H4a news Clips [April 11, 2015] Summary of Today’s news



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Jeb Bush hires two new foreign policy advisers [Ed O’Keefe, WaPo, April 10, 2015]


Bush has tapped Robert S. Karem and John Noonan to join his growing policy shop, according to aides familiar with the hires.
As Jeb Bush inches closer to running for president, he's hired two new advisers to help develop his foreign policy agenda.
Bush has tapped Robert S. Karem and John Noonan to join his growing policy shop, according to aides familiar with the hires.
Most recently, Karem was a top policy adviser to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). He also worked for former vice president Dick Cheney as a researcher on his memoir and as a member of his national security staff.
Noonan is leaving his role as spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee, and once advised Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign on defense policy.
Aides said that Karem and Noonan are expected to help Bush track world affairs on a daily basis and work with him on his foreign policy agenda. They'll work alongside Justin Muzinich, who will serve as Bush's policy chief should he launch a formal campaign, as expected. Muzinich is a former New York-based investment firm manager.
One of the most sensitive tasks Karem and Noonan are expected to tackle is facilitating conversations with Bush's 21-member advisory team of veteran GOP foreign policy experts.
The team, which he unveiled in February, reflects a broad cross-section of GOP thinking, including two former secretaries of state, George Shultz and James Baker; two former CIA directors, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden; former attorney general Michael Mukasey and Paul Wolfowitz, a former deputy defense secretary and lead architect of the Iraq war.
There are no current plans for the group to ever formally meet in person with Bush -- such a gathering might be too awkward given the members' intensely differing views. And given his early fundraising prowess, his standing in early public opinion polls and his family history, it's no surprise that jockeying to advise Bush has been intense, according to some people familiar with the process.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that an early casualty of the jockeying was Elbridge Colby, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, who was being considered as one of Bush's foreign policy aides.
But Colby said in an e-mail to The Post that he was never formally offered the job.
Bush aides strongly disputed the reports of infighting and said that Bush welcomes the group's differing views on the world, and that he's been interacting with the experts frequently via e-mail as he develops a broader understanding of foreign affairs.
How Rand Paul Can Get Better at Interviews [Alan Rappeport, NYT First Draft, April 10, 2015]
Sen. Rand Paul has given several interviews recently over which his temperament has been called into question.
Senator Rand Paul’s penchant for prickly interviews has ruffled feathers during his first week as a presidential candidate, leaving some wondering if this is a deliberate strategy or just a hot temper.
After a contentious back and forth with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie this week, and the “shush” of a female CNBC anchor in February, Mr. Paul said on Thursday that he is an “equal opportunity” curmudgeon when it comes to losing his patience with the media.
Seeming to prove that point, Mr. Paul walked away during an interview on Friday with a male reporter from The Guardian when pressed for specifics on the issue of criminal justice.
As Mr. Paul is likely to do many more interviews as he seeks the Republican nomination, First Draft checked in with a media coach to see how the Kentucky senator can improve.
“The advice I would give to him is to always remember the interview is not with the reporter,” said Brad Phillips, president of Phillips Media Relations. “The reporter is the conduit to the audience you want to reach out to.”
Mr. Phillips said candidates and politicians can be successful with an aggressive approach toward the media until it begins to erode their likability. Taking a “happy warrior” approach, smiling more and giving off a warmer vibe, Mr. Phillips said, would behoove Mr. Paul as voters start to pay more attention.
“If somebody who gives the perception as being peevish were to get the nomination, the historical trend makes clear that person would be running at a disadvantage,” he said.
Trying to cool perceptions about Mr. Paul’s temper, his team said on Friday that they did not turn off the lights on his interview with The Guardian. And to prove that Mr. Paul has nothing against female journalists, his aides made sure to say he was rushing to do an interview with Dana Bash of CNN.
Ted Cruz: 'Jihad' Was Waged Against Religious Freedom Bills [Daniel Strauss, TPM, April 10, 2015]
Sen. Ted Cruz argued that opponents of a pair of controversial religious freedom laws had been waging a jihad against those proposals.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) argued that opponents of a pair of controversial religious freedom laws had been waging a jihad against those proposals.
"We look at the jihad that is being waged right now in Indiana and Arkansas going after people of faith who respect the biblical teaching that marriage is the union of one man and one woman," Cruz said during a panel moderated by conservative radio host Steve Deace on Thursday. "We need to bring people together to the religious liberty values that built this country."
Cruz's comments come after Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) was forced to clarify a controversial religious freedom law aimed at allowing businesses to refuse to serve same-sex individuals based on religious objections. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison (R), sent similar legislation back to his state's legislature in response to national criticism as well.
Cruz, and most of the likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates, have expressed strong support for both laws. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) recently threw his support behind similar legislation that in certain ways is broader than the Indiana or Arkansas bills.
Cruz added that "it wasn't long ago when this was an area of bipartisan agreement."
Marco Rubio Assails Obama but Not Clinton at N.R.A. Forum [Nick Corasaniti, NYT First Draft, April 10, 2015]
Marco Rubio did not mention Hillary Clinton in his speech at the NRA convention.
N.R.A. Rating: A
Guns owned: One
Bull’s-Eye: Mr. Rubio criticized President Obama for what he saw as a lackluster response to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. “Mr. President, if condemning that puts us on a high horse, I suggest we saddle up,” Mr. Rubio said, as the crowd rose to its feet.
Misfire: The crowd gave a hesitant response to Mr. Rubio’s mention of legislation he introduced that would keep local officials in Washington from enacting gun laws, which has not received much attention.
“Cold Dead Hands” Moment: None, really.
Other Ammo: Mr. Rubio criticized Mr. Obama for his response to the Paris attacks, the president’s “line in the sand” comments on Syria and what he perceived to be a “weak” American foreign policy.
Cross Hairs: He focused entirely on Mr. Obama and did not mention Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Pump Action: Mr. Rubio drew laughter for jokes about Mr. Obama’s golf game and his State of the Union water bottle moment.
Big National News
National Stories
White House: Iran deal requires phased sanctions removal [Jim Kuhnhenn, WaPo, April 10, 2015]

President Obama’s Foreign Policy advisor, Ben Rhodes, has pushed back on the notion that demands for the immediate suspension of sanctions has imperiled the potential deal.

PANAMA CITY — The White House pushed back Friday against declarations from Iran’s leaders that any nuclear deal must include an immediate lifting of sanctions, indicating President Barack Obama will walk away from negotiations unless sanctions are removed over time.

Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes portrayed the tough stance by Supreme Leader Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani as a reflection of internal pressures from Iran hardliners and said the development doesn’t mean a final agreement is unattainable. But Rhodes pointed out the framework agreement that Iran and the six powers reached last week to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities allows for sanctions to be removed over time, not at once.

“It’s very clear and understood that sanctions relief will be phased,” Rhodes told reporters traveling with Obama in Panama for the Summit of the Americas. “The fact of the matter is, we have framework. The president has said if the details don’t bear out, we won’t have a deal.”

In his first comments on the framework, Khamenei told a gathering of religious poets on Thursday that he “is neither for nor against” it. But he said the punitive “sanctions should be lifted completely, on the very day of the deal.” He said because the agreement was only the framework and not the accord itself, “nothing has been done yet.”

The deadline for a final deal is June 30.

Rouhani, a relative moderate, sent the same message during a ceremony Thursday marking Iran’s nuclear technology day, which celebrates the country’s atomic achievements.

“We will not sign any agreement unless all economic sanctions are totally lifted on the first day of the implementation of the deal,” Rouhani said.

Rhodes said Khamenei and Rouhani had to deal with internal politics, but that their statements should not be taken as a test of what the final deal will look like.

“They have their own hardliners who are skeptical of this deal,” Rhodes said. “The test of whether or not that framework can be memorialized is not a comment on any given day by an Iranian leader, the test will be if by the end of June we have a document.”

The framework says sanctions put in place over Iran’s nuclear program will be suspended once international monitors verify that Tehran is abiding by the limitations spelled out in the agreement. Rhodes said the International Atomic Energy Agency will have to inspect military sites.

An essential part of the deal, he said, is “having the IAEA ability to inspect suspicious sites, no matter where they are.”

The West has long feared Iran’s nuclear program could allow it to build an atomic bomb and that Tehran has used uranium enrichment — the key point of contention in the negotiations — to pursue nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, such as power generation and cancer treatment.

New Sea Drilling Rule Planned, 5 Years After BP Oil Spill [Coral Davenport, NYT, April 10, 2015]


The Obama administration is planning to impose a major new regulation on offshore oil and gas drilling to try to prevent the kind of explosions that caused the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, administration officials said Friday.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is planning to impose a major new regulation on offshore oil and gas drilling to try to prevent the kind of explosions that caused the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, administration officials said Friday.
The announcement of the Interior Department regulation, which could be made as soon as Monday, is timed to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the disaster, which killed 11 men and sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the gulf. The regulation is being introduced as the Obama administration is taking steps to open up vast new areas of federal waters off the southeast Atlantic Coast to drilling, a decision that has infuriated environmentalists.
The rule is expected to tighten safety requirements on blowout preventers, the industry-standard devices that are the last line of protection to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, was caused in part when the buckling of a section of drill pipe led to the malfunction of a supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer on a BP well called Macondo.
It will be the third and biggest new drilling-equipment regulation put forth by the Obama administration in response to the disaster. In 2010, the Interior Department announced new regulations on drilling well casings, and in 2012, it announced new regulations on the cementing of wells.
The latest regulation, a result of several years of study, will be imposed on all future offshore drilling equipment and will be used by the administration to make the case that it can prevent a BP-like disaster as oil exploration expands in the Atlantic. The Interior Department is also reviewing a proposal from Royal Dutch Shell to drill in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, off the coast of Alaska.
“We’re coming on five years, and we’ve been working tirelessly in the regulation division since it happened,” said Allyson Anderson, associate director of strategic engagement in the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. “We’ve doubled down on building a culture of safety,”
But environmentalists remained highly skeptical.
“Making sure the design, operation and maintenance of the blowout preventer is the best it can possibly be is imperative, no question,” said Bob Deans, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-author of the book “In Deep Water,” an investigation of the cause of the spill. “Industry and government have taken measures over the past five years to reduce some of the risk in what is an inherently dangerous operation at sea. That’s a far cry from saying it’s safe. And the last thing we need is to expose Atlantic or Arctic waters to a BP-style blowout.”
Environmentalists also noted that a panel appointed by President Obama to investigate the spill concluded that the chief cause of the disaster, which left the Gulf Coast soaked in black tar, was not the blowout preventer but a broad systemic failure of oversight by the companies involved in drilling the well and the government regulators assigned to police them.
Five years after the spill, the number of accidents and injuries per oil-producing well has increased, according to Interior Department statistics. Between 2009 and 2014, the overall number of oil- and gas-producing wells dropped about 20 percent, and accidents and incidents associated with drilling in the Gulf of Mexico dropped 14 percent. But during that period, accidents and injuries per producing well increased by about 7 percent.
A report last year by the Chemical Safety Board concluded that the blowout preventer’s blind shear ram, an emergency hydraulic device with two cutting blades, punctured the pipe and sent oil and gas gushing to the surface. The study found that the drill pipe had buckled under the tremendous pressure of the oil and gas rising from the well from the initial blowout.
That report warned that another disastrous offshore oil well blowout could happen despite regulatory improvements in the four years since the BP well explosion.
“The new regulation is important,” said William K. Reilly, a co-chairman of the presidential panel that investigated the spill, and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President George Bush. “The signal from the department that it is attending to each of the systems is more important. The blowout preventer is the last-ditch preventer. It was activated too late in Macondo. If you get to the point where it’s all you’ve got, it better be good. But the system process we identified — attention to management, process design, adherence to the system — those are really vital long before you ever get to the point where you have an emergency.”
Mr. Reilly blamed Congress for some of the continued systemic problems, saying that lawmakers should have appropriated funds to increase programs for safety training and inspection.
Administration officials say that since the spill, the Interior Department has initiated the most aggressive and comprehensive offshore oil and gas regulation and oversight in history. The agency has nearly doubled the number of safety inspectors in the Gulf of Mexico, from 55 at the time of the spill to 92 today. After the accident, the Interior Department was restructured, separating the agency charged with overseeing safety from the one charged with overseeing the collection of revenue.
The agency has also put in place a requirement that any company performing deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico must have access to containment dome technology — essentially, a dome that can be put over an exploded well to contain gushing oil. At least two ports in the Gulf of Mexico now store containment domes that can be used in emergencies.
While the oil industry typically opposes regulations, it has followed some of the recommendations made by the presidential panel. The big oil companies created and funded the Center for Offshore Safety, an institute intended to promote and disseminate best practices in drilling.
“The industry’s overall safety record was strong before Macondo, and the co-chairs of President Obama’s national spill commission were absolutely right when they said that offshore drilling is now even safer,” said Jack N. Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry. “We will continue to build on these achievements because our goal is zero accidents and zero spills.”
General Electric to sell bulk of its finance unit [Andrew Ross Sorkin & Michael J. de la Merced, NYT Dealbook, April 10, 2015]
General Electric plans to sell off most of its finance arm within two years, redefining the multinational conglomerate as it seeks to complete a transformation begun amid the tumult of the financial crisis.
General Electric plans to sell off most of its finance arm within two years, redefining the multinational conglomerate as it seeks to complete a transformation begun amid the tumult of the financial crisis.
In addition to the huge planned sales of assets outlined by the company on Friday, General Electric will take other major steps, including bringing back about $36 billion in cash that currently resides overseas.
Rapidly shrinking the finance arm, GE Capital — once the most powerful driver of the company’s earnings until it rocked the parent company after the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 — will erase one of the most prominent legacies of G.E.’s former chief executive, Jack Welch.
But it could also release the company from one of its biggest burdens: strict regulatory requirements that come with GE Capital’s being regarded as a financial institution that is too big to fail.
General Electric’s plan is that by 2018, its core industrial businesses — ranging from jet turbines to heavy energy equipment to sophisticated medical devices — will account for more than 90 percent of its earnings, up from 58 percent last year.
To Jeffrey R. Immelt, the company’s chairman and chief executive, corporate legacy has not deterred him from a plan to shrink a huge and sometimes unwieldy collection of businesses. The conglomerate has already sold divisions like its small appliances unit that became too small to affect its sales, which stood at $148 billion last year.
“We’re not sentimentalists,” he said in an interview.
The conglomerate’s ambitious plan will begin with the sale of most of GE Capital’s real estate assets for $23 billion to the Blackstone Group and Wells Fargo, as well as other buyers.
All that will remain by the end of the sales process are any financing businesses closely tied to the conglomerate’s core industrial businesses. G.E. estimates that those remaining assets will be valued at about $90 billion, a fraction of the $363 billion of GE Capital assets held as of year-end.
Friday’s announcement represents the final stage of what Mr. Immelt has called a “simplification” campaign aimed at making one of the country’s biggest corporations smaller and safer.
The plan will come with a substantial initial cost, with the company planning to take an accounting hit of $16 billion in its first fiscal quarter this year, most of which will be a noncash charge.
Moreover, the company will also pay about $6 billion in taxes on earnings it brings back from overseas.
Many American corporations continue to hold significant sums of money overseas — Apple for example, holds roughly $158 billion in foreign subsidiaries — in hopes of a change to the United States tax laws.
But G.E., which has been criticized in the past for its tax avoidance strategies, said it had chosen to move quickly.
“We decided not to wait for tax reform,” said Keith S. Sherin, the chairman and chief executive of GE Capital.
The severe downsizing of the finance unit is a sea change for General Electric. For much of its 123-year history, the company had a finance division, though the business traditionally served as a support for its parent’s manufacturing arms. Under Mr. Welch, however, GE Capital swelled in size, scope and willingness to take on risk, becoming one of the most prominent lenders in the country.
Yet that immenseness badly wounded General Electric in the wake of Lehman’s demise, when the market upheaval left the conglomerate hard-pressed to borrow debt for its day-to-day operations.
Since the financial crisis, the conglomerate has taken steps to shrink its finance operation, selling off smaller pieces over the years. In one of its most notable moves, it spun off its private label credit card arm — now known as Synchrony Financial — in a $2.9 billion initial public offering last year.
Still, Mr. Immelt said, the company focused on moving carefully, its board careful “not to burn stuff out” at fire sale prices.
But the success of Synchrony — its stock has risen 30 percent since it began trading — helped prod Mr. Immelt and his team, including advisers at JPMorgan Chase and Centerview Partners, to consider moving more quickly.
At the same time, Mr. Immelt said in the interview, G.E.’s mainstay industrial operations were performing well.
Now is a “perfect time to be a seller,” he said. Moreover, he added of potential asset buyers, “people are lining up at the starting line.”
First up came a potential sale of GE Capital’s real estate assets. As G.E.’s management team and advisers weighed potential partners, one name quickly came to mind: Blackstone and its huge real estate arm.
“We thought there was only one buyer who can do this: Jon Gray at Blackstone,” Mr. Sherin of GE Capital said. “We told him, ‘If you can hit this bid on an exclusive basis, it’s yours.’ ”
Despite not putting the real estate assets up for a competitive auction, which may have fetched a higher price, Mr. Sherin declared himself happy with the result. Moving this way assured G.E. of both a speedy and certain transaction.
“Both parties think they got a fair price,” he said.
General Electric said it would remain an acquirer of businesses as well, though its deals will be aimed at bolstering industrial operations. Last year, it paid $13.5 billion for the energy operations of the French industrial company Alstom.
Selling the bulk of GE Capital could bring significant benefits for G.E. shareholders, by the company’s reckoning. It estimates that it could return more than $90 billion to investors by 2018, through special dividends, stock buybacks and other financial moves. About $35 billion of that alone will come from the GE Capital asset sales.
Perhaps one of the most notable potential consequences of the drastic move is that G.E. will be able to shed its designation as a “systemically important financial institution.” Such status comes with high requirements to keep capital on hand, potentially limiting its financial returns.
So significant is the label that MetLife, the big insurer, has sued regulators to try to remove the designation.
“We’re probably the most heavily regulated company in the world,” Mr. Immelt said. But he added, “Regulation doesn’t scare us.”
The conglomerate has already begun discussions with government regulators, though is hoping to formally apply for the removal of the so-called Sifi designation by next year.


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