3.25.15 HRC Clips

From:nmerrill@hrcoffice.com To: nmerrill@hrcoffice.com Date: 2015-03-25 11:59 Subject: 3.25.15 HRC Clips

HRC Clips March 25, 2015 HRC Women’s voice topic of forum set in LR (ArkansasOnline)............................................................. 4 Round 1: Hillary Clinton vs. Liberal Ideas (TIME).......................................................................... 5 Rift in Bush camp illustrates Israel’s high profile in 2016 race (The Washington Post).................... 7 Hillary Clinton Caught Between Dueling Forces on Education: Teachers and Wealthy Donors (The New York Times) 10 Trading Favors: Why the GOP is Helping Hillary Clinton (The Atlantic)...................................... 13 Obama Draws on Tight Circle for Adviser (The New York Times)................................................ 15 Would Hillary Clinton inherit Obama’s black voter enthusiasm? (CNN)........................................ 17 Clinton Tenure Lacked Top Watchdog --- The State Department had no permanent inspector general during her time as secretary (The Wall Street Journal)....................................................................................................................................................... 19 U.S. visa official faulted; Homeland Security’s No. 2 leader created appearance of special access, a report says. (Los Angeles Times) 21 Clinton Email Probe Means Political Tightrope for House GOP (National Journal)...................... 23 Report criticizes official who helped Dems with visa program (Associated Press Newswires)....... 25 Jeb Bush had another email account while Florida governor (Associated Press)............................. 27 Hillary Clinton promised a new relationship with the media. She was kidding. (The Washington Post) 28 Group Urges Clinton to Embrace Liberal Agenda (The New York Times).................................... 31 Trusted Aide Declines Formal Role in a Clinton Campaign (The New York Times)...................... 32 Paul slams Clinton on women’s rights (The Hill)............................................................................ 33 What Scott Walker Can Teach Hillary Clinton (Slate).................................................................... 34 Congress Is the Best Bet to Recover Hillary’s E-mails (The Hill).................................................... 36 Clinton: U.S. Should Consider German Model for Saving Jobs (Foreign Policy)............................ 38 Hillary Clinton vs. the record-keepers (Yahoo).............................................................................. 40 Florida Tepid Toward Bush, Rubio runs (Public Policy Polling).................................................... 48 Amongst Friends, Clinton Discusses Urban Renewal (Newsweek)................................................ 49 Citizens United files new lawsuit for Clinton records (Politico)..................................................... 51 Hillary Clinton Moved Her Head, According To Crack Campaign Reporters (Huffington Post).... 52 Hillary Clinton seeks clean slate with press (Politico)..................................................................... 54 Hillary Clinton adds top digital talent to campaign-in-waiting (The Washington Post) By Philip Rucker March 25, 2015 The Washington Post Hillary Rodham Clinton has added some of the Democratic Party’s most experienced digital strategists to her team of political advisers as she gets ready to launch her 2016 presidential campaign. Teddy Goff, the digital director of President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, is advising the Clinton campaign-in-waiting on its digital strategy, while longtime Clinton aide Katie Dowd is on board to be the campaign’s digital director with Jenna Lowenstein as her deputy, according to several Democrats with knowledge of the moves. Andrew Bleeker, a digital marketing guru and veteran of Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, also could join the Clinton campaign in an advisory role, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Clinton team’s staffing decisions. Goff is expected to serve as a top adviser for digital strategy to the Clinton campaign, which would enable him to continue running his private business. Dowd, who is widely respected in the Clinton orbit as a skilled manager and has a personal relationship with the former secretary of state, will be on staff overseeing the campaign’s day-to-day digital operations. And Lowenstein, who has been vice president of digital at Emily’s List, one of the outside groups laying the groundwork for Clinton’s candidacy, would join the staff as deputy digital director. In 2008, the Obama team pioneered the use of new technologies for political campaigns while the Clinton campaign struggled to keep up. Now, two cycles later, Clinton is the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination and has her pick from the party’s deep bench of digital talent, which includes alumni of Obama’s innovative campaigns. During his 2012 stint, Goff led a staff of 250 and oversaw the Obama campaign’s social media outreach, online advertising and fundraising, and product development and design. He managed state-level digital efforts in more than 25 battleground states during Obama’s 2008 campaign. Goff is a partner at Precision Strategies, a firm he co-founded with Obama campaign veterans Stephanie Cutter and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon. Bleeker is another Obama world star, having overseen digital marketing strategy on the president’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. He founded Bully Pulpit Interactive, a digital firm that advises corporations as well as political campaigns, and worked for Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Dowd has been Clinton’s director of digital strategy at the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. She served as new media director on Clinton’s 2008 campaign and followed Clinton to the State Department, where she worked as an innovation adviser running Foggy Bottom’s digital diplomacy efforts. She also worked at the White House as senior adviser to the U.S. chief technology officer. Lowenstein joins the Clinton team from Emily’s List, which helps elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. She is credited with expanding the group’s reach on social media and breaking its online fundraising records in the 2014 midterm campaign cycle. Emily’s List is preparing to play a major role supporting Clinton from the outside and earlier this month honored her at its 30th anniversary gala. Lowenstein previously has served as deputy digital director for the Democratic National Committee and for Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign. Women’s voice topic of forum set in LR (ArkansasOnline) Marchh 25, 2015 ArkansasOnline In partnership with the Clinton Foundation, the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock will hold an event called “Empowering Women and Girls: Amplify Your Voice” on Monday. No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project is a Clinton Foundation initiative led by former Secretary of State and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton to inspire and advance the full participation of women and girls around the world. Earlier this month, the Clinton Foundation unveiled the “Full Participation Report,” presenting the most complete picture of the status of women’s participation since the 1995 United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Participants include Arkansas Children’s Hospital President and Chief Executive Officer Marcy Doderer; Wal-Mart Senior Director of Women’s Economic Empowerment Beth Keck; Director of No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project Terri McCullough; Chief Executive Officer of YWCA USA Dara Richardson-Heron; and founder and Executive Director of KIPP Delta Public Schools Scott Shirey. Round 1: Hillary Clinton vs. Liberal Ideas (TIME) By Haley Sweetland Edwards March 24, 2015 TIME Hillary Clinton does not face a serious primary challenger for the Democratic nomination in 2016, but that isn’t stopping some liberals from putting together the trappings for one. The handful of Democrats who have expressed interest in challenging Clinton — Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb — are all polling double digits behind her and raising minimal funds. None have the kind of name recognition that could seriously threaten her inevitable march to the nomination. But that’s not stopping some on the left from trying their hand at the classic primary squeeze play of raising issues in the primary in an effort to persuade her to adopt them. Over the weekend, during his first foray into the early caucus state of Iowa, O’Malley called for tougher sanctions on Wall Street and “too-big-to-fail” banks, and for reinstating Glass-Steagall, a law that separated commercial and investment banking which was repealed in 1999. He also called for strongly supporting the long-embattled Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in 2010 response to the financial crisis. “Today, most Republicans in Congress are hell-bent on disassembling the Dodd-Frank Act,” O’Malley’s PAC, O’Say Can You See, wrote in a press release Monday, along with a link to a petition. “And too many Democrats have been complicit in the backslide toward less regulation.” O’Malley’s populist swing came the same weekend that the Boston Globe featured a splashy package begging Massachusetts Senator and liberal hero Elizabeth Warren to run for president. “Democrats need Elizabeth Warren’s Voice in the 2016 presidential race,” the editorial board urged. (The idea is not totally out of left field, as it were. Though Warren has said repeatedly that she is not running for president, she has been somewhat cagey about it. She studiously uses the present tense — “I am not running for president” — and has yet to endorse a Clinton candidacy.) This week, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee also re-upped its ongoing effort to motivate liberals to challenge Clinton’s famously Wall Street-friendly economic positions. Liberals should join New Hampshire and Iowa leaders in urging candidates to “campaign on big, bold, economic populist ideas,” the PCCC urged. “The more momentum we get, the more Hillary Clinton and others will take notice.” So what’s all this clamoring, calling-to-arms actually add up to? Liberal optimists argue that it’s the only thing that will help scooch Clinton to the left at a time when she’s already planning her general election strategy. They believe that Clinton will adopt some of their positions in order to win the full-throated endorsement of key liberals such as Warren who she’ll need to rally the base in 2016. Liberal pessimisists say it’s all for naught. Without a face to put on these ideas — or even a name on a ballot — the left won’t have enough clout to persuade Clinton to change course. Even if she doesn’t adopt any of their ideas, Clinton could still rally the liberal base in the general election because she’d be the first female president, by adopting other liberal planks or by running against the right Republican. Rift in Bush camp illustrates Israel’s high profile in 2016 race (The Washington Post) By Anne Gearan and Ed O’Keefe March 25, 2015 The Washington Post Former Florida governor Jeb Bush on Tuesday disavowed criticism of Israel levied by longtime family counselor and former secretary of state James A. Baker III - laying bare a problem faced by the entire 2016 presidential field. Israel, and U.S. policy toward it, has become an intensely partisan issue with serious implications for Jewish voters, campaign fundraising and foreign policy. For Republicans seeking office, almost any critique of Israel has become taboo. That doesn’t leave much leverage for diplomacy if a Republican wins the White House. And for presumed Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, the tough line that President Obama is taking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forces her hand. Clinton is in the awkward spot of appearing to side against Netanyahu or against the president she served as secretary of state. “Frankly, I have been disappointed with the lack of progress regarding a lasting peace - and I have been for some time,” Baker told a left-leaning audience Monday night, according to news reports of his speech. He added that “in the aftermath of Netanyahu’s recent election victory, the chance of a two-state solution seems even slimmer, given his reversal on the issue.” That put Baker - a longtime friend of the Bush family and an unpaid adviser to Jeb Bush’s expected presidential campaign - alongside Obama and firmly outside the Republican wagon circle. Baker was notably critical of comments Netanyahu made in the closing hours of his reelection campaign last week, when the prime minister suggested that he no longer supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu has since backtracked, with limited effect. Obama on Tuesday said he took Netanyahu “at his word” and was openly skeptical that the Israeli leader would support an independent state for Palestinians. Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security and a former Obama administration Mideast policy aide, said Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this month crystallized the growing partisan divide. Republicans invited Netanyahu over White House disapproval, and Democrats accused Republicans of colluding with Netanyahu to sabotage nuclear diplomacy with Iran. “The fact that Netanyahu has become such a hero to them, and that the whole confrontation has such a partisan tinge to it, just exacerbates a division that was not there” to the same degree in past elections, Goldenberg said. Clinton has not addressed Netanyahu’s remarks or the White House reaction to them. She is on record supporting the diplomatic outreach to Iran that undergirds the current U.S.-Israeli tension. [For Hillary and Bibi, a long and fraught relationship] As Obama sought to do Tuesday, candidate Clinton will no doubt stress the ongoing strength of U.S. support for Israel despite policy differences with its leader. In the short term, she will probably try to avoid criticizing Netanyahu directly, according to analysts and Democrats involved in outreach to Jewish voters. “Hillary Clinton as both a candidate and as president would put serious effort into healing the rift between the United states and Israel,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. If the rift continues, Clinton may seek to distance herself from Obama’s stance. That is because any tension with Israel makes many Jewish Democrats squeamish and because she would want to pave the way toward better relations with Netanyahu if she wins. Baker has been an outspoken advocate for the former Florida governor’s likely White House bid. Bush touted Baker’s support last month when he announced a 21-member foreign policy advisory team that is counseling him as he prepares to run for president. Baker has also long supported peace negotiations that would require concessions from Israel and the Palestinians. As secretary of state to Jeb Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, in 1990, Baker famously told off Israel for stiff-arming U.S. efforts to broker talks. “When you’re serious about peace, call us,” Baker said, addressing the Israeli leadership from afar at a congressional hearing. “The phone number is 202-456-1414,” he added. Then and now, the number reaches the White House switchboard. Baker’s views are now out of step with Republican primary campaign orthodoxy, if not with many actual Republican general-election voters. Baker spoke Monday night at a conference hosted by J Street, an advocacy group focused on U.S.-Israel relations and support of negotiations toward a Palestinian state. Spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said in a statement that Bush “respects Secretary Baker, he disagrees with the sentiments he expressed last night and opposes J Street’s advocacy. Governor Bush’s support for Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu is unwavering, and he believes it’s critically important our two nations work seamlessly to achieve peace in the region.” Bush, who said he has visited Israel five times, has repeatedly expressed support for Netanyahu and for Israel. He tweeted congratulations last week to Netanyahu on his reelection. [Where do strained U.S.-Israeli relations go after Netanyahu victory?] Other Republicans see the current division as a way to criticize Obama and burnish their own pro-Israel credentials. Announcing his presidential bid at Liberty University on Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) drew long applause criticizing Obama on Israel. “Instead of a president who boycotts Prime Minister Netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with Israel,” Cruz said. Another possible Republican contender, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said on the Senate floor last week that Obama is making a “historic mistake.” “Allies have differences, but allies like Israel, when you have a difference with them and it is public, it emboldens their enemies,” Rubio said. The sharp critiques could help Republican contenders win over some of the party’s most influential donors. Many top contributors will assemble in Las Vegas next month for the annual spring meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which touted Netanyahu’s appearance before Congress last month. Cruz, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana are scheduled to address the gathering, as is former president George W. Bush. Staunch support for Israel is a prime motivator for major GOP donors such as Sheldon Adelson and Norman Braman. Rubio visited Israel with Braman, a wealthy car dealer who is expected to give a Rubio-aligned super PAC as much as $10 million if the fundraising group is formed. Hillary Clinton Caught Between Dueling Forces on Education: Teachers and Wealthy Donors (The New York Times) By Maggie Haberman March 25, 2015 The New York Times The last time she ran for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton did not have to take a position on the Common Core, Race to the Top or teacher evaluations in tenure decisions. She won the endorsement of one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions in 2007 after deploring the use of standardized tests and the underfunding of the No Child Left Behind law by President George W. Bush’s administration. Now, as she prepares for a likely second run at the White House, Mrs. Clinton is re-entering the fray like a Rip Van Winkle for whom the terrain on education standards has shifted markedly, with deep new fissures in the Democratic Party. Already, she is being pulled in opposite directions on education. The pressure is from not only the teachers who supported her once and are widely expected to back her again, but also from a group of wealthy and influential Democratic financiers who staunchly support many of the same policies -- charter schools and changes to teacher tenure and testing -- that the teachers’ unions have resisted throughout President Obama’s two terms in office. And the financiers say they want Mrs. Clinton to declare herself. ‘‘This is an issue that’s important to a lot of Democratic donors,’’ said John Petry, a hedge fund manager who was a founder of the Harlem Success Academy, a New York charter school. ‘‘Donors want to hear where she stands.’’ The growing pressure on education points out a deeper problem that Mrs. Clinton will have to contend with repeatedly, at least until the Iowa caucuses: On a number of divisive domestic issues that flared up during the Obama administration -- trade pacts, regulation of Wall Street, tax policy -- she will face dueling demands from centrists and the liberal base of the Democratic Party. Her allies believe that with no strong primary opponent to force her into the open, Mrs. Clinton has plenty of time to maneuver before taking sides. But advocates will be using what leverage they possess to draw her out sooner. Mr. Petry said there were many other political contests where wealthy Democrats who favor sweeping changes to education -- including a more businesslike approach, and tying teacher tenure to performance as measured by student scores -- could focus their resources next year instead, including congressional, state and local races. Some progressives already view Mrs. Clinton as overly cozy with Wall Street. And should she align herself with the elite donors who favor an education overhaul, many of them heavyweights in the investment world, it could inflame the liberal Democratic base. The outcome is particularly important for advocates of an overhaul, whose movement has faced growing opposition the past few years. Political crosswinds have whipped up from both the right and the left, particularly over the Common Core education standards that more than 40 states have put in place, but also over Race to the Top, the Obama administration’s program to reward school districts that improve, using measurements that union leaders often find controversial. Reform proponents include donors, but also a cross section of parents and business advocates. Jeb Bush, a likely Republican presidential candidate, has been a staunch supporter of the Common Core, but other contenders in his party have railed against it. And in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic proponent of education overhaul, is battling to survive an April 7 runoff in his bid for a second term. Mr. Emanuel closed dozens of underperforming schools, many of them in predominantly black neighborhoods, and had an angry run-in with a leader of the city teachers’ union. Not surprisingly, supporters of an education overhaul speak apprehensively about Mrs. Clinton’s longstanding friendship with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed her in 2007. ‘‘I hope she sees this as a winning political issue,’’ said Whitney Tilson, manager of Kase Capital and a board member of Democrats for Education Reform, a leading left-of-center advocacy group on the subject. But he said he was concerned: ‘‘She has had more longstanding ties to the teachers’ union, certainly, than Obama ever had. She’s thrown some bones to both sides and I think is sort of trying to triangulate on this.’’ In another sign of that anxiety, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, Joe Williams, recently circulated a memo to its board members highlighting the ‘‘strong ally’’ the group has had in the White House over the past six years and describing the ‘‘stiff pushback’’ the group and its allies are now facing. Presumably in an attempt to set the terms for a policy discussion with Mrs. Clinton and other candidates, the memo said the group had commissioned polling showing that ‘‘voters support our policies, and if candidates want to meet voters where they are, they should, too,’’ according to a copy obtained from a recipient. Mr. Williams concluded, ‘‘Democratic candidates who support education reform are representative of where the American people are, and those who want to roll back progress risk becoming outliers.’’ Mr. Williams noted that the polling had been conducted by Benenson Strategy Group, founded by Joel Benenson, whom Mrs. Clinton had recently retained as chief strategist. An official at the firm said research had been done before it was hired by Mrs. Clinton and had not been conducted by Mr. Benenson himself. Still, Mr. Benenson, who was Mr. Obama’s pollster, would be familiar with how the issue played out in the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney accused Mr. Obama of being too close to teachers’ unions, and Mr. Obama’s advisers saw his support for changes to education as an asset against Mr. Romney, a businessman. In fact, Mr. Obama’s ties with teachers’ unions have grown increasingly toxic. Union leaders complained that his administration did not listen to them, and anger over the use of test scores to gauge success boiled over last year when the head of the largest union, the National Education Association, called on Education Secretary Arne Duncan to resign. Mrs. Clinton intends to listen to both sides, according to her advisers. ‘‘I think it will be different than the Obama administration in the sense that both the teachers’ union and the reformers will really feel like they have her ear in a way they haven’t,’’ said Ann O’Leary, a onetime aide to Mrs. Clinton in the Senate and now a senior vice president at Next Generation, a group involved with the Clinton Foundation on an education initiative. ‘‘She believes we need to have some kind of ways that we can measure student progress,’’ Ms. O’Leary said. But she said Mrs. Clinton was ‘‘also sympathetic that the test regime has become very burdensome in driving the education system in ways that many people think is problematic.’’ Mrs. Clinton will at least not have to establish credibility on the subject. Her involvement with efforts to overhaul education dates back at least to the early 1980s, when her husband named her co-chairwoman of an Arkansas committee that called for a teacher-competency test, smaller classes and a higher dropout age. As a senator, she voted for No Child Left Behind in 2001, but later attacked the law, saying it was failing children. Her association with Ms. Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers began when Ms. Weingarten was a local union leader in New York and Mrs. Clinton was the state’s junior senator. Yet her incoming campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, has been a charter school supporter. In an interview, Ms. Weingarten suggested that those she termed ‘‘the so-called education reformers’’ were most worried that the agenda they have pushed for with the Obama administration, and in places like Chicago, ‘‘does not work.’’ But she rejected the idea that Mrs. Clinton would set policy based on anything other than ‘‘her experience and the evidence.’’ ‘‘She has been versed in these issues for a long time, and will give everyone a fair hearing and a fair shot, but she will look at it through the lens of what’s good for kids. Period,’’ Ms. Weingarten said. ‘‘Anybody who thinks otherwise just doesn’t know her.’’ Trading Favors: Why the GOP is Helping Hillary Clinton (The Atlantic) By Russell Berman March 25, 2015 The Atlantic Improbable as it may sound, House Republicans are on the verge of approving, without much fanfare, a major priority of Hillary Clinton’s. When Clinton ran for president in 2008, she touted her role as first lady in “designing and championing” the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which provided coverage for millions of children whose parents did not qualify for Medicaid but could not afford private insurance. At the time President Clinton signed the law in 1997, it constituted the largest expansion of government-funded children’s health insurance since the enactment of Medicaid in 1965. On Tuesday, Republicans unveiled legislation that would extend CHIP for another two years, without spending cuts or changes of any kind. The program’s funding is due to expire at the end of September, making this an unusual case of Congress moving to act well in advance of a deadline. You won’t hear much about the CHIP extension from Republicans, however. They are supporting it to gain Democratic backing for one of Speaker John Boehner’s top goals: a package that permanently prevents steep cuts in Medicare payments to doctors and institutes a few long-sought reforms to the entitlement program. The so-called “doc fix” is an annual headache for both parties, and repealing it for good has commanded most of the attention inside the Beltway. Yet extending funding for children’s health insurance is equally significant, and its inclusion in the bill represents a rare bipartisan breakthrough, as well as a sign that the nation’s improved fiscal footing is helping to ease the gridlock in Congress. That Republicans might extend CHIP is a testament to its popularity. After 18 years on the books, the program is an accepted component of the social safety net. Health policy experts say it has succeeded in its original goal of providing coverage to more than half of the nation’s uninsured children. And when congressional leaders asked governors last year what to do with the program, both Republican and Democratic state leaders urged them to continue it, said Ron Pollack, the executive director of FamiliesUSA. CHIP’s trajectory is a mark of hope for supporters of Obamacare—and a reason for fear among conservatives. The longer a government program endures, the more popular it becomes, and the harder it is to eliminate it. Still, there’s a crucial difference between CHIP and the Affordable Care Act, aside from the much broader scope of the 2010 overhaul. “The Children’s Health Insurance Program has, from its origination, been a bipartisan program,” Pollack noted. In Congress, it was the brainchild of the late Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican of Utah who now heads the Finance Committee. Hillary Clinton, just three years removed from her failed bid to shepherd universal health care into law, championed the more limited insurance expansion from the White House. It was ultimately included in a larger budget deal that Republicans passed and President Clinton signed in 1997. A decade later, Hillary Clinton drew some criticism for embellishing her role in the program’s passage, given that she stayed mostly behind the scenes after stumbling on health care earlier in her husband’s tenure. “Success has more than one set of parents in the political arena,” Pollack said. “Clearly, she played a significant role.” Count on Clinton to tout CHIP again during her 2016 presidential run, especially considering the bipartisan effort it took to create it. Along with Bill Frist, the Republican former Senate majority leader, Clinton co-authored an op-ed last month in The New York Times urging Congress to extend the program. “This is an opportunity to send a message that Washington is still capable of making common-sense progress for American families,” they wrote. “As 2015 unfolds, we know Congress will continue to debate the future of health care reform. We most likely won’t see eye to eye about some of the more contentious questions. But one thing everyone should be able to agree on is that our most vulnerable children shouldn’t be caught in the crossfire.” While CHIP began as a bipartisan program, it did not escape the ideological battles of the last decade over healthcare. President George W. Bush signed the first reauthorization in 2007, but only for two years and only after vetoing two Democratic attempts to expand it. President Obama signed the expansion shortly after taking office, despite opposition from most Republicans. The Affordable Care Act extended the program again through this coming September. Given CHIP’s popularity, conservative fiscal hawks didn’t realistically expect the GOP Congress to let funding completely run out in September, but they hoped Republicans would demand reforms to the program, starting with a roll-back of its expansion under Obama. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that Republicans and Democrats have sort of accepted that CHIP is here,” said Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action, a conservative group frequently at odds with Boehner. Heritage’s main objection to the $200 billion Medicare deal is that it will add significantly to the deficit, but Holler also said Republicans “missed a huge opportunity” to reform CHIP. An even bigger fear, Holler said, is that Boehner’s deal with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will set a precedent for future big-spending agreements with Democrats. After facing revolt after revolt from conservatives, the speaker changed course when it came to fixing the Medicare reimbursement rate. As National Journal’s Daniel Newhauser reported, Boehner went first to Pelosi to strike a deal, not to his right flank. Congress faces another set of deadlines on the debt ceiling and the Highway Trust Fund in the coming months, and with the improving economy helping to bring down the deficit, more bipartisan deals could come as lawmakers loosen the federal pursestrings. Instead of fighting over how which programs to cut, Democrats and Republicans may strike more bargains in which they agree to fund each other’s priorities. Boehner hasn’t publicly discussed the children’s health program extension, but a House Republican leadership aide noted that the deal was only for two years, not the four that Democrats wanted. That could give Republicans time to enact reforms that would be implemented by the next president. “By extending CHIP, this bill would keep more than three million people from being uninsured or enrolling in the Obamacare exchanges over the next decade,” the aide said. While the bill is seen as likely to pass the House this week, Democrats in the Senate could put up a fight over the length of the extension or abortion provisions tucked into the legislation. For advocates like Pollack, the quicker the measure passes, the better—in part because of concerns that a Clinton campaign could complicate things. If Hillary is out on the stump demanding that Congress reauthorize CHIP, support among Republicans could disappear, especially with increased pressure from conservatives. “It’s fair to say,” Holler noted, “that Hillary Clinton’s healthcare legacy is being extended in this deal.” Obama Draws on Tight Circle for Adviser (The New York Times) By Michael D. Shear March 25, 2015 The New York Times WASHINGTON -- Shailagh Murray, a former political reporter who has spent the last four years as a senior adviser to the vice president, will move to the West Wing as the top message strategist for President Obama, the White House announced on Tuesday. Ms. Murray will replace Dan Pfeiffer as one of the president’s senior advisers, and will help coordinate the president’s agenda during the final two years of his term. In a statement, Mr. Obama called her an ‘‘invaluable asset’’ to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ‘‘For four years, I’ve relied on Shailagh Murray’s strategic advice and keen ability to cut through the Washington noise to focus on what matters to everyday Americans,’’ Mr. Obama said. ‘‘I’m proud to have her as a senior adviser.’’ In addition to bringing Ms. Murray to the White House, the president also announced the hiring of Jason Goldman, an early executive for companies like Twitter and Medium, as the chief digital officer of the White House, focusing on the use of social media to advance the president’s message. Mr. Goldman was formerly head of product at Twitter and served on the company’s board of directors. He also worked at Google. In the statement, Mr. Obama said that Mr. Goldman ‘‘brings new energy and coveted expertise as someone who’s helped shape the digital age. Our mission is to use every single tool available to ensure that all Americans can contribute to and benefit from our American resurgence.’’ Ms. Murray’s office will be just down the hall from the Oval Office, in a place previously occupied by David Axelrod and David Plouffe, the chief architects of Mr. Obama’s White House campaigns. In the last several years, Mr. Pfeiffer had aggressively pursued ways to broaden the White House’s reach beyond the traditional media. He had Mr. Obama appear on Internet-only comedy sites, and post important announcements first on Twitter and other sites. Ms. Murray’s charge will be to find a way to keep Mr. Obama on offense even as the national spotlight shifts from the White House to the 2016 presidential campaign. White House officials said they believed that dynamic could be an opportunity for the president to pursue his agenda aggressively. Stephanie Cutter, a former senior adviser to Mr. Obama who helped run his 2012 re-election campaign and has known Ms. Murray for the better part of two decades, said she had an ability to get to the point of any issue. ‘‘There is going to be a natural shift in attention to the 2016 campaign and away from the White House that happens at the end of any administration, and that will be a challenge,’’ Ms. Cutter said, ‘‘but Shailagh understands how to cut through the clutter to reach the American people.’’ In selecting Ms. Murray, 49, Mr. Obama is turning to a trusted aide to Mr. Biden with whom the president also has a warm rapport. That is a well-established pattern for Mr. Obama, who is most comfortable among a tight circle of familiar advisers. As some of his closest aides have left the White House in recent days to join the nascent presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama has held to that approach. He named Brian Deese, who has served in the administration since Mr. Obama took office, as a senior adviser, replacing John D. Podesta, who is expected become chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. And he selected Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for both of his White House bids, to take over for Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director who departed last week to take that post for Mrs. Clinton. But if Ms. Murray does not bring new blood, people close to the president said, she may offer some fresh perspectives on how to get Mr. Obama’s message across in an increasingly complex and competitive media environment. ‘‘She understands the old media well, and I think it’s an asset to have someone inside who comes from that background, but she also has a very deep appreciation for new media and for innovative ways to get a message across, and I think that’s going to be very, very valuable for the president,’’ Mr. Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime communications guru, said. He added, ‘‘She’s someone who has been totally willing to level with the people she’s working for and tell them what they needed to know, not in an obstreperous way, but in a clear and forceful way.’’ As a reporter, Ms. Murray covered Congress for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and covered political campaigns in 2006, 2008 and 2010. She joined the White House in 2011 as Mr. Biden’s communications director and was promoted to deputy chief of staff two years later. Ms. Murray will start next week. Would Hillary Clinton inherit Obama’s black voter enthusiasm? (CNN) By David Love March 25, 2015 CNN Hillary Clinton held a closed door meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday. Although the former secretary of state, senator and first lady has not declared, it is treated as a foregone conclusion that Clinton is running for president. Likely to launch her campaign in April, Clinton is regarded as the front-runner — if not the only Democratic candidate — and the inevitable Democratic nominee. There is an assumption that since Clinton supported Obama, the black community will now embrace her. But there are more than a few who didn’t get that memo. At this stage of the game, many African-Americans may not be excited about a candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. And after two terms of the nation’s first black president, she should proceed with caution. Clinton need look no further than the 2008 contest, when black voters doused water on her presidential prospects. Early on, Clinton was the favorite of black folks, lest you forgot, and it did not hurt that President Clinton had been regarded as the “first black president” with high approval among African-Americans. Then, support for a senator named Barack Obama blew up after the Iowa caucuses. And Clinton found herself apologizing for her husband’s comments about Obama’s win in the South Carolina primary. President Clinton was relieved of his black card privileges for the remainder of the 2008 election season when he compared Obama’s win in the Palmetto state to that of Jesse Jackson in 2004 and 2008, suggesting that Obama, like Jackson, would not win. The misstep was an affront to many African-Americans, as were Hillary Clinton’s suggestions on the campaign trail that Obama was only good for making speeches, but not for taking action. And let’s not forget her assertions that she was the candidate for “hard-working Americans, white Americans.” We can chalk up some of that rhetoric to spirited campaign-trail junk-talking, and obviously much has happened since the 2008 election. President Obama made Clinton his secretary of state, and she served as a capable top diplomat and a loyal member of the Obama Cabinet. But that does not mean black voters will completely forget the bitter, racially tinged presidential campaign politics of seven years ago. Black voters are among the most loyal of the Democratic Party base, and their record high turnout for Obama was an important part of his victory. However, with a charismatic Obama no longer on the ballot, maintaining the same level of enthusiasm for any other candidate is a challenge. Moreover, as for Clinton, who (understandably?) has her own ideas and may not agree with the President on certain issues, any criticism of Obama could cost her some black voters. Remember that Clinton voted in favor of the unpopular, costly and deadly Iraq war. That support cost Clinton in 2008. And while she has remained silent on the recent re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Clinton’s strongly pro-Israel stance on Mideast peace now appears at odds with the emerging consensus among major groups in the Democratic base, including blacks, Latinos and young voters. However, it is likely that foreign policy will not pose as great a challenge to Hillary Clinton as economics. Because she is tied to the Wall Street wing of her party and commands sky-high speaking fees, people may take a closer look at her approach to tackling inequality and the shrinking of the middle class, and whether she is too concerned about offending the wealthy. The nation is hurting, despite the economic turnaround, and this is felt particularly strongly among blacks, who still have high unemployment rates, a rising wealth gap compared to whites, and, for many, no recovery in sight. And while police shootings of young black men continue to stir outrage in the community, Clinton has remained relatively quiet on the subject. She will have to prove that she can identify with this frustration and offer ideas for reform in local law enforcement. This, rather than her email account, is what concerns the black electorate. Perhaps a populist, more down-to-earth challenger such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb could appeal to black and working-class voters, and unlike Clinton, would not have to fight the perception of living in a protective security bubble, or lacking core beliefs other than being in power. It is safe to assume that if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination that she will ultimately win the majority black vote in the general election, but that may not be enough. Let’s remember President George W. Bush won re-election in 2004 with just 11% of the black vote. Had Mitt Romney been able to duplicate that number of black votes, he would be president now. Obama won in no small part because blacks turned out for him in record numbers in 2012, particularly in swing states like Ohio. Clinton can’t assume she’ll inherit that same level of black voter enthusiasm. Support for Barack Obama does not necessarily translate into support for another Democrat. This means Clinton must fight for votes like anyone else: knock on doors, kiss babies, clap off beat at the AME church, and do whatever it takes. Clinton Tenure Lacked Top Watchdog --- The State Department had no permanent inspector general during her time as secretary (The Wall Street Journal) By Byron Tau and Peter Nicholas March 25, 2015 The Wall Street Journal The State Department had no permanent inspector general -- the lead watchdog charged with uncovering misconduct and waste -- during Hillary Clinton’s entire tenure as secretary, leaving in place an acting inspector who had close ties to State Department leadership. President Barack Obama didn’t put forward a nominee to lead the inspector general’s office while Mrs. Clinton led the State Department, making it the only agency with a presidentially appointed inspector general that had neither a confirmed nor nominated head watchdog during that full time period. Five months after Mrs. Clinton left office, Mr. Obama nominated a permanent inspector general, who was confirmed by the Senate three months later. The lack of a confirmed inspector general raises questions about oversight of the department under Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. The department has been criticized for its failure to gather and archive the email records of Mrs. Clinton and other officials and for responses to public-record requests that lawmakers and advocacy groups say were insufficient, including its response to requests for information from a congressional panel investigating the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya. The vacancy in the top watchdog spot left the State Department with no confirmed inspector general for more than five years, the longest gap since the position was created in 1957, according to department records. While other agencies have had no permanent inspectors general at various points in recent years, some of those vacancies were due to a lack of confirmation by the Senate on nominees put forward by Mr. Obama. Is isn’t clear whether Mrs. Clinton had any role in the lack of a nomination. The acting inspector general, Harold Geisel, had served in a variety of roles, including U.S. ambassador to Mauritius in Bill Clinton’s administration and in a State Department job under Richard Nixon. Because he was a longtime foreign-service officer, Mr. Geisel was banned from becoming permanent inspector general, a prohibition to ensure that oversight is conducted by people who don’t have ties to the departments they investigate. “It’s a convenient way to prevent oversight,” said Matthew Harris, a University of Maryland University College professor who has worked in law enforcement and researches inspectors general. Acting inspectors general “don’t feel empowered; they don’t have the backing of their people.” Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Mr. Geisel’s role as a Clinton administration ambassador undercut his status as a watchdog. “We did not believe he could be truly independent. We raised the issue,” Mr. Royce said. He said an independent inspector would likely have uncovered and raised objections to Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email account and computer server for official correspondence. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, said Mr. Geisel “was a career official spanning Republican and Democratic administrations alike, independent and hard-hitting.” A spokesman for the State Department said Mr. Geisel led a team that “conducted more investigations between 2007 and 2012 than the IG had under his predecessor.” The White House declined to elaborate on the reason for the lack of an appointment. A White House spokesman said the inspector general’s office issued more than 450 reports while there was no permanent head. Mr. Geisel, assuming his tenure would be short-lived, said he did little to decorate his office. “I never even put up a picture,” he said in an interview. After his five-year stint, the State Department gave him a paid temporary assignment reviewing staffing conditions at outposts in Egypt and Nairobi, Mr. Geisel said. Designed to be isolated from political pressure, inspectors general are tasked with uncovering waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement of federal agencies. The State Department office has a large staff that conducts audits and investigations. During Mr. Geisel’s tenure, members of Congress and watchdog groups raised questions about his distance from top leadership at the State Department. The nonpartisan Project On Government Oversight said Mr. Geisel had an unduly close relationship with Patrick F. Kennedy, the department’s undersecretary for management, a top post. In a 2010 letter to the White House, the group cited friendly emails between the two as evidence of a close relationship, as well as the fact that Mr. Geisel recused himself from an investigation into a situation involving Mr. Kennedy during his tenure. Asked whether he believed he was compromised in his ability to do his job, Mr. Geisel said: “My work absolutely speaks for itself.” He described his mission as “telling the truth that needs to be told, which may not be the truth that people want to hear.” One person who worked in the office from 2009 to 2013, Evelyn Klemstine, spoke highly of Mr. Geisel. “I personally never felt that he inhibited any of the audits that we did,” she said. U.S. visa official faulted; Homeland Security’s No. 2 leader created appearance of special access, a report says. (Los Angeles Times) By Joseph Tanfani March 25, 2015 Los Angeles Times The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department intervened several times in projects with connections to insiders, including Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and a brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a report issued by the department’s watchdog Tuesday. Alejandro Mayorkas, while head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, created an “appearance of favoritism” in a program that offers visas to wealthy foreigners willing to invest in American companies, the report says, though it stops short of saying Mayorkas was guilty of wrongdoing. More than 15 whistle-blowers came forward to complain that Mayorkas was giving special treatment to connected applicants, the report by the department’s Office of Inspector General says. The projects included McAuliffe’s electric car company, GreenTech Automotive; a series of films by Sony Pictures; and a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Mayorkas intervened “in unprecedented ways,” the report says, and “created a perception ... that certain individuals had special access and would receive special consideration.” If it were not for Mayorkas, the report says, the applications would have been decided differently. The report says the projects eventually won approval after Mayorkas heard from advocates like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, both Democrats. In a 32-page response, Mayorkas, now the department’s deputy secretary, said he weighed in only to fix a broken system that wasn’t moving applications. “I did so not because I wanted to but because I needed to,” Mayorkas wrote. “It was not easy or pleasant to hear complaints of how poorly our agency was performing.” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he still had “full confidence” in Mayorkas, but said the report also showed that leaders needed to avoid the “appearance of special treatment.” The complex EB-5 visa program, mixing immigration policy with economic development goals, offers U.S. visas to people willing to invest at least $500,000 in projects that create at least 10 jobs and meet other requirements. Most of the visas, about 10,000 annually, are snapped up by wealthy Chinese investors. But a number of the deals have turned out to be fraud schemes, and critics in Congress have charged that the government isn’t properly screening the investors for security risks. Mayorkas, who once served as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said the visa program was a mess when he began at Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2009. The office was short-staffed, he said, and the agency was deluged by complaints about stalled applications. Some of the complaints were from McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who helped run presidential campaigns for Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Gulf Coast Funds Management, a company run by Anthony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, was trying to attract EB-5 applicants to invest in GreenTech, where McAuliffe was board chairman until he left in 2012 to run for governor. The report says Mayorkas became involved at some point in the long application process but declined to do so in others, saying it was inappropriate. The project eventually won approval. Though Mayorkas didn’t ultimately make the decision, the report says, his unusual involvement was “corrosive” and intimidated staffers. Mayorkas, though, said McAuliffe kept complaining about his treatment, at one point leaving an expletive-laced message. Mayorkas also intervened in 2011 in a project called LA Films, set up to steer money from about 200 investors into Sony Pictures films, the report says. His staff members wanted to deny the project, the report says, but that changed after Mayorkas received a call from Rendell, who knew the project head from his previous dealings in Philadelphia. And Reid, then Senate majority leader, asked Mayorkas to look into a stalled application from a company that wanted to invest in the SLS Hotel in Las Vegas. The report spurred biting criticism of Mayorkas from Republicans. The report shows “just how questionable Mr. Mayorkas’ ethics and judgment were,” said Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a long-standing critic of Mayorkas and the EB-5 program. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said he would hold a hearing Thursday to explore the report’s findings. Johnson said that he also had concerns about the integrity of the EB-5 program but that the problem was not Mayorkas, but lawmakers. “Officials of this department are constantly contacted by outsiders, including members of Congress of both parties, on behalf of those with an interest in the outcome of a particular EB-5 case,” Johnson said. He said he had asked his staff to come up with a way to keep the program free from outside influence. Clinton Email Probe Means Political Tightrope for House GOP (National Journal) By Ben Geman March 24, 2015 National Journal House Republicans probing the Benghazi attacks have a politically delicate task that goes well beyond investigating the 2012 incident that claimed the lives of four Americans. They have to make clear they’re out to get Hillary Clinton’s emails—not Hillary Clinton. Thus far, Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy and his aides have taken pains to cast the overall Benghazi probe as a methodical one. It’s even taken some criticism from the Right for not being more aggressive against the former secretary of State. And that’s by design. The panel wants to avoid the appearance that it is attacking Clinton by any means possible. That—ideally—means few leaks and little grandstanding. “We are not putting out for the public bits and pieces of our investigation. That’s not how a solid, fair investigation is conducted,” said Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana, one of seven Republicans on the panel. “I am very pleased with the professional nature and the civility of the investigation and how it is progressing.” “If you look back at the three hearings we have had so far, I have mentioned Hillary Clinton’s name a whopping zero times. We were interviewing witnesses that have nothing to do with Secretary Clinton when this story broke,” Gowdy said on Fox News Sunday. The emphasis on perception is a marked change from some previous House GOP investigations of the Obama administration, including probes into Fast and Furious and Solyndra, which were seen in some circles as political fishing expeditions. Many Republicans took note when House Speaker John Boehner announced last May that the Benghazi panel would be headed by Gowdy, not then-House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa—the author of those more controversial probes. “They have to be careful not to make it look too nakedly partisan, and more specifically, not exclusively built around the prospects of Hillary Clinton winning the White House in 2016, even though everyone in this town knows that that’s true,” said Thomas Schaller, a political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. To that point, last week Gowdy sent a letter to Clinton’s attorney asking for her private email server to be turned over to the State Department’s inspector general or another “neutral, detached, and independent arbiter.” Gowdy didn’t, however, ask for it to be sent over to the House panel. Schaller’s recent book, The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House, argues that the increasingly powerful House wing of the GOP has hobbled the party’s White House prospects in recent decades. But in this case, Schaller believes the House panel is poised to help the party’s 2016 prospects. “This might be the one case where, if it is done right and it is done successfully, I suppose it could actually help the presidential wing of the party because it does look like Hillary Clinton was damaged by this revelation,” he said of the discoveries about Clinton’s email practices. GOP strategist Rick Wilson framed it this way in Politico: “Let’s try something new: maintain message discipline, hold focus and keep an eye on a bigger objective than your daily press release, social media hits or email fundraising drops.” David Marin, a former top GOP aide on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and a veteran of congressional investigations, says the Select Committee has proceeded with integrity. “I think they have proceeded exactly as I would have wanted to proceed if I were working for this committee. They are quietly, diligently doing their work. You haven’t seen leaks from this committee in terms of documents, you haven’t see any show hearings,” Marin said. “I think at the end of the day, this committee will be judged on the quality of its report, on the report’s objectivity and utility, on whether the facts presented match the conclusions the committee reaches. Everything else is just theater and noise, and I do have a strong sense that Mr. Gowdy understands this,” said Marin, who is now with the Podesta Group, a prominent lobbying and PR firm. Democrats are having none of it. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic panel member, said on Fox News Sunday recently that the GOP-controlled committee has not yet had Clinton testify on Benghazi because Republicans want that to occur “as far into the presidential cycle as possible.” And GOP efforts to keep a lid on political talk or appearances may not make a difference anyway, given the personalities and strong feelings involved. “It doesn’t matter what we do,” said committee member Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican. “It is going to be looked at as being political.” Report criticizes official who helped Dems with visa program (Associated Press Newswires) By Alicia A. Caldwell March 25, 2015 Associated Press Newswires WASHINGTON (AP) — When influential Democrats with stakes in different investment groups needed help securing visas as part of a complicated foreign investor program, they sought out a fellow Democrat who just happened to be in charge of the immigration agency overseeing their applications. Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the time, took up their causes, according to a report by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. Investigators say Mayorkas improperly intervened in three cases involving prominent Democrats, including a company run by the youngest brother of likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the report released Tuesday, investigators said Mayorkas helped efforts to secure the visas in ways that created the appearance of favoritism and special access. That, in turn, caused resentment among career government employees, managers and lawyers. The agency’s inspector general, John Roth, said he could not suggest a motive for Mayorkas, a longtime Democrat who served on President Barack Obama’s transition team after his 2008 election and was U.S. attorney in California under President Bill Clinton. Roth did not accuse Mayorkas of violating any laws and acknowledged that Mayorkas sometimes declined to become involved in cases because he said he did not think it would be appropriate. Mayorkas said in a statement that he disagreed with the inspector general’s findings but that “I will certainly learn from it and from this process.” He added: “There was erroneous decision-making and insufficient security vetting of cases. I could not and did not turn my back on my responsibility to address those grave problems. I made improving the program a priority and I did so in a hands-on manner.” The U.S. government’s investor-visa program, known as EB-5, allows foreigners to obtain visas to live permanently in the U.S. with their spouse and children if they invest $500,000 to $1 million in projects or businesses that create jobs for American citizens. Approved investors can become legal permanent residents after two years and later can become U.S. citizens. The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said the findings were “extremely concerning” and that he will conduct a congressional hearing about them Thursday. Roth was expected to testify. The Associated Press first reported in July 2013 — as Mayorkas was being considered for the No. 2 job at the Homeland Security Department — allegations that he had improperly intervened in the investor case involving a financing company run by Anthony Rodham, brother of Mrs. Clinton. Mayorkas told senators at his confirmation hearing that the allegations were “unequivocally false” and said he oversaw the program “based on the law and the facts, and nothing else.” The inspector general’s new conclusions also cast doubt on whether the Homeland Security Department withheld embarrassing internal files the AP had sought under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act as part of its own investigation nearly two years ago — and instead released records that indicated no wrongdoing. The AP in July 2013 requested all emails to or from Mayorkas over the preceding seven months that contained specific words or names, including Rodham. The government eventually sent AP more than 200 pages, mostly censored, including emails in which Mayorkas told investors and agency staff that he would not become involved in internal deliberations. “I cannot weigh in,” Mayorkas wrote to Assistant Secretary Douglas Smith on Feb. 1, 2013, in a message turned over to the AP and cited in the new inspector general’s report. “The (investor’s) attorney sent an email to me and I responded that I could not weigh in.” But the inspector general’s report also cited other messages from Mayorkas that were never turned over to AP. In one case, Mayorkas forwarded a January 2013 email from Rodham about delays with a high importance designation. The email would have been covered under AP’s information request since Mayorkas sent it during the relevant time period and contained Rodham’s name. “Staff understood these applications were getting high-level attention,” the inspector general’s report said. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe was also connected to the investor proposal but later divested. His spokesman, Brian Coy, said the report demonstrated that McAuliffe asked the government to decide on the investment proposal in a timely fashion. The other two cases involved a Hollywood investment program and an investment effort in Nevada that had ties to former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, respectively. Mayorkas previously came under criticism for his involvement in the commutation by President Clinton of the prison sentence of the son of a Democratic Party donor. Another of Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Hugh Rodham, had been hired by the donor to lobby for the commutation. Mayorkas told lawmakers during his 2009 confirmation hearing that it was a mistake to talk to the White House about the request. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said there were lessons to be learned in the inspector general’s investigation but described Mayorkas in a statement as “exceptionally conscientious, honest and patriotic.” “He is often impatient with our sluggish government bureaucracy, can at times be very hands-on in resolving issues and problems that are brought to his personal attention, and is always mindful that we are public servants,” Johnson said. “Ali works hard to do the right thing, and never acts, in my observation, for reasons of personal advancement or aggrandizement.” Roth, the inspector general, praised as “courageous” the agency employees who confidentially had complained about Mayorkas’ actions and promised they would be protected as whistleblowers. Jeb Bush had another email account while Florida governor (Associated Press) By Ronnie Greene March 24, 2015 Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeb Bush used another, previously unreported email address when he was governor of Florida, records show — the newest wrinkle in an evolving debate over public officials’ use of private email accounts. The disclosure follows revelations that Hillary Rodham Clinton used a private email address to conduct State Department business when she was secretary of state. Republican Bush and Democrat Clinton are two likely contenders in the 2016 race for the White House. When Bush released thousands of emails from his tenure as Florida’s governor as part of his preparations to run for president next year, he did so from the email account he shared openly, jeb@jeb.org. Those emails also include references to another email address, jeb@gencom.net. Bush said through a spokeswoman that he was unaware of the account, although records showed that people wrote to him there more than 400 times between 1999 and 2004. The same records show no replies from Bush coming from that address. Instead, when Bush responded, he did so from his more well-known email address. Writers sometimes also reached the governor at jeb@jebbush.org or jeb@myflorida.com. Bush’s spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell, said Bush had no knowledge of the other email account. “He doesn’t know what that email address is,” she told The Associated Press Tuesday. There’s no indication this other account was used in any improper or secretive way. But its existence — and the mystery around it — show the potential complications when public officials, like Bush and Clinton, use private email accounts to conduct public business. An AP review of Bush’s emails spotlighted cases in which top donors sought to sway the governor on political appointments during his two terms in office. The gencom address traces to ElectroNet Broadband Communications of Tallahassee, Florida’s capital. The company did not immediately respond to a phone message Tuesday from the AP with questions about the Bush email address. The majority of emails sent to Bush at that address came in 1999, and a slow trickle followed in ensuing years. Just one came in 2004, from a South Florida businessman who wrote to Bush at both addresses about a university board meeting. Several writers used both email addresses when contacting Bush. Others reached Bush simply through the gencom account — writing to him on a range of issues from judicial appointments to the federal raid that captured the Cuban child Elian Gonzalez to state labor and literacy issues. Hillary Clinton promised a new relationship with the media. She was kidding. (The Washington Post) By Chris Cillizza March 24, 2015 The Washington Post “I am all about new beginnings,” Hillary Clinton said at event honoring the late New York Times Robin Toner Monday night in Washington. “A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new e-mail account. The relationship with the press. So here goes: no more secrecy. No more zone of privacy. After all, what good did that do me?” Clinton made clear that her change of heart was decidedly tongue in cheek, adding: “Before I go any further, look under your chair, you’ll find a simple non-disclosure agreement my attorneys drew up. Old habits last.” ZING! Here’s the thing: Clinton shouldn’t be joking. She badly needs a new relationship with the press after a 2008 campaign that was marked by the remarkably uncivil daily interactions between her press team and the reporters tasked with covering the campaign. (I am far from blameless in that as a participant in plenty of skirmishes that, in retrospect, were so tiny and meaningless as to not make much of a difference in even the short term.) And, in her hires for the not-yet-announced-but-come-on-everyone-knows-she’s-doing-it presidential campaign there does seem to be an acknowledgment that the press shop needs an entirely different approach. As Peter Nicholas wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal: Mrs. Clinton’s new campaign is shaping up to be a hybrid of longtime Clinton and Obama political operatives. Tensions are inevitable. But Mrs. Clinton seems to want some sort of rapprochement with the press. Three of the people she has recently tapped for key spots in her media operation suggest as much. All have strong ties to the press corps; none is known for a combative approach to the media. He’s exactly right. Jennifer Palmieri, who is expected to be the communications director, has a long history with the national media -- from her time working for John Edwards’ presidential bid to her service as a senior press person in the Obama White House. Brian Fallon, expected to be the national press secretary, spent time on Capitol Hill with the irrepressible Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) before going to head press operations at the Justice Department. And Jesse Ferguson, who is expected to play a major role in the Clinton 2016 press shop, comes out of the world of House Democratic politics and is known -- by me and lots of other reporters -- for his reasonableness. Those hires will likely make some difference in how the Clinton campaign deals with the media. But, the key question is not really the philosophy of the people Clinton has hired when it comes to dealing with the media. It’s whether she (and her husband) have actually changed their mind in any meaningful way about their approach to the press. And, in that regard there’s little evidence to suggest that anything like a new beginning is likely. Hillary Clinton’s handling of her news conference addressing the email controversy a few weeks back was guarded and careful -- unwilling to play ball with the media up to and including the decision to stage it at the United Nations -- a less-than-ideal location for the crush of media at the event. And there was that whole following-reporters-to-the-bathroom thing. Bill Clinton, in a speech last spring at Georgetown, lamented the way the press covers politicians. “If a policymaker is a political leader and is covered primarily by the political press, there is a craving that borders on addictive to have a storyline,” he said. “And then once people settle on the storyline, there is a craving that borders on blindness to shoehorn every fact, every development, every thing that happens into the story line, even if it’s not the story.” And, Hillary Clinton said much the same in a speech at the University of Connecticut around the same time; “A lot of serious news reporting has become more entertainment driven and more opinion-driven as opposed to factual,” she said at the time. “People book onto the shows, political figures, commentators who will be controversial who will be provocative because it’s a good show. You might not learn anything but you might be entertained and I think that’s just become an unfortunate pattern that I wish could be broken.” Now, there is truth in the Clinton analysis of the media. The growth of journalists as “brands”, the rise of social media and the growth in both the ability to measure traffic and the increasing preeminence of traffic as a definition of journalistic success have altered journalism since even the last time Hillary Clinton ran for president -- and often in not-so-good ways. But, it’s clear that the Clintons are not simply offering a clinical analysis on the media. Their feelings about the press are deeply held and laden with emotion, beliefs forged over more than two decades in the national spotlight. As Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush wrote in an absolutely seminal piece on Hillary Clinton’s relationship (or lack thereof) with the media in mid-2014: While the white-hot anger she once felt toward the media has since hardened into a pessimistic resignation (with a dash of self-pity), she’s convinced another campaign would inevitably invite more bruising scrutiny, as her recent comments suggest. Public life “gives you a sense of being kind of dehumanized as part of the experience,” she lamented a few weeks ago to a Portland, Ore., audience. “You really can’t ever feel like you’re just having a normal day.” When asked why Clinton hasn’t done more to reach out to reporters over the years, one Clinton campaign veteran began to spin several theories. She was too busy, she was too prone to speaking her mind and the like—then abruptly cut to the chase: “Look, she hates you. Period. That’s never going to change.” While “hate” might be overstating things somewhat, it is absolutely clear that Hillary Clinton’s disdain for how the media does its collective job isn’t going to disappear or even change because she says a few nice words at a dinner or hires a handful of senior press operatives who have a different approach to the media than her past flacks. Yes, people like Palmieri, Fallon and Ferguson can temper some of the media suspicion in Clintonworld but they will never cure the candidate (or her spouse) of their fundamental dislike and, more importantly, distrust of the press. Now, distrusting the press isn’t exactly disqualifying for a presidential candidate. In fact, bashing the media is one of the most bipartisan applause lines a pol can deliver; I have been in Democratic and Republican audiences in which a little press-bashing elicits huge cheers. And, whining from reporters about access to a candidate or polite treatment from a campaign isn’t exactly the sort of stuff that the average voter feels a ton of sympathy for. And yet, it’s hard to dispute that Clinton’s relationship with the media played a role in just how difficult -- and disappointing -- that campaign was for her. Clinton has made some moves in the last few weeks that suggest she recognizes that she can’t repeat those mistakes this time around. But, campaigns take their lead from the candidate. And Clinton doesn’t seem to, really, have adjusted her view of the media in any meaningful way between 2008 and today. That matters. Group Urges Clinton to Embrace Liberal Agenda (The New York Times) By Jonathan Martin March 24, 2015 The New York Times A liberal group is starting a campaign Tuesday aimed at pushing Hillary Rodham Clinton to adopt a full-throated liberal agenda in her all-but-certain presidential campaign, signaling that even some on the far left of the Democratic Party are now more focused on shaping Mrs. Clinton’s eventual platform than they are on finding an alternative to her. Over 200 Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats signed a petition at ReadyForBoldness.com, a website that plays on the name of the pro-Clinton group “Ready for Hillary.” The effort, sponsored by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, will push Mrs. Clinton and other Democratic presidential hopefuls toward embracing expanded Social Security benefits, curbs on Wall Street and an overhaul of the campaign finance system, among other liberal priorities. The organization is seeking volunteers in early primary states to attend campaign events and ask candidates where they stand on the liberal agenda. Among those signing the “Ready for Boldness” statement are former Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, Representative Dave Loebsack of Iowa, and Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter, each former members of Congress from New Hampshire. “Our Democratic nominee will have the best chance to win New Hampshire and other swing states in the general election if they campaign on a bold economic agenda that impacts kitchen table issues like jobs, wages, college affordability and retirement security,” Ms. Shea Porter said. Trusted Aide Declines Formal Role in a Clinton Campaign (The New York Times) By Maggie Haberman March 24, 2015 The New York Times Cheryl D. Mills, an adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton who has been closer to her than perhaps any other over the last six years, will not be playing a formal role in her soon-to-be-announced presidential bid, according to people in direct discussions with the campaign. Ms. Mills, who had a senior role in Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign and then served as an adviser and chief of staff at the State Department, has told friends that she knows first-hand how intense and trying a presidential race can be and that she values the work she is doing outside of political life. That includes working for a hedge fund she started that is focused on Africa. There had been some discussion of Ms. Mills taking a campaign co-chair title along with John Podesta, who served in senior roles in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Mr. Podesta is not currently planning to relocate to New York City, where Mrs. Clinton’s campaign will be based, and advisers to Mrs. Clinton are still discussing who, if anyone, could play that role, according to people familiar with the discussions. Ms. Mills has been singular among Mrs. Clinton’s circle of trusted advisers in stating plainly to people that she hoped the former secretary of state would forgo another national campaign. At the same time, she has devoted much of the last two years to helping Mrs. Clinton preserve the option of running and has been strongly supportive of Mrs. Clinton’s desire to delay declaring her candidacy as long as possible. Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, declined to comment. Even without an actual title, there is little doubt that Mrs. Clinton will continue to consult frequently with Ms. Mills, which could pose a familiar challenge for Mrs. Clinton’s team of paid advisers, who will have to contend with a circle of counselors who aren’t in the campaign structure, but who have her ear nonetheless. At the same time, the fact that the campaign is still assessing how to structure top tier of her political operation just weeks before an expected announcement highlights the late start Mrs. Clinton has had in building her team, despite considering her campaign for the last two years. Paul slams Clinton on women’s rights (The Hill) By Kevin Cirilli March 24, 2015 The Hill Likely presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Monday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not a consistent defender of women’s rights. Paul said on Fox News’s “The Kelly File” that Republicans need to “aggressively go after the Clintons,” since she is expected to announce her run for president. “We need to go after their corruption. We need to call her out for not being a consistent defender of women’s rights,” Paul said. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy on the Clinton side. ... You can’t let that go.” Paul said that Republicans will not win the White House in 2016 unless they attack her record. “We won’t win unless we aggressively combat her and make sure that she has to explain her record as well,” Paul said. What Scott Walker Can Teach Hillary Clinton (Slate) By Jamelle Bouie March 24, 2015 Slate Hillary Clinton has been polarizing her entire political career. But now, ahead of a second presidential run, she wants to be a uniter, not a divider. People should “get out of the kind of very unproductive discussion that we’ve had for too long, where people are just in their ideological bunkers, having arguments instead of trying to reach across those divides and have some solutions,” she said, speaking to labor leaders and policy wonks during a Monday event at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that doubles as the Clinton administration-in-waiting. Elsewhere in Washington, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities—another left-leaning think tank—released its analysis of the new Republican budgets. “Each budget plan,” notes the CBPP, “derives more than two-thirds of its [approximately $5 trillion] budget cuts from programs for people with low or modest incomes even though these programs constitute less than one-quarter of federal program costs.” This includes billions in cuts to tax credits for working families as well as trillions in cuts to health care for low-income people. At the same time, House Republicans are mulling huge tax relief for the wealthiest Americans; later this week the House Ways and Means Committee will consider a bill to repeal the federal estate tax. Clinton hasn’t announced a full agenda for 2016, much less a campaign for president. But when she does, it will stand on the opposite bank of anything offered by Republicans, with a vast distance between the two. She will give a plan for growing the welfare state. They will offer a plan for gutting it. Put differently, she has to know that there’s no way to bring the two sides together. Democrats and Republicans aren’t just polarized; they’ve adopted distinct ideologies, and they’ve prioritized a maximalist approach to using power and influence. The first two years of the Obama administration weren’t modest. Part of this was a massive economic crisis that demanded a proportional response, but part of it was policy ambition. From the stimulus to the auto bailouts, Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, and a host of other, smaller policies, Obama and the Democrats steered the country in a much more liberal direction than any president and Congress since Lyndon Johnson. Likewise, if elected president in 2012, Mitt Romney had promised a full repudiation of the Obama administration. His White House would have slashed social spending, repealed the Affordable Care Act, and pushed a sweeping agenda of broad tax cuts and deregulation. It would have been a complete ideological victory, scored without any input from liberals. It’s not that the “togetherness” talk is unreasonable. The public craves political comity and wants its leaders to affirm values like cooperation and bipartisanship. And even if they’ve built their appeal on the opposite, most politicians will oblige. “The answer will not come from Washington,” said Sen. Ted Cruz—of all people—in his presidential announcement speech. “It will only come as it has come at every other time of challenge in this country, when the American people stand together and say we will get back to the principles that have made this country great.” But even if they try—and candidates tend to pursue their promises once in office—there’s no way anyone can keep this pledge. If elected president, Hillary Clinton won’t bring anyone together, just like Barack Obama didn’t overcome bitter partisanship and George W. Bush couldn’t sustain the national unity of his first two years in office (not that it was a huge priority). Not only are presidents pressured by party elites and activists with distinct visions, but the public is more polarized, and less willing to give approval or support to presidents from the other side. It’s why Clinton polarized more than Bush, why the second Bush polarized more than Clinton, and why Obama stands as the most polarizing president we have known—until we elect the next one. Indeed, the only person in the present presidential field who seems to understand that political comity is a fool’s errand is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, which, given his record for sowing ideological rancor, isn’t a surprise. In 2013—just after the government shutdown—he spoke at a breakfast for reporters in Washington, D.C. And when asked about polarization, he refused to say he could bridge the divide: “For years, the conventional wisdom was that Americans want divided government,” he said. “I think they’ve seen in the last few years that that’s not necessarily a good thing. Instead of checks and balances you get a lot of gridlock.” … “What we learned in Wisconsin and what many of the other battleground states, particularly in the Midwest, learned during the 2010 election, was that if you want to get big, bold reform done in your state you need a team to help you do that. So in our case everything switched from Democratic control to Republican control in 2010 and that empowered us to go out and make reforms that would’ve been much more difficult without those changes.” It’s clear that Clinton wants to echo Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign of change and togetherness. But, as per her critique in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Obama’s message was a mistake. Outside of the most technical or non-salient issues, there’s no chance of bipartisan cooperation in the next presidential administration, and to promise otherwise is to set yourself up for failure. The only way a President Hillary Clinton will succeed in 2017 is if she has a Democratic Congress to pass her policies, confirm her judges, and staff her administration. In other words, Clinton needs to listen to Walker. He gets it. Instead of a promise to work with Republicans, Clinton should promise to elect Democrats. It’s the only way she’ll get results, and ultimately, that’s what the public wants. Congress Is the Best Bet to Recover Hillary’s E-mails (The Hill) By Shannen Coffin March 24, 2015 The Hill In opposing efforts to reopen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases seeking Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, the Department of Justice is playing perfectly to type. Last week, the department told the D.C. Circuit that there was no reason to re-open a case in which it had previously said it had no e-mail. Justice’s lawyers argued that its prior statements to the court were literally true: It had no such e-mails at the time it conducted its prior searches. As I previously wrote, the Supreme Court has consistently rejected the notion that private citizens can force the recovery of documents removed from agency recordkeeping systems through FOIA lawsuits. This precedent was established in 1980, in a case involving an effort to force the State Department to produce notes and tapes that Henry Kissinger took with him when he resigned as Secretary of State. The Court reasoned that the Freedom of Information Act requires an agency to search only those records within its possession and control at the time of the request. The Department of Justice, representing the State Department now, relies heavily on that principle in arguing that, when it made its prior representations to the courts in some pending (and some now dismissed) FOIA cases, the State Department complied with the law. Because Secretary Clinton had removed – and, some might argue, even concealed — her e-mails from agency possession and control, the agency did not have an obligation to search those records in the past. So the Department of Justice’s argument goes, and under the current law, it is likely to succeed. Instead of giving power to the average citizen to claw back Mrs. Clinton’s records through the Freedom of Information Act, federal law generally allows that only the federal government itself can seek to recover documents removed from its control. The Federal Records Act requires that when an agency head or the Archivist of the United States learns that official records have been or will be removed or destroyed, they must request that the Attorney General initiate a civil enforcement action to recover the documents. This may be where the Department of Justice’s recent filings fall short. DOJ explains that there is “no basis, beyond sheer speculation, to believe that former Secretary Clinton withheld any work-related e-mails from those provided to the Department of State.” But the very fact that Mrs. Clinton took it upon herself to decide what to produce and what to delete – and the many inconsistencies in her own description of the document-review process – should give the Department of State and the Archivist pause as to whether she produced all of her official e-mails when requested. The State Department seems unconcerned about the possibility of the existence of other e-mails beyond the 30,000 or so Clinton has already handed over. The Archivist, at least, has raised his eyebrows, inquiring in a letter to the State Department about the circumstances surrounding the “potential alienation” of Mrs. Clinton’s e-mail records. If either the agency head or Archivist fail to act to recover improperly removed e-mails, a private party has some recourse to the courts, although that recourse is limited. A private citizen can petition a court to compel either official to fulfill this statutory duty. As one federal court recently held in a case involving an effort to seek the return of e-mails held in a private account by the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy: If the agency head or Archivist does nothing while an agency official destroys or removes records in contravention of agency guidelines and directives, private litigants may bring suit to require the agency head and Archivist to fulfill their statutory duty to notify Congress and ask the Attorney General to initiate legal action. . . . [The private party must] plausibly allege that records have been unlawfully ‘removed’ [from the agency in order to be granted judicial relief]. But judicial relief merely forces the agency head and/or Archivist to fulfill their statutory obligation to ask the Attorney General to sue. In every case, even where a court intervenes, the ultimate decision about whether to seek judicial relief to force return of the improperly removed documents is left with the Attorney General of the United States. And given the Department’s current position that nothing is amiss, the likelihood of a civil enforcement action to force Mrs. Clinton to account for any missing records seems low. A number of organizations have already begun to seek to reopen FOIA claims long-since closed. But absent some prior misrepresentations by the Department of State in those FOIA cases, this federal scheme leaves little chance of judicial relief for those public-interest and media organizations clamoring for Mrs. Clinton’s e-mail servers to be seized and searched. Even in the face of clear violations of records laws, federal judges are simply unlikely to force the Attorney General to exercise his well-established discretion to enforce the law. The best chance of recovering Mrs. Clinton’s records, then, currently lies in congressional subpoenas. But that process may take months or even years – with an elaborate and predictable kabuki dance of subpoena, stonewalling, contempt citation, House votes, and, finally, judicial enforcement. A future President Clinton may have served her second term in office before that process is resolved. So was all hope of recovery of any remaining e-mails lost with Mrs. Clinton’s stroke of the delete button? Perhaps not. Assuming there is anything left to recover after Mrs. Clinton’s rather arbitrary deletion process, there still exists an obvious avenue for relief through Congress that does not involve a protracted subpoena fight: Congress could simply amend the Federal Records Act to make clear that the Attorney General’s duty to seek civil enforcement of the Act is non-discretionary, thus allowing a court to order the Attorney General to fulfill his duty to recover the documents. Or, if Congress wishes to empower private citizen suits, it could amend the Freedom of Information Act to permit courts to order directly that a private party return improperly removed federal records for preservation by the agency. Such statutory tweaks could be applied immediately to remedy any improper records removal and topple the wall of secrecy Clinton has built around her public service. Clinton: U.S. Should Consider German Model for Saving Jobs (Foreign Policy) By David Francis March 24, 2015 Foreign Policy When times are tough in Germany, Berlin staves off unemployment by paying for private jobs with government subsidies. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a presumed Democratic 2016 presidential candidate, suggested Monday that a similar program could work in the United States. Speaking about job creation at the Center for American Progress in Washington, Clinton said the United States should look to comparable foreign economies for examples of how to create and keep jobs. She said Berlin’s model for dealing with job retention during downturns is one Washington should explore. “The other thing that Germany does is, instead of an unemployment system, they have a wage subsidy system so you don’t let people go in the first place,” Clinton said. She was referring to Germany’s “Kurzarbeit,” or short-work, policy, one that Germans are enthusiastically proud of. It allows companies to reduce workers’ hours with the government picking up the tab for the lost time. Of course, getting such a wholesale change to how the United States deals with job losses during economic downswings would require Congress to act, no sure thing given current partisanship. And U.S. officials have run into trouble in the past by suggesting European solutions to America’s problems. Moreover, Germany’s policies would be difficult to replicate in the United States, said American Enterprise Institute scholar Desmond Lachman. The German workforce is highly unionized, he said, making it easier for workers to get concessions from the central government when times are tough. Lachman also said the German policy does little to create new jobs, and widens the gap between top earners and those at the bottom who don’t get salary increases when Berlin steps in with subsidies. During her speech, Clinton said job creation and lessening income inequality were priorities. “Then what you’re doing is basically just sharing the work,” Lachman told Foreign Policy. You’re not creating jobs, you’re just keeping unemployment down … while increasing the number of people at the bottom.” During the Great Recession, the German labor market proved especially resilient. In 2010, when the United States and the rest of the world were losing jobs, Germany actually added them because companies there took advantage of the government program. According to a survey for the Munich-based research group Ifo Institute, in the first quarter of 2010 — the depths of the European sovereign debt crisis — 39 percent of German manufacturers were using Kurzarbeit, allowing them to hold onto skilled labor at a time when many firms around the globe were shedding jobs. Many on the right and left, including President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, have mentioned the Kurzarbeit concept as something the United States should consider. And evidence from Germany, Europe’s strongest economy, shows that it stops companies from cutting jobs. Clinton said she was willing to try. “Maybe we’ll start not too far from here, in a beautiful domed building,” she said to laughter and applause. Hillary Clinton vs. the record-keepers (Yahoo) By Nancy Scola March 24, 2015 Yahoo It was a Thursday morning, Jan. 26, 2012, and Hillary Clinton was standing onstage in the three-story, redwood-paneled Dean Acheson Auditorium at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., to speak with some of the 25,000 or so people who flesh out the department’s organizational chart. Three years into her tenure, Clinton had been building a reputation for being eager to think hard about technology. Around the world, she pitched the idea that the networked society was remaking international relations, producing a need for “21st-century statecraft.” InWashington, she gave speeches extolling Internet freedom. Inside Foggy Bottom headquarters, she launched an in-house online forum, calling it the Sounding Board. But Clinton knew full well that the State Department’s own technology was lagging behind. She chuckled knowingly when the moderator that day said that one of the hottest questions on the Sounding Board was about Internet Explorer 7 — so sluggish and dated that while activists in the Middle East were using Twitter to organize protests, those inside the State Department could see only a broken version of Twitter.com. The question put to Clinton: When were those working at the State Department finally going to get a decent browser on their computers? Once Clinton stopped laughing, she made a declaration. “I’m happy to announce that Google Chrome will be deployed worldwide on February 14.” Consider it, she said, a Valentine’s Day present. The town hall meeting lasted just over an hour and covered topics ranging from the Armenian genocide to limits on career advancement for Foreign Service officers. And yet, says Ian Schuler, who served in the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the time, “She could have said, ‘You’re all getting Chrome,’ dropped the microphone and walked out. Because that’s all anyone talked about.” There is perhaps no figure, now or ever, in American politics like Hillary Clinton: a former first lady, a powerful secretary of state, a potential Democratic presidential nominee. But standing there that day, Clinton was one of many presidential officials who have found themselves confronted with jalopy technology and a desire to maintain some degree of control over their records. In fact, the saga of Clinton’s use of a nongovernmental email address is, in many ways, rooted in a question of control. Clinton, as secretary of state, would take control of which tools department employees had to do their work. And she would take control of the archive she would leave behind after what would turn out to be her 1,472 days in Obama’s Cabinet. A desire to be in command is natural, even healthy, in politicians. But for those charged with keeping the apparatus of government chugging along, it can also be where it all starts to go wrong. The inconvenience of government tech Joining the State Department, recalls Schuler, who is now CEO of the Washington, D.C., technology firm Development Seed, meant being assigned a “computing device that worked almost like a real computer.” Talk to others who have worked with and around State’s IT, and you hear phrases like “old” and “1990s tech” and “f—-ing terrible.” Explains Schuler, “The technology is optimized for security. It’s not at all optimized for doing work or for connecting with people beyond the State Department. It means you spend a lot of your day without any way to connect to the outside world. And that can make it really hard to do your job.” It’s easy enough to chalk up the shouting over Clinton’s decision to use clintonemail.com instead of government tools to yet another bout of Clinton hate or a fresh instance of Hillary Clinton being held to a higher standard than anyone else in politics. After all, Colin Powell used a personal account as secretary of state, from 2001 to 2005, and admitted on ABC’s “This Week” that he “retained none of those emails.” Peter Daou, the Internet director for Clinton’s 2008 run for president, in a blog post dismissed the complaints about her as the whinging of the Beltway “innerati.” And Philip “P.J.” Crowley, who served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs from 2009 to 2011, agreed to talk about the Clinton emails — a subject he clearly considered trivial — only if we could work around an interview he already had scheduled on “real-world issues like the Islamic State.” But there are many others who have deep experience with the workings of the federal government who — though they may not want to shout it from the rooftops — find what Clinton did unsettling. They include Democrats, good-government activists and by-the-books federal employees who argue that they’d be pummeled if they did what s