Word: beltway
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Experts like Erikson acknowledge that Obama has domestic political constraints, including the staunch opposition of Cuban-American pols like New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez and Florida Senator Mel Martinez to the bill that would end the travel ban. But even they know momentum is building inside the Beltway, as prominent Senators like Indiana's Richard Lugar now argue that the Cuban embargo has been a failure. Obama didn't need the once indispensable Cuban-American vote to win Florida's critical electoral votes in last year's presidential race, and the Cuban-American Foundation - a once hard-line exile group...
...daylong celebration transforms the presidential yard into official Washington's version of an amusement park, with food, games, music, storytelling, and, yes, thousands of eggs. The President and first lady generally attend, along with other notables ranging from Beltway celebs (Attorney General Janet Reno read attendees a story called "Queen Janet from the Bunny Planet" in 1997) to full-on stars (the Jonas Brothers performed last year). And, of course, there is egg rolling - a European custom of murky origin wherein a hard-boiled egg is pushed, dragged, flung or otherwise propelled across a lawn with a long-handled spoon...
...night that he has already managed to get AIG employees to give back $50 million of the bonuses. But much of the credit still has to go to the Obama Administration for its handling of the AIG fracas. With that in mind, here are five lessons of the latest Beltway blowup. (Read "The AIG Bonuses: Getting Mad and Getting Even...
Judicial options were raised outside the Beltway. As he announced that AIG had paid so-called retention bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, including 11 who no longer work there, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo questioned the validity of the contracts that guaranteed those payouts. He said the agreements were made in March 2008 to duplicate employees' 2007 bonuses "despite obvious signs that 2008 performance would be disastrous." (To further fuel the outrage, Cuomo added that the top individual AIG bonus was more than $6.4 million, while the top 10 collected a total of $42 million...
...Earmarks were made for hypocrisy; they're always reprehensible when they're in someone else's district. But despite all the Beltway hyperventilation, earmarks are not really a problem. Their exponential growth is a symptom of the larger problem of wasteful spending, but blaming the earmark process for wasteful spending is like blaming the Internet for porn. It is just a convenient delivery device, and it can have good uses as well as frivolous ones. Its abuse in recent years says more about the people misusing it than the process itself. (See the Top 10 Outrageous Earmarks...