Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The Unfriedndly Skies Get Nastier

The DOJ really doesn't want to kill this merger, that would be insane. What they really want to do is wring some concessions out of the merged entity such as giving up some routes, hold fees down etc. The unions, under the infamous Citizens United decision gave gazillions of dollars to the Democrats, and now they feel like they are getting stabbed in the back. Actually they're getting shot right between the eyes! This is going to be resolved, but not without leaving a lot of bitter feelings with organized labor. Sometimes, you get what you pay for, people who want to regulate everything...including your industry.

For the record, the airline industry was deregulated (HA!,HA!) in 1979, and all of the other airline mergers were okay.

Federal Courts

DOJ suit against airline merger further alienates unions

By Joseph Weber

Published August 27, 2013

FoxNews.com

FILE: Aug. 13, 2013: An American Airlines and US Airways planes parked at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va.AP

The Obama administration is again facing criticism from Big Labor, one of the president's top political supporters, this time for trying to block the American Airlines-US Airways merger.
At least four labor unions have joined in opposition to the Justice Department's Aug. 13 anti-trust suit that essentially argues the proposed, $11 billion merger could reduce the number of flight choices for customers, allow the two airlines to control pricing, and increase fares and fees.
Unions representing American pilots and flight attendants from both airlines were, as expected, the first to criticize the administration and the suit.
But the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trade Department recently joined the fight, putting some added muscle behind opposition to the administration's case.
“It’s going further than just a few unions that really don’t represent a lot of people,” Marc Scribner, a transportation policy expert with Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, told FoxNews.com on Monday.
In just the past several months, unions have criticized the president’s signature health care law as a jobs killer, claiming the law's mandate on employers to provide insurance to full-time workers is forcing them to cut jobs or send people into part-time status. They've also ripped the administration for not approving the Keystone XL pipeline and for a proposal to allow small knives in plane cabins, which representatives for pilots and flight attendants helped defeat.
The Allied Pilots Association, which represents 10,000 American Airlines pilots, argues the merger would make the two airlines competitive with industry leaders Delta and United, help bankrupt American Airlines and “significantly expand the choices of travel destinations.”
Further, they question why the federal government is attempting to block this merger after approving similar ones.
"It makes no sense for the Justice Department to conclude now that the airline industry consolidation is somehow undesirable,” argues the pilot’s union, which has the backing from unions representing flight attendants from both airlines.
Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer said in filing the suit: "We determined that the merger -- which would create the world’s largest airline and leave just three legacy carriers remaining in the U.S. -- would substantially lessen competition for commercial air travel throughout the United States. Importantly, neither airline needs this merger to succeed. We simply cannot approve a merger that would result in U.S. consumers paying higher fares, higher fees and receiving less service."
The Association of Flight Attendants, which represents US Airway attendants, called the suit a “war on workers.”
Scribner thinks Obama’s course of action on the recent issues is “definitely a risk,” considering Big Labor has long supported Democratic candidates.
The AFL-CIO contributed more than $9 million in 2011-12, and transportation unions gave roughly $11 million, second only to public sector unions over the same period, according to the website OpenSecrets.gov.
“There have been a number of various issues about which unions rightly feel upset,” Scribner added. “The president is doing things that don’t cater to the interests of labor.”
However, Big Labor abandoning Democrats in large numbers is not expected any time soon.
An internal poll by the AFL-CIO on election night 2012 showed Obama got roughly 65 percent of the union vote, compared with 33 percent for Mitt Romney, with larger margins in battleground states.
The federal suit was joined by the District of Columbia and six attorneys general -- including Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli and Greg Abbott of Texas, both Republicans, who are both running for governor.
The airlines have filed a motion in court seeking a November trial date.

Government Shutdown...Again!

This ought to be a barrel of laughs. As if the parties concerned haven't been incompetent enough in the handling of this issue, now that Obamacare is in the mix, this may be the worst food fight of all. It is unconscionable for any member of either party to advance a position that would have the United States defaulting on sovereign debt. That is the height of irresponsibility, but given the battle lines that have been drawn between people who barely say hello to each other, the possibility of another government shutdown is not out of the question.

U.S. Treasury to Hit Debt Limit in Mid-October

By Damian Paletta | The Wall Street Journal – 13 hours ago

WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department said it would hit its borrowing limit in mid-October and be unable to pay all of its bills soon after that time, narrowing the window the White House and Congress have to maneuver on budget talks.
The deadline, which is sooner than many on Capitol Hill had expected, gives a sobering jolt to a number of fiscal discussions that have faltered for months.
The White House and many lawmakers, as well as economists and business leaders, have warned of a possible financial crisis if the $16.7 trillion borrowing limit isn't raised and the government can't pay all of its bills. Interest rates likely would spike and the bond and stock markets would become extremely volatile if the value of Treasury securities came into question.
Before Monday, the Treasury had said the debt-ceiling deadline would occur sometime after Labor Day, and some outside analysts had forecast it might not come until November. The new mid-October deadline falls just two weeks after Congress and the White House must reach a separate agreement over how to fund government operations beyond Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. Failure to do so would trigger a partial government shutdown.
Washington remains deeply polarized over the tax and spending issues that are central to the discussions that will soon take place.
The White House and Republican leaders on Monday used the new timetable to reiterate already-hardened positions, suggesting that the two sides are far apart and that any agreement, if reached, could be far away.
"The debt limit remains a reminder that, under President Obama, Washington has failed to deal seriously with America's debt and deficit," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio).
Mr. Boehner has said he would support an increase in the debt ceiling only if it is accompanied by a larger level of spending cuts or budget changes.
The White House said it wouldn't negotiate over raising the debt ceiling, reiterating its view that Congress cannot send signals to financial markets that the government won't make payments it has agreed to fund.
"Protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is the responsibility of Congress, because only Congress can extend the nation's borrowing authority," Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew wrote in a letter to Mr. Boehner on Monday. "Failure to meet that responsibility would cause irreparable harm to the American economy."
Mr. Lew told Congress that after mid-October, the government would only have $50 billion in cash, a sum that could be depleted quickly. That money probably wouldn't last long, said Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank founded by Democratic and Republican lawmakers calling for bipartisan solutions.
"The first of November is a nasty day," he said. "You have a lot of money going out the first of November."
The Treasury has used emergency measures, such as suspending certain pension contributions, for months to buy more time for Congress to act. Some lawmakers had believed that the government's improving fiscal condition, bolstered by rising tax revenue and money coming in from mortgage-finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could give the Treasury even more time, potentially until sometime in December.
The White House has spent several months working with a small group of Republican senators to discuss a budget agreement that some Democrats had hoped would clear the way for an increase in the debt ceiling. Those talks have not progressed beyond an early stage, people familiar with the process have said.
House GOP leaders haven't disclosed their strategy for dealing with the debt-ceiling deadline, focusing instead on what to do to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of next month. They have held talks with rank-and-file members over a proposal to fund the government at existing levels for the next two or three months, a proposal that many Democrats have indicated they could reluctantly accept.
A vocal minority of Republicans, however, have said they would vote for a budget bill only if the White House's health-care law is defunded, a demand Democrats wouldn't accept—setting up a clash that could make it more difficult to reach a bipartisan agreement.
It is unclear if the tightened debt-ceiling window could alter their planning.
The U.S. government has roughly $16.7 trillion in debt, a level that continues to rise because the Treasury spends more money than it brings in through taxes, fees and other revenue. The deficit—the annual gap between spending and revenue—has fallen sharply this year, but it is still expected to be around $600 billion for the year that ends Sept. 30.
In 2011, the White House and congressional Republicans locked horns in a bitter feud over the debt ceiling. They spent weeks working to craft a deficit-reduction agreement to combine with an increase in the debt ceiling, but those talks collapsed in late July and financial markets swung wildly.
The debt ceiling was increased in early August as part of the Budget Control Act, which set caps on certain spending levels and led to the across-the-board "sequester" cuts that began in March and are scheduled to continue through 2021.

We Were Sure About WMD in Iraq

Obama Mulling Response to WMD Use in Syria

By Alexis Simendinger - August 27, 2013

President Obama worked Monday to muster a coordinated international response to retaliate against Syria’s apparent deadly use of chemical weapons near Damascus on Aug. 21.
Faced with video evidence and some first-person accounts of lethal gassing, and under renewed pressure to react, the president weighed options as Syria’s more than two-year-old civil war crossed the “red line” Obama laid out a year ago.

“President Obama believes there must be accountability,” and will decide on “an informed response,” Secretary of State John Kerry said during brief remarks Monday. While Kerry’s words were heated -- he described the Syrian deaths as a “moral obscenity” that “should shock the conscience of the world” -- he did not indicate a timetable for U.S. action.
United Nations inspectors worked Monday to collect forensic evidence that could independently identify the toxic substance that killed hundreds of Syrians, including children, and injured many more. The U.N. team has been tasked to determine what chemical agent caused the deaths, but not who was responsible.
In the absence of conclusive results from investigators’ tests, Kerry said the administration was nevertheless certain, based on observable data, that “chemical weapons were used in Syria.” Administration officials said their certainty Monday -- after equivocation last week -- was based on open-source information, such as the videos and photographs; information provided by international organizations tied to the Syrian opposition forces; and witnesses in or near the capital city suburbs that were attacked.
The secretary described spending part of Sunday reviewing the now-familiar but unsubstantiated videos of apparently gassed victims, which have ricocheted around the world. Kerry called the images “gut wrenching.”
The administration said it holds the regime of Bashar al-Assad responsible, expressing “very little doubt” that it used chemical weapons to kill Syria’s own people. Officials offered no explanation for the regime’s motive, since the attack occurred as U.N. investigators arrived in Damascus with Syria’s permission to gather information about previous attacks blamed on chemical exposures.
The administration’s acceptance that weapons of mass destruction killed innocent people, some in their sleep, forced U.S. officials to review military and other options over the weekend. The White House continued to rule out deployment of American troops into Syria, but military strikes by air or launched from warships in the Mediterranean are under discussion at the Pentagon and in the White House.
The administration is mindful that attacking a sovereign nation could become an unpleasant reminder among Americans of the “coalition of the willing” that President Bush amassed against Saddam Hussein, who never possessed the WMD in Iraq that the Bush administration claimed were there.
Although the Obama administration seeks the ouster of Assad and his government, and is supporting opposition forces by providing U.S. trainers, equipment and military support, the White House stopped short Monday of vowing to use the alleged chemical attacks in Ghouta as a rationale for regime change.
“There needs to be a response that reflects the seriousness of this transgression,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday when asked to describe Obama’s aims in light of previous assertions. (Obama first said the use of WMD in Syria is a national security concern for the United States; the administration later described the deaths “an atrocity” that breached international “norms.”)
The president, in a CNN interview broadcast Friday, said America is viewed as the indispensable nation in this situation, but he suggested that the United States would need either clear evidence of the use of chemical weaponry by the Assad forces or a United Nations mandate to attack Syria in retaliation, or both.
“There are questions of whether international law supports it, [and] do we have the coalition to make it work?” he said.
Carney said Obama views Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons as a separate question from the administration’s overall aim to reduce or eliminate the proliferation of WMD that are banned internationally, as well as the stockpile known to be hidden in Syria.
The president “has, obviously, very clear and broad nonproliferation goals,” Carney said. “His position on chemical weapons in Syria remains separate from this incident [Aug. 21] -- a matter of great concern to us and to the international community. And that will be the case going forward, separate from the response that is decided upon in reaction to this use of chemical weapons.”
With four U.S. destroyers now positioned in the Mediterranean, those options are said to include missile strikes, sustained bombing raids, additional assistance to rebel forces battling the Assad regime, and the international defense of a no-fly zone.
The president is consulting with his national security advisers, the United Nations, international allies and heads of state, and members of Congress, Carney said.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner confirmed the White House consulted with the Ohio congressman Monday.
“This afternoon, the speaker had preliminary communication with the White House about the situation in Syria and any potential U.S. response,” Brendan Buck said in a statement. “The speaker made clear that before any action is taken there must be meaningful consultation with members of Congress, as well as clearly defined objectives and a broader strategy to achieve stability."
The White House declined to name all the lawmakers consulted by the president and his advisers, and hedged when asked if Obama would seek a congressional resolution of approval for U.S. military action or some other specific green light from lawmakers. Congress returns to Washington after a month-long break on Sept. 9.
In 2011, some House and Senate members criticized the president and his administration for avoiding provisions of the War Powers Act that require congressional approval during the deployment of U.S. air power to help defend a NATO no-fly zone established over Libya.
Obama now awaits the results of a review by the U.S. intelligence community and its counterparts abroad to refine the fragmented and unsubstantiated information coming out of Syria, the White House indicated.
“The intelligence community is further assessing and evaluating what happened, and we will be able to share with you an assessment of the IC [intelligence community] in the coming days about the use of chemical weapons on August 21s,” Obama’s spokesman told reporters.
RCP congressional reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns contributed to this report.

Alexis Simendinger covers the White House for RealClearPolitics. She can be reached at asimendinger@realclearpolitics.com. Follow her on Twitter @ASimendinger.