Politics, Government & Business in California's Inland Empire
By IE Business Daily
Saturday January 24, 2015
Online and phone based applications are creating hysteria for local, state and federal government agencies and bureaucrats.
By Debra J. Saunders
Updated 5:41 pm, Wednesday, January 21, 2015
As President Obama delivered his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, I saw all of 2015 flash before my eyes. It was a smart speech that wisely stuck to “middle-class” values and was shrewdly short on details. I saw another year of the president not compromising. For Republicans, it was Ground Hog Day — an endless loop of the president talking up bipartisanship without practicing it.
By Julie Pace, AP White House Correspondent
Posted: 01/20/15, 7:28 PM PST | Updated: 28 secs ago
WASHINGTON >> Refusing to bend to the new Republican Congress, President Barack Obama unveiled Tuesday night an ambitious State of the Union agenda steeped in Democratic priorities, including tax increases on the wealthy, education and child care help for the middle class and a torrent of veto threats for the GOP’s own plans.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 – 10:00 a.m.
Some, not all ears, will be tuned to Tuesday night’s State of the Union address by President Barack Obama.
By Justin Sink – 01/19/15 08:45 AM EST
President Obama will head into Tuesday’s State of the Union with his highest job approval numbers in 18 months, according to a new poll released Monday by The Washington Post and ABC News.
Reuters
By Howard Schneider
DALTON, Georgia – Sun Jan 18, 2015 1:40pm EST
(Reuters) – Barack Obama enters the final two years of his presidency with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: the decline of the middle class he has promised to rescue.
By Charles Krauthammer, Opinion writer
January 15, 2015
On Sunday, at the great Paris rally, the whole world was Charlie. By Tuesday, the veneer of solidarity was exposed as tissue thin. It began dissolving as soon as the real, remaining Charlie Hebdo put out its post-massacre issue featuring a Muhammad cover that, as the New York Times put it, “reignited the debate pitting free speech against religious sensitivities.”
By Maura Dolan
January 14, 2015
A Sacramento federal judge prepares to decide whether to downgrade marijuana, but ruling’s reach is limited
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
1/11/15 – 6:26 PM EST
Barack Obama n’est pas Charlie — or at least, he wasn’t this weekend.
By Cindy Chang
January 11, 2015
It seems that federal prosecutors are after the “big fish” in L.A. County Jail obstruction-of-justice inquiry
By Fawn Johnson
January 8, 2015
President Obama wants to provide free tuition at community colleges, a proposal that could benefit as many as 9 million students, according to a White House outline of the plan released Thursday.
There is one big caveat in the proposal — there is no plan to fund it, other than to ask Congress for the money.
By Jim Puzzanghera
January 10, 2015
The Federal Reserve said Friday it made a record $98.7 billion in profits last year, mostly from interest on the more than $4 trillion in bonds it has purchased since 2008 to stimulate the economy.
January 8, 2015 | 11:40 AM
By April Dembosky
Most days in early January, tax preparation offices are dead. Most people won’t get their W-2 or other tax documents until later this month.
SHEA JOHNSON
STAFF WRITER
Posted Jan. 7, 2015 @ 8:34 pm
Updated at 8:37 PM
VICTORVILLE — Depositions are expected to get underway next week, nearly two years after the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the city of Victorville, its airport authority and others of dramatically inflating the combined valuation of four airport hangars in a 2008 municipal bond offering.
By Seung Min Kim
1/7/15 8:14 PM EST
House Republicans are ready to fire the opening salvo in the war over President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
President opposes first legislative move by GOP-controlled Congress.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere and Burgess Everett
1/6/15 8:51 PM EST
President Barack Obama’s Keystone veto threat Tuesday was the opening gambit in his fight with the new Republican majorities in Congress looking to derail his post-midterm momentum.
Politics
By Paul Kane
January 4 at 7:26 PM
Mitch McConnell has an unusual admonition for the new Republican majority as it takes over the Senate this week: Don’t be “scary.”
By Susan Abram, Los Angeles Daily News
Posted: 01/03/15, 5:01 PM PST |
Dozens of hospitals across Southern California will see their federal reimbursements reduced this year for not meeting standards to keep Medicare patients safe and infection free.
By Bob Egelko
January 2, 2015 – 5:39 PM
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia prides himself on interpreting the Constitution as it was intended by those who drafted it. When it comes to torture of suspected terrorists, one of those drafters might be Jack Bauer.
By Brian Faler
1/2/15 – 4:01 PM EST
The question of who will be Congress’ next chief number-cruncher has suddenly gotten a lot more important.
By Andrew Restuccia
1/2/15 – 2:48 PM EST
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is set to vote on legislation approving the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline on Thursday.
By Rebecca Shabad – 01/01/15 – 06:00 AM EST
The federal budget is almost certain to be the central battleground between President Obama and the new Republican Congress in 2015.
By Jim Puzzanghera
December 31, 2014
The economy boomed through most of last year, a time when the nation’s capital was devoid of major budget fights and threats of government shutdown.
By James Oliphant
December 30, 2014
You can make a compelling case that 2014 was the worst year for President Obama since, well, the year before. And, in fact, the president spent much of this year trying to recover from some body blows he took in the final months of 2013, when, in short order, Congress rebuffed him on Syria and the federal health care exchange imploded.
Democrats pushed through dozens in December, but Republicans have all the leverage now.
By Burgess Everett
12/29/14 9:02 PM EST
Democrats are still dancing in the end zone after running up the score on dozens of President Barack Obama’s nominees during the lame duck.
They should enjoy the moment, because Republicans are about to step up their goal-line defense.
By JULIE PACE and NANCY BENAC Associated Press
12/24/2014 11:41 AM
WASHINGTON–
It was supposed to be a joke. “Are you still president?” comedian Stephen Colbert asked Barack Obama earlier this month.
Published: December 25, 201
Updated: December 26, 2014 – 10:49 a.m.
Buried in the $1.1 trillion, 1,603-page federal spending bill approved by Congress earlier this month is a little relief for medical marijuana advocates such as Jim Camper.
The spending package contains language forbidding federal agencies from using their resources to go after medical marijuana in states where it is legal.
To read story by Jeff Horseman in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
WHITE HOUSE
Wage stagnation, long-term unemployment undermine rosy numbers.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
12/23/14 6:58 PM EST
President Barack Obama will use his State of the Union address to roll out an agenda aimed at tackling stagnating wages and helping Americans who feel left out of the economy’s surge, and he’s planning to use the first few weeks of January to travel the country promoting a new economic message.
By Bob Egelko
Published: Monday, December 22, 2014
In a sharp reversal of federal drug policy, Congress has prohibited the Justice Department from interfering with laws in California and other states that allow the medical use of marijuana. And the turnabout caught the immediate attention of federal judges, who want to know its impact on some recent criminal convictions under the federal law that classifies pot as one of the most dangerous drugs.
Politics
Operation Revenge
By GLENN THRUSH
December 19, 2014
Two senior White House staffers stumbled out of the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago into the boozy, early-morning aftermath of President Obama’s Nov. 6, 2012, reelection victory and ran smack into a sober reporter. “It’s over,” one of the wobbly, relieved aides said. “He never has to do this again.”
By David Knowles
Dec 21, 2014 – 3:50 PM PST
If not for President Obama signing 61 bills into law late last week, a new heir to the title of “Do-Nothing Congress” would have been named.
By Cheryl K. Chumley – The Washington Times
Monday, December 22, 2014
Republicans say they have the will to bring down Obamacare — and many are eyeing a little-known, little-used budget too called “reconciliation” to do so.
By Debra J. Saunders
Updated 10:11 am, Saturday, December 20, 2014
The needle already was in the haystack. That essentially is the message embedded in the Democrats’ Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA interrogations and detentions, approved without a single Republican vote and released by committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
By Andrew Khouri
December 17, 2014
President Obama’s decision to start normalizing relations with Cuba gives American business a fresh opportunity on an island once known as a travel hub for the U.S. jet set.
By Jim Puzzanghera
December 17, 2014
Plunging gasoline costs led to the largest drop in consumer prices in six years last month and added another complication for Federal Reserve policymakers as they try to determine when to start raising interest rates.
By Jim Puzzanghera,
December 17, 2014
The American economic outlook, bolstered by robust job growth and a sharp drop in gasoline prices, was boosted a little more with the Federal Reserve’s signal that it would take as long as three years to raise interests to once-normal levels.
By Ed O’Keefe and Sean Sullivan
December 16, 2014 at 10:51 PM
The least-productive Congress in modern history drew to an abrupt close late Tuesday as the U.S. Senate extended dozens of expired tax breaks but failed to renew a federally backed terrorism insurance program supported by big businesses and major sports leagues.
By Evan Halper
December 16, 2014
‘The first time in decades that the federal government has curtailed its oppressive prohibition of marijuana’
By David Nakamura
December 15, 2014 at 3:58 PM
President Obama is bracing for a political and legal battle with Republicans next year over his executive actions on immigration, but as he seeks to rally support against the anticipated assault, a lingering frustration among some Latinos could mean renewed pressure on him to do even more to protect illegal immigrants.
By Dan Balz
December 13, 2014 at 2:06 PM
The November elections brought significant changes to Washington and to many states. What they did not produce was any greater sense of optimism on the part of the public about the state of American politics. If anything, they produced the opposite.
By Joshua Brustein
December 11, 2014
Verizon is the latest big company to enter the post-Snowden market for secure communication, and it’s doing so with an encryption standard that comes with a way for law enforcement to access ostensibly secure phone conversations.
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
12/11/2014 7:19 PM
As the most severe winter storm in at least a half-decade bore down on California on Tuesday, 3,000 miles away in Washington, the House voted, largely along party lines, for a California drought relief bill.
By Timothy M. Phelps
December 11, 2014
The Justice Department will generally not try to enforce federal marijuana laws on Native American reservations.
By Evan Halper
December 11, 2014
More than 1 million Americans who were promised secure, predictable retirement income probably will see part of their monthly benefit checks evaporate as Congress moves to stabilize some private pension systems veering toward insolvency.
By Ed O’Keefe
December 10, 2014 at 10:30 AM
{This item has been updated and revised.}
The $1.01 trillion spending bill unveiled late Tuesday will keep most of the federal government funded through next September — and it’s packed with hundreds of policy instructions, known on Capitol Hill as “riders,” that will upset or excite Democrats, Republicans and various special interest groups.
By David Rogers
12/9/14 8:41 PM EST
Updated 12/10/14 8:51 AM EST
Capping weeks of backroom talks, House Republicans filed a $1.1 trillion year-end spending bill Tuesday night — a giant package that’s both a last marker for this Congress and first step toward GOP control in the next.
By Billy House
December 8, 2014
As lawmakers pressed Monday to finalize the legislative language of a must-pass omnibus spending bill, labor unions and retiree groups were mobilizing to defeat what they are characterizing as a lame-duck sneak attack on the pensions of some already-retired workers.
Behind closed doors, Republicans are plotting one last tilt at the Affordable Care Act.
By Jennifer Haberkorn and Manu Raju
12/8/14 8:15 PM EST
In high-level strategy sessions on Capitol Hill, Republicans are going through reams of historical information and sitting through marathon slide show presentations, trying to figure out how to gut Obamacare through a complicated budget process that requires only a simple majority — a sign of how seriously they’re taking their best shot yet at dealing a long-term blow to the health care law.
Greg Giroux
Dec 7, 2014 3:17 PM PST
Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy’s double-digit ousting of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu on Saturday was, in the words of the senator-elect, an “exclamation mark” on a 2014 election that saw the Republicans win control of the Senate. With Landrieu’s departure, only half of the Senators who voted to pass the Affordable Care Act will still be in office in 2015, when the new members are sworn in.
Sunday, December 7, 2014 – 09:25 a.m.
As expected, voters kicked U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) out of office on Saturday.
By Michael A. Fletcher
December 3, 2014 at 9:38 PM
Congress could soon allow the benefits of current retirees to be cut as part of an agreement to address the fiscal distress confronting some of the nation’s 1,400 multi-employer pension plans.
By Lisa Mascaro, Michael A. Memoli and Joseph Tanfani
December 2, 2014
Hoping to prevent a government shutdown by opponents of President Obama’s immigration plan, House Speaker John A. Boehner floated a proposal Tuesday for funding most of the government — but not the immigration agencies — through the end of the 2015 fiscal year.
Votes on a year-end congressional deal hinge on Rep. Yoho.
By Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer
12/1/14 9:51 PM EST / Updated 12/2/14 10:09 AM EST
Top House Republicans agree on a two-part plan to keep the government from closing in nine days. Now comes the hard part: selling it.
By Billy House and Sarah Mimms
November 30, 2014
Lawmakers reconvene Monday for the final two weeks of the 113th Congress, with some Republicans clamoring to use the power of the purse to block President Obama’s executive action on immigration and Democrats warning that such a strategy could lead to another government shutdown.
By Jim Puzzanghera
November 29, 2014
The incoming Republican majority in Congress is preparing to give number-crunching a controversial twist, and the new math could make it easier for the GOP to cut taxes.
Sarah Hurtubise, Reporter
11/28/2014 – 2:48 PM
One in three Americans has put off seeking medical treatment in 2014 due to high costs, according to Gallup — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.
Hostile Climate
Nov 26, 2014 1:46 PM PST
Post-midterms Obama is ready to fight Congress on his legacy issues, including clean air.
President Barack Obama sure seems itching for a fight—or a few—with the incoming Republican Congress.
By Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
11/24/14 7:29 PM EST
Updated 11/25/14 8:39 AM EST
House Republican leaders are beginning to coalesce around a strategy to avoid a government shutdown in less than a month.
By Danielle Paquette
November 23, 2014 at 4:48 PM
If the presidency were a car, Barack Obama would be a highway-worn Toyota Prius … or something.
Tribune News Service
David Lightman
November 22, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Obama legacy wasn’t supposed to unfold this way.
Barack Obama was changing the political map, pushing the Democratic Party into the South and the Mountain West. He was building a new social network that would endure long after an Obama presidency. And he was building a new Democratic coalition for a new age, with greater turnout from young and minority voters.
By Amanda Becker
WASHINGTON Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:27am EST
(Reuters) – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday filed a long-anticipated lawsuit challenging the implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law over employer-based coverage and payments to insurers, according to court documents.
By Lauren French
11/21/14 7:24 PM EST
The House Intelligence Committee dismissed on Friday a number of the most persistent myths about the 2012 terrorist attacks at a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.
Politics
By Ed O’Keefe and Max Ehrenfreund
November 20, 2014 at 9:28 PM
President Obama unveiled a long-awaited series of changes to the nation’s immigration policies Thursday evening. While most of the details have yet to be announced, here’s a general overview of what to expect in the coming months, based on information provided by the White House:
Who’s in?
By Ben Kamisar, Jesse Byrnes and Justin Sink
11/19/14 – 06:19 PM EST
Three major networks will not air President Obama’s prime-time address Thursday outlining his executive actions on immigration.
By Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer
11/18/14 – 1:08 PM EST
House and Senate Republican leaders have been privately discussing the potential of introducing targeted immigration reform bills in the coming months, according to multiple sources in both chambers.
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
11/18/2014 1:03 PM
California still has, by far, the nation’s largest population of illegal immigrants, but it declined between 2009 and 2012, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center.
By Karen Tumulty and Katie Zezima
November 17, 2014 at 9:47 PM
President Obama’s expected action lifting the threat of deportation from millions of undocumented immigrants, which could come as early as this week, will expand the authority of the executive branch into murky, uncharted territory.
Monday, November 17, 2014 – 08:45 a.m.
Obamacare. The Gift that keeps on giving!
My last story on Obamacare isn’t even a week old and already there’s another controversy.
Sunday, November 16, 2104 – 12:00 p.m.
Unsettling information pretaining to onging civil litigation involving the 2008 sale of bonds related to the construction of four large aircraft maintenance hangars at Victoville’s Southern California Logistics Airport (SCLA) has started to go public.
By Dan Keating and Jason Millman
November 15, 2014 at 6:59 PM
People shopping on the HealthCare.gov marketplace that reopened Saturday have more options this year than they did last year, but the options usually will be costlier.
Post-election events help clarify internal White House debate on timing.
By Seung Min Kim and Carrie Budoff Brown
11/14/14 7:11 PM EST
An internal debate over the timing of President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration has raged for months, with White House officials gaming out options to minimize the collateral damage yet failing to reach consensus on the best moment to act before their year-end deadline.
Executive action, strongly opposed by the GOP, would help as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants
By Rachel Roubein
November 13, 2014
President Obama will reportedly launch an executive action plan in the coming days to help as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants, granting them work authorization and temporary relief from deportation.
By Jeremiah Dobruck
November 11, 2014
The lowest violent-crime rate in city history last year netted Irvine its 10th straight title as the safest big city in the nation, officials announced this week.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014 – 11:00 a.m.
Over a year ago we correctly said the Affordable care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, would single-handedly undermine Democrat chances in the 2014 midterm elections. The pocketbook issue was raised by every Republican candidate in every contested U.S. Senate race, and it worked. Democrats were routed at the polls.
Now brace for round number two!
By Peggy Noonan
Updated – Nov. 7, 2014 7:02 p.m. ET
The drubbin’, thumpin’, poundin’ was a two-part wave, a significant Republican rise in the U.S. Senate and a Democratic collapse in the governorships.
It was one of those nights neither party ever forgets.
By Ed O’Keefe
November 7, 2014 at 7:28 PM
President Obama firmly rejected advice from top congressional Republicans on Friday that he delay his promised executive action on immigration reform, dismissing calls from critics inside and outside his party to allow Congress to debate the issue next year.
Court ot rule on healthcare law again
By David G. Savage
November 7, 2014
The Supreme Court will decide the fate of President Obama’s healthcare law yet again, this time ruling on whether low- and middle-income Americans may receive subsidies in two-thirds of the states to make insurance more affordable.
By Christi Parsons and David Lauter
November 6, 2014
President Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell talked of cooperation Wednesday in the aftermath of the huge GOP election victory, but the two sides prepared for renewed conflict on issues that have dominated the campaign and national debate for the last two years.
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, MANU RAJU and JOHN BRESNAHAN
11/5/14 9:02 AM EST – Updated: 11/5/14 1:07 PM EST
At a late October lunch, President Barack Obama looked across the table at Sen. Chuck Schumer. Wasn’t there anywhere else he could go to campaign?
Wednesday, November 5, 2014 – 08:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, November 5, 2014 – 09:55 a.m.
It wasn’t just a wave. It was a tidal wave.
The country sent President Barack Obama and his Democrat Party a strong message on Tuesday.
By Steven Dennis
Nov. 2, 2014
Updated 7:20 p.m. | With two days before election day, the Gallup poll has the President Barack Obama approval rating approaching the worst of his presidency.
By Charles Krauthammer, Opinion writer
October 30 at 7:29 PM
Is this election really about nothing? Democrats might like to think so, but it’s not.
First, like all U.S. elections, it’s about the economy. The effect of the weakest recovery in two generations is reflected in President Obama’s 13-point underwater ratings for his handling of the economy.
By Jim Puzzanghera
October 29, 2014
Federal Reserve policymakers voted Wednesday to end the central bank’s controversial bond-buying stimulus program, determining the economy is strong enough to remove the unprecedented support.
By RON NIXON
OCT. 27, 2014
WASHINGTON — In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE | 10/27/14 5:02 AM EDT
Nervous that Democrats could lose control of the Senate, the White House is already discussing how to cut deals with a Republican majority.