Politics, Government and Business in Southern California's Inland Empire
Andrew Edwards, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/24/2013 09:47:56 AM PDT
Updated: 05/24/2013 06:12:21 PM PDT
Arrowhead Credit Union, based in San Bernardino, has been released from conservatorship after being under government control for nearly three years.
Friday, May 24, 2013 – 06:00 a.m.
Here’s some news moving across the transom Friday morning.
IRS manager placed on leave
Lois Lerner, the manager at the center of a massive scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, was placed on paid leave Thursday afternoon. The move comes after Lerner invoked her fifth amendment right against self-incrimination before a congressional oversight committee earlier this week.
By Carol Matlack
May 22, 2013
Apple (AAPL) has a deal with Ireland granting it an effective 2 percent tax rate on tens of billions of dollars in profit at the company’s Irish affiliates, according to a U.S. Senate report released on May 20.
By Richard Simon and Melanie Mason
May 22, 2013, 8:47 a.m.
WASHINGTON — A top Internal Revenue Service official invoked the 5th Amendment and declined to testify Wednesday before a House committee investigating the agency’s mishandling of applications by some conservative groups for tax-exempt status.
Posted on | May 22, 2013
Mayor Tom Owings, following a rambunctious study session on Tuesday, May 21, confirmed that he received a target letter in the federal grand jury probe of corruption in the Moreno Valley.
To read story by Debra Gruszecki in The Press Enterprise, click here.
By Dan Balz,
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
It is never good for an administration when a front-page newspaper article about an ongoing controversy begins as follows: “The White House offered a new account Monday of how and when it learned . . . ” That’s what readers of The Post awoke to on Tuesday. In trying to contain the controversy and protect President Obama, White House officials have only added to questions about what happened.
By Zachary Goldfarb
Published: May 20, 2013 at 11:00 pm
The Treasury Department was informed on three separate occasions that the Internal Revenue Service planned to disclose that it targeted conservative groups for scrutiny, and on one occasion, Treasury expressed concern about the form of the disclosure, a Treasury official said on Monday night.
By Ken Dilanian, Washington Bureau
May 20, 2013, 9:15 p.m.
WASHINGTON — The FBI obtained a sealed search warrant to read a Fox News reporter’s personal emails from two days in 2010 after arguing there was probable cause he had violated espionage laws by soliciting classified information from a government official, court papers show.
In an affidavit, an FBI agent told a federal magistrate that the reporter had committed a crime when he asked a State Department security contractor, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, to share secret material about North Korea in June 2009.
The affidavit did not name the reporter, but Fox News identified him as its chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen. He was not charged, but Kim was indicted on espionage charges in August 2010 and is awaiting trial. He has denied leaking classified information.
The case marks the first time the government has gone to court to portray news gathering as espionage, and Fox News officials and 1st Amendment advocates reacted angrily Monday after the secret warrant was reported by the Washington Post.
“We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter,” said Michael Clemente, Fox News executive vice president of news. “In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”
The development emerged days after the Justice Department notified the Associated Press that the agency used a subpoena last year to obtain phone company records for 20 telephone lines used by more than 100 reporters and editors in three cities. The subpoena was pursuant to a grand jury investigation of an alleged leak of classified information about an Al Qaeda plot to bomb a U.S. aircraft.
Neither Fox News nor the Associated Press was told in advance about the government actions or had a chance to challenge them in court, the usual practice. The government ordered Google not to disclose that it had given the FBI access to Rosen’s Gmail account, and Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia confirmed in a September 2010 ruling that the government did not have to notify Rosen.
To read entire story, click here.
By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times
May 20, 2013, 8:53 p.m.
WASHINGTON — The former top federal prosecutor in Arizona retaliated against the lead whistle-blower in the Fast and Furious gun-smuggling scandal by leaking an internal report that suggested the whistle-blower once favored allowing illegal gun sales as a way to track weapons to drug cartels in Mexico, the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office said Monday.
By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau
May 19, 2013, 8:41 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Three years ago, the Obama administration brought criminal charges under the Espionage Act against Thomas Drake, an Air Force veteran and intelligence expert at the National Security Agency in Maryland.
Elspeth Reeve
May 17, 2013
The IRS official who revealed the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups on Friday did so on purpose — by asking a tax lawyer to ask her about it at American Bar Association tax section’s annual meeting.
By Carol D. Leonnig
Published: May 16, 2013
When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help.
The IRS approved charitable status for the foundation, which was run by President Obama’s brother and named after his father, in about a month’s time. The IRS also agreed to give the group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising.
By Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung
Published: May 15 E-mail the writers
The Obama administration released 100 pages of e-mails Wednesday that reveal differences between intelligence analysts and State Department officials over how to initially describe the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Juliet Eilperin
Published: May 15 E-mail the writers
President Obama on Wednesday demanded and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven T. Miller, as part of a multi-pronged effort to quell controversies that threaten to dominate his second term.
By Karen Tumulty
Published: May 15 E-mail the writer
The most corrosive political scandals are the ones that feed a preexisting story line — which is why the White House could have difficulty putting the current ones behind it any time soon.
By Michael A. Memoli
May 15, 2013, 9:15 a.m.
WASHINGTON — Republican congressional leaders, faced with an array of crises threatening to overwhelm the White House, appear to have singled out the targeting of conservative political groups by the IRS as the most fertile — and politically advantageous — to focus on.
By Sean Sullivan
Published: May 14, 2013
More than four dozen media organizations joined forces Tuesday to sharply rebuke the Justice Department for secretly gathering the phone records of Associated Press journalists, calling on the department to promptly return the records and disclose all other pending subpoenas related to the news media.
Shane Goldmacher
May 14 2013, 4:39 PM ET
As three separate scandals – the IRS targeting the tea party, the Justice Department’s phone-records grab from the AP, and Benghazi – erupt simultaneously, congressional Republicans are hoping to fold them into a single narrative of an unaccountable and overreaching White House that cannot be trusted.
As Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., put it colorfully during a Fox News appearance, “This sounds like a president somewhat drunk on power.”
By Scott Wilson
May 13, 2013
There was a guiding principle early in President Obama’s first term that in Washington it is always better to be pitching than catching.
The stimulus bill, the bank and auto industry bailouts, Wall Street regulation, health-care legislation, Muslim outreach abroad — the first two years featured Obama as pitcher.
Government secretly probed AP phone records
By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau
May 13, 2013, 9:33 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors secretly obtained telephone records from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press and its journalists in an attempt to learn who leaked information on how the CIA thwarted an apparent terrorist plot hatched in Yemen.
By J.D. Harrison
Published: May 12, 2013
Many small-business owners worry that a new tax on insurance providers in the health-care law will mean higher premiums for them, undermining the law’s capacity to lower their health-care costs.
By Juliet Eilperin
Published: May 12, 2013
At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials singled out for scrutiny not only groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names but also nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.
By Billy House
Updated: May 13, 2013 | 3:37 a.m.
May 12, 2013 | 12:00 p.m.
With tensions over fiscal issues building, and the three-month suspension of the nation’s debt limit set to expire Sunday, lawmakers this week will be rehashing on the House floor their messaging war over repealing President Obama’s three-year-old health care law.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.
By Nancy Cook
Updated: May 12, 2013 | 9:05 a.m.
May 10, 2013 | 3:33 p.m.
The Internal Revenue Service’s admission that it inappropriately targeted conservative political groups for special scrutiny during the 2012 presidential election only gives congressional Republicans more ammunition as they try to defund and weaken the agency.
By Michael Catalini
Updated: May 11, 2013 | 5:08 a.m.
May 10, 2013 | 8:15 a.m.
Longtime allies of Hillary Clinton are coming to her defense amid new reports suggesting the State Department, under her stewardship, altered talking points about the attacks in Benghazi to remove references to terrorism and al Qaida.
May 10, 2013
Posted by Alex Koppelman
It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.
By Dale Kasler
dkasler@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, May. 8, 2013 – 1:40 pm
Last Modified: Wednesday, May. 8, 2013 – 3:56 pm
Former CalPERS Chief Executive Fred Buenrostro pleaded innocent today to conspiracy charges in connection with the pension fund’s bribery scandal.
By Emily Alpert, Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2013, 8:59 p.m.
The number of violent crimes involving guns has plummeted in the last two decades, but more than half of Americans think the opposite is true, according to reports released Tuesday.
May 06, 2013; 06:38 PM
Moreno Valley Mayor Tom Owings put out a statement late Monday asserting he had reason to believe a grand jury will begin to collect testimony Wednesday, May 8, as part of a wide-ranging investigation into corruption by federal enforcement agencies.
To read story by Debra Gruszecki in The Press Enterprise, click here.
By Billy House
Updated: May 5, 2013 | 2:11 p.m.
May 5, 2013 | 12:00 p.m.
The brewing debt-ceiling showdown still looms weeks—if not months—away, but hostilities will begin flaring this week as House Republicans push action on a bill signaling no retreat from their demand for spending cuts as a condition to any ceiling hike.
Monday, May 6, 2013 – 11:45 a.m.
Last Friday’s release of the April employment report by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is somewhat curious.
The much followed official unemployment rate (U-3) fell from 7.6% to 7.5%.
May 04, 2013; 05:24 PM
Law enforcement officials first announced the formation of a task force focused on political corruption in November 2010, when FBI agents and San Bernardino County district attorney’s investigators raided Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton.
To read story by Imran Ghori in The Press Enterprise, click here.
Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/04/2013 06:22:53 PM PDT
In 2010, San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos announced the formation of the Inland Empire Joint Corruption Task Force, prompted by allegations of rampant corruption in local government. His announcement followed an FBI raid at the county-run Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, where it was alleged that some public officials had been receiving free medical care.
By Dan Morain
dmorain@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, May. 5, 2013 – 12:00 am | Page 1E
Last Modified: Sunday, May. 5, 2013 – 7:22 am
Rep. Ami Bera, one of two Democratic physicians in the House, doesn’t want Obamacare to fail.
But the freshman member of Congress is worried about President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
May 01, 2013; 06:20 PM
The scene that played out in Moreno Valley this week was a familiar one in the Inland area: FBI agents and other law enforcement officials raiding homes and offices as part of a public corruption investigation.
To read story by Imran Ghori in The Press Enterprise, click here.
April 30, 2013; 08:32 AM
Federal and local agents served search warrants on Tuesday, April 30, at the homes of Moreno Valley’s five City Council members, a real estate broker with political connections and the corporate office of Skechers warehouse developer Highland Fairview.
To read story by Lora Hines, Jeff Horseman, John Asbury and Imran Ghori in The Press Enterprise, click here.
April 30, 2013 9:37 PM
Jim E. Winburn, Staff Writer
VICTORVILLE • A City Councilwoman and former bond broker for the municipal airport authority blame what they called “handshake deals” for the questionable financial practices that ultimately led to this week’s fraud allegations against Victorville by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
ENERGY
By Amy Harder
Updated: April 30, 2013 | 10:13 p.m.
April 30, 2013 | 1:17 p.m.
The United States has double the amount of oil and three times the amount of natural gas than previously thought, stored deep under the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, according to new data the Obama administration released Tuesday.
By Justin Sink – 04/30/13 07:00 PM ET
President Obama bristled during a press conference on Tuesday when asked whether his second-term agenda is failing after the first 100 days.
April 30, 2013; 08:32 AM
Federal and local agents served search warrants throughout in Moreno Valley on Tuesday morning, April 30, raiding the homes of the city’s mayor, all five City Council members, a businessman with close political connections and the corporate offices of development company Highland Fairview.
To read story by Lora Hines, Jeff Horseman, Richard K. De Atley and John Asbury in The Press Enterpise, click here.
April 29, 2013 8:40 PM
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Jim E. Winburn, Staff Writer
VICTORVILLE • The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday filed a fraud complaint against the city of Victorville, a securities underwriting firm and others involved in a 2008 municipal bond offering.
Monday, April 29, 2013 – 12:30 p.m.
A shoe has finally dropped in the ongoing financial escapades of Victorville, California.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), announced in a press release Monday, that it has filed a civil fraud lawsuit against the city of Victorville and investment banking firm Kinsell, Newcomb and DeDios (KND).
By BEN WHITE and TARINI PARTI | 4/28/13 2:29 PM EDT
Call them the debt crisis dissenters.
The two parties are miles apart on how to cut the deficit and national debt: Republicans want to slash spending even more. Democrats want to raise revenue.
By Lori Montgomery
April 27, 2013
With another fight over the national debt brewing this summer, congressional Republicans are de-emphasizing their demand for politically painful cuts to retirement programs and focusing on a more popular prize: a thorough rewrite of the U.S. tax code.
Posted by Ezra Klein
April 26, 2013 at 2:12 pm
The Democrats have lost on sequestration.
That’s the simple reality of Friday’s vote to ease the pain for the Federal Aviation Administration. By assenting to it, Democrats have agreed to sequestration for the foreseeable future.
By Michael Catalini
Updated: April 26, 2013 | 1:30 p.m.
April 26, 2013 | 11:27 a.m.
The influential conservative website Red State does not score key-vote legislation.
But Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Helping Sick Americans Now Act nearly changed that. The bill would have insured thousands of Americans with pre-existing conditions who would be dropped because of a provision in the Affordable Care Act, Cantor argued. The bill was supposed to be a savvy way to make the GOP seem softer and score political points by tweaking Obamacare.
Adam Clark Estes
Apr 25, 2013
In a marathon session before a weeklong recess, Senators finally found a way to agree on something Thursday night, when they passed a bill to end flight controller furloughs.
By Jim Puzzanghera
April 25, 2013, 4:25 p.m.
WASHINGTON – The Senate on Thursday failed to pass bipartisan legislation that would allow states to collect sales taxes from larger Internet retailers, but the bill cleared a key procedural hurdle and is on track for approval after lawmakers return from a recess.
By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Published: April 25, 2013
The next battle over the federal debt limit appears to be further away than many expect — and perhaps not until well into autumn.
By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ | Associated Press – 10 hrs ago
NEW YORK (AP) — Flight delays piled up across the country Monday as thousands of air traffic controllers began taking unpaid days off because of federal budget cuts, providing the most visible impact yet of Congress and the White House’s failure to agree on a long-term deficit-reduction plan.
By Nathan Hurst
Roll Call Staff
April 22, 2013, 3:44 p.m.
“Why is President Obama unnecessarily delaying your flight?” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor tweeted as part of GOP lawmakers’ social media offensive. “FAA can reprioritize.”
Sunday, April 21, 2013 – 01:00 pm.
The situation surrounding the now highly-publicized Independent Foreclosure Review (IFR) heated to a boiling point this past week, when affected homeowners started receiving checks meant to help offset improper and illegal foreclosure practices leveled at them by banks.
By Lew Sichelman
April 19, 2013
The lending landscape shifted measurably this month when the standard-bearer for first-time buyers and low-to-moderate income borrowers became more expensive than its private business counterpart.
April 19, 2013 10:15 PM
Jim E. Winburn, Staff Writer
VICTORVILLE • The city is now being represented by international law firm Arent Fox in connection with an ongoing investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, city attorney Andre de Bortnowsky confirmed Friday.
By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
April 18, 2013, 7:34 a.m.
SACRAMENTO — An estimated 400,000 Californians who have been unemployed for more than six months soon will be feeling the bite of federal spending reductions.
By Ed O’Keefe and Philip Rucker
Published: April 17, 2013
President Obama’s ambitious effort to overhaul the nation’s gun laws in response to December’s school massacre in Connecticut suffered a resounding defeat Wednesday, when every major proposal he championed fell apart on the Senate floor.
By Dan Balz
Published: April 17, 2013
If there was ever a moment that symbolized the difference between the power of public opinion and the strength of a concerted minority, it came Wednesday when the Senate defeated a bipartisan measure to expand background checks on gun purchases.
By David Nakamura, Published: April 15
Millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States could earn a chance at citizenship under a sweeping Senate proposal to be released Tuesday that would represent the most ambitious overhaul of the nation’s immigration system in three decades.
By JOHN BRESNAHAN and JAKE SHERMAN
4/15/13 3:18 PM EDT Updated: 4/16/13 10:00 AM EDT
The White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are shy of the 60 votes they need to move the bipartisan compromise bill on background checks for gun sales.
By John M. Gonzales
CHCF Center for Health Reporting
Posted: 04/13/2013 03:33:16 PM PDT
Updated: 04/13/2013 04:13:57 PM PDT
Related story: Obamacare has Southern California health care officials scrambling
By Mike Lillis – 04/14/13 06:00 AM ET
A growing number of House Democrats are concerned that President Obama’s proposal to cut Social Security benefits will haunt the party at the polls in 2014.
By Kathleen Hennessey
April 10, 2013, 3:00 a.m.
WASHINGTON — President Obama will unveil a budget proposal Wednesday that curbs spending on Social Security, raises the minimum wage, closes tax loopholes for top earners and invests in infrastructure — an overdue document that the White House described as its final offer to Republicans in the deadlocked deficit reduction talks.
By Abby Sewell
April 8, 2013, 12:59 p.m.
Southern California Edison has submitted a formal request to federal regulators for a license amendment that would allow the San Onofre nuclear plant to be fired back up for the first time in more than a year.
Monday, April 8, 2013 – 01:30 p.m.
The March employment report, released by the U.S. Department of Labor last Friday, would seem to have caught all the so-called experts off guard.
The country added a paltry 88,000 jobs. A number that was about half of what was expected.
Posted by Joe Davidson on April 5, 2013 at 1:47 pm
President Obama is expected to propose $35 billion in federal retirement program savings in the fiscal year 2014 budget plan he will release Wednesday.
By Alexander Bolton – 04/08/13 05:00 AM ET
The next 10 weeks are a make-or-break period for President Obama’s second-term agenda.
He needs quick victories in the Senate on gun control and immigration if he is to build momentum for a fight in the Republican-controlled House — the chief obstacle to his agenda.
By GINGER GIBSON | 4/7/13 10:25 PM EDT
President Barack Obama might think he’s offering a compromise budget on Wednesday when he formally unveils it.
But Senate Republicans — a group Obama will try to woo with a dinner that night — are expected to vigorously push back, casting the 2014 spending plan as another attempt to raise taxes to fuel more deficit spending.
Joe Garofoli
Updated 10:59 pm, Friday, April 5, 2013
President Obama apologized Friday to California Attorney General Kamala Harris for comments he made about her physical beauty at a Bay Area fundraiser the day before.
By Lisa Mascaro and Christi Parsons, Washington Bureau
April 5, 2013, 5:12 p.m.
WASHINGTON — The budget that President Obama is scheduled to release next week drew attacks Friday from both the left and right — a reaction that White House aides appeared to welcome as they sought to portray the plan as a middle-of-the-road attempt at compromise.
Drew Joseph
Updated 10:42 pm, Thursday, April 4, 2013
Instead of leaving the Bay Area Thursday after what would have normally been a quiet two-day fundraising trip, President Obama faced some criticism for calling California’s Kamala Harris “the best-looking attorney general in the country.”
By Alex Lazar – 03/30/13 02:45 PM ET
There is new momentum to revamp Washington’s Groundhog Day-like budget process.
The Senate’s recent vote to embrace a biennial budget, coupled with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) endorsement, has significantly boosted the chances it could pass in this Congress.
By Michael Doyle
mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com
Published: Friday, Mar. 29, 2013 – 1:12 pm
WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON – Top congressional Republicans are preparing new roadblocks for an ambitious California high-speed rail project that’s received both praise and caution flags from a long-awaited federal audit.
By Billy House
Updated: March 28, 2013 | 7:51 p.m.
March 28, 2013 | 7:30 p.m.
A strategy by House Republican leaders to bottle up revenue bills until a comprehensive overhaul of the tax code is finished is being sold to GOP lawmakers as a tactical way to hobble Senate Democrats.
March 28, 2013 8:42 PM
Jim E. Winburn, Staff Writer
VICTORVILLE • High Desert government representatives have asked the Federal Aviation Administration to find the money needed to keep the Southern California Logistics Airport control tower open.
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