  How do we give our workers the skills they need to do those jobs?  And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?

To make America a magnet for good jobs, this budget invests in new manufacturing hubs to help turn regions left behind by globalization into global centers of high-tech jobs.  We’ll spark new American innovation and industry with cutting-edge research like the initiative I announced to map the human brain and cure disease.  We’ll continue our march towards energy independence and address the threat of climate change.  And our Rebuild America Partnership will attract private investment to put construction workers back on the job rebuilding our roads, our bridges and our schools, in turn attracting even more new business to communities across the country.

To help workers earn the skills they need to fill those jobs, we’ll work with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America.  And we’re going to pay for it by raising taxes on tobacco products that harm our young people.  It’s the right thing to do.  (Applause.)

We’ll reform our high schools and job training programs to equip more Americans with the skills they need to compete in the 21st century economy.  And we’ll help more middle-class families afford the rising cost of college.

To make sure hard work is rewarded, we’ll build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class for anybody who is willing to work hard to climb them.  So we’ll partner with 20 of our communities hit hardest by the recession to help them improve housing, and education, and business investment.  And we should make the minimum wage a wage you can live on -- because no one who works full-time should have to raise his or her family in poverty.  (Applause.)

My budget also replaces the foolish across-the-board spending cuts that are already hurting our economy.  And I have to point out that many of the same members of Congress who supported deep cuts are now the ones complaining about them the loudest as they hit their own communities.  Of course, the people I feel for are the people who are directly feeling the pain of these cuts -- the people who can least afford it.  They’re hurting military communities that have already sacrificed enough.  They’re hurting middle-class families.  There are children who have had to enter a lottery to determine which of them get to stay in their Head Start program with their friends.  There are seniors who depend on programs like Meals on Wheels so they can live independently, but who are seeing their services cut.

That’s what this so-called sequester means.  Some people may not have been impacted, but there are a lot of folks who are being increasingly impacted all across this country.  And that's why my budget replaces these cuts with smarter ones, making long-term reforms, eliminating actual waste and programs we don’t need anymore.

So building new roads and bridges, educating our children from the youngest age, helping more families afford college, making sure that hard work pays.  These are things that should not be partisan.  They should not be controversial.  We need to make them happen.  My budget makes these investments to grow our economy and create jobs, and it does so without adding a dime to our deficits.

Now, on the topic of deficits, despite all the noise in Washington, here’s a clear and unassailable fact: our deficits are already falling.  Over the past two years, I’ve signed legislation that will reduce our deficits by more than $2.5 trillion -- more than two-thirds of it through spending cuts and the rest through asking the wealthiest Americans to begin paying their fair share.

That doesn’t mean we don't have more work to do.  But here’s how we finish the job.  My budget will reduce our deficits by nearly another $2 trillion, so that all told we will have surpassed the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that independent economists believe we need to stabilize our finances.  But it does so in a balanced and responsible way, a way that most Americans prefer.

Both parties, for example, agree that the rising cost of caring for an aging generation is the single biggest driver of our long-term deficits.  And the truth is, for those like me who deeply believe in our social insurance programs, think it's one of the core things that our government needs to do, if we want to keep Medicare working as well as it has, if we want to preserve the ironclad guarantee that Medicare represents, then we’re going to have to make some changes.  But they don't have to be drastic ones.  And instead of making drastic ones later, what we should be doing is making some manageable ones now.

The reforms I’m proposing will strengthen Medicare for future generations without undermining that ironclad guarantee that Medicare represents.  We’ll reduce our government’s Medicare bills by finding new ways to reduce the cost of health care -- not by shifting the costs to seniors or the poor or families with disabilities.  They are reforms that keep the promise we’ve made to our seniors:  basic security that is rock-solid and dependable, and there for you when you need it.  That's what my budget represents.

My budget does also contain the compromise I offered Speaker Boehner at the end of last year, including reforms championed by Republican leaders in Congress.  And I don’t believe that all these ideas are optimal, but I’m willing to accept them as part of a compromise -- if, and only if, they contain protections for the most vulnerable Americans.

But if we're serious about deficit reduction, then these reforms have to go hand-in-hand with reforming our tax code to make it more simple and more fair, so that the wealthiest individuals and biggest corporations cannot keep taking advantage of loopholes and deductions that most Americans don’t get.  That's the bottom line.

If you're serious about deficit reduction, then there's no excuse to keep these loopholes open.  They don't serve an economic purpose.  They don't grow our economy.  They don't put people back to work.  All they do is to allow folks who are already well-off and well-connected game the system.  If anyone thinks I’ll finish the job of deficit reduction on the backs of middle-class families or through spending cuts alone that actually hurt our economy short-term, they should think again.

When it comes to deficit reduction, I’ve already met Republicans more than halfway.  So in the coming days and weeks, I hope that Republicans will come forward and demonstrate that they’re really as serious about the deficits and debt as they claim to be.

So growing our economy, creating jobs, shrinking our deficits.  Keeping our promise to the generation that made us great, but also investing in the next generation -- the next generation that will make us even greater.  These are not conflicting goals.  We can do them in concert.  That’s what my budget does.  That’s why I’m so grateful for the great work that Jeff Zients and his team have done in shaping this budget.  The numbers work.  There’s not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here.

And if we can come together, have a serious, reasoned debate -- not driven by politics -- and come together around common sense and compromise, then I’m confident we will move this country forward and leave behind something better for our children.  That’s our task.
Thank you, God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)