Mediaboss Marketing

By The Washington Examiner

Former President Barack Obama took a private jet from Hawaii last week to Bali, Indonesia, where he and his family are staying in a $2,500-a-night suite for a week, and making time for whitewater rafting.

Good for him.

Some people are criticizing the former president for his lavish vacations, and it's true that there is something more than a little galling about his living the high life after his malign eight years governing the rest of us. But we'd actually like Obama to take even more vacations indeed, a complete and unceasing absence from the political stage.

Whether he deserves a break is less important than the fact that America desperately deserves a break from him. We urge him to spend more time with his family, and to set aside completely his tiring, tiresome, indecorous and arrogant efforts to hang around as a political scold.

With disregard for precedent and disdain for decorum, Obama has refused to bow out of the political fray after leaving office. Again and again, he has deliberately acted to make government more difficult and success more unlikely for President Trump. This has included buddy-buddy visits and high-fives with foreign leaders who gave Trump a cold shoulder. It was his sad impression of the Dixie Chicks, traveling overseas to preen and signal that he was better than the man his country chose as his successor.

This week, despite all the charms of Hawaii, Indonesia, Michelle and his daughters, Obama took time out to pen a long essay on the healthcare bill being considered by the Senate. Perhaps his four years in the Senate and eight years in the White House left him with little confidence in Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. Perhaps he thought MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, NPR, CNN and every other liberal outlet lacked the intellectual firepower to take on Sens. Mitch McConnell and John Barrasso.

Originally posted here:
OPINION: How About Never, Mr. Obama - Fox Nation

Shortly after President Donald Trump tweeted out a video of him violently pummeling a person with the CNN logo for a head, a throwback photo has emerged showing former President Barack Obama raising his own fist in a friendly fist bump with a healthcare worker.

Fighting for a good cause:healthcare, former White House photographer Pete Souza captioned the photo on Sunday that shows Obama greeting several smiling men and women.

The no-doubt jab at Trumps provocative video, which has been interpreted by someas possibly endorsing violence against the media, came as Senate Republicans continue to grapple with repealing and replacing Obamas Affordable Care Act.

It also came amid a new round of criticism over Trumps incendiary posts on Twitter, with him earlier using the social media platform toattack Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinskisphysical appearance and intelligence.

With millions of people at risk of losing health care coverage,Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) spoke out on the presidents comments on Sunday, urging Americans to ignore Trumps tweets and focus on whats important.

Our focus cannot be on the tweet. Our focus has to be on that kitchen table family paying $20,000, $30,000 and $40,000 for their premiums, wondering how theyre going to make ends meet, he said on NBCs Meet The Press.

I get so frustrated when we get focused on tweets, he continued. We need to think about these families with this incredible human need.

This, of course, isnt the first time Souza has taken aim at Trump.

The accomplished photojournalist, who also served as former President Ronald Reagans official photographer, has frequently trolled Trump by digging up his photo archive to compare the current presidents actions to his predecessor.

The photos have focused on Trumps famous NATO shove, what handholding looks like between the president and first lady, as well as how a president can demonstrate respect towards women.

Here is the original post:
Obama Photographer Reminds America What Presidents Should Be ...

"The Paris agreement, even with the temporary absence of US leadership, will still be a critical factor in helping our children solve the enormous challenge in civilization," Obama said at a Seoul conference organized by South Korea's Chosun Ilbo media group.

In his speech, Obama highlighted the role China plays in allowing North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un's regime to continue.

"China is the one country North Korea does depend on to some extent and the elites depend on to access foreign currency, basic supplies that are important to the regime," the former president said.

Obama also noted that Kim governs a bit differently than his father who preceded him, but is still a threat due to his hunger for power.

"Pyongyang doesn't always listen to China," the former president said. "Unlike the father, the son often times has engaged in fairly significant diplomatic insults of Beijing in a way we haven't seen before and in a way that surprised China."

"You have a young man who is only interested in maintaining power and is willing to do anything to sustain that," Obama added.

Trump spoke alongside South Korean President Moon Jae-in Friday in the US, expressing his frustration with the North Korean government.

After the speech in Seoul Monday, Obama and Moon met and discussed the future relationship between the US and Asia.

Read the original:
Obama touts Paris accord despite 'temporary absence of US leadership' - CNN International

In upholding green groups efforts to end the E.P.A.s 90-day stay over parts of the regulation, the appeals court ruled that the agencys decision was unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious. The agency, it said, did not have authority under the Clean Air Act to block the rule.

Americans overwhelmingly believe that global warming is happening, and that carbon emissions should be scaled back. But fewer are sure that it will harm them personally.

E.P.A.s stay, in other words, is essentially an order delaying the rules effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule, Judges David Tatel and Robert Wilkins wrote. The third member of the three-judge panel, Janice Rogers Brown, dissented. The judges said the agency would have to undertake a new rule-making process to undo the regulation.

The methane rule was part of a broad suite of climate regulations enacted by former President Barack Obama. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Oil and gas companies have argued that the rule requiring them to report and fix any methane leaks in their equipment is an unnecessary burden because many oil-producing states already have their own regulations. The E.P.A. announced on June 5 that it was suspending enforcement of the rule, arguing that the industry had not had enough opportunity to comment. The court rejected that argument.

The courts decision ends the continued pollution by the oil and gas industry thats been illegally allowed by Pruitt, said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Reid Porter, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, said that standards set in 2012 are already reducing methane emissions. A stay is needed to allow for regulatory certainty as E.P.A. continues the formal process to review the rule making, he said in a statement.

An E.P.A. spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing the opinion and would weigh its options.

Mondays decision does not mean the methane rule cannot be reversed. But to do so, the E.P.A. will have to write a new rule to unwind it and must comply with the Obama-era regulation in the meantime.

Originally posted here:
Court Blocks EPA Effort to Suspend Obama-Era Methane Rule - New York Times

The Trump administration took aim late last week at an Obama-era rule designed to crack down on for-profit colleges.

The Department of Education announced Friday that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will press pause on the gainful employment regulations developed by the Obama administration. The rules require that career training programs, many of which are at for-profit colleges, graduate students whose loan payments dont exceed 20% of their discretionary income or 8% of their total earnings. Rather than providing students with a degree in a broad field, these programs, which are typically less than four years, prepare students directly for work in a given occupation, such as health care support, cosmetology or mechanics. Programs that dont meet those criteria for multiple years could lose access to federal financial aid.

Initially, career-training programs would be required to disclose the data associated with the requirement to students by July 1 of this year. On Friday, DeVos announced that she would give the schools until July 1, 2018 to comply with this requirement. In addition, the Department is extending the deadline for schools to file any appeals challenging the way the Department calculated their debt-to-earnings ratio.

We need to get this right for our students, and we need to get this right for our institutions of higher education, DeVos said in a statement announcing the delay. Once fully implemented, the current rules would unfairly and arbitrarily limit students ability to pursue certain types of higher education and career training programs.

The announcement marks the latest attempt by the Trump administration to challenge Obama-era regulations targeting for-profit colleges. Last month, officials announced they would revisit both the gainful employment rule and a regulation known as defense to repayment that allows borrowers who believe theyve been defrauded by their schools to have their federal student loans wiped away.

This is also the second time Trump administration officials pushed back deadlines for schools to comply with the gainful employment requirements.

It is very clear this administration is looking for any possible tool it can find to weaken or delay the gainful employment regulation, while they are re-regulating it out of existence, said Ben Miller, the senior director of postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Borrower advocates have argued for years that many for-profit colleges use unseemly tactics to recruit vulnerable students and saddle them with debt in exchange for a degree thats not worth much in the labor market. The collapse of Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institutes two major for-profit college chains in the last two years, amid scrutiny from regulators, highlighted those concerns. Thousands of borrowers were left in the lurch after the two schools filed for bankruptcy.

Dont miss: What to expect on student debt from Betsy DeVos

Amid those concerns, the Obama administration moved to regulate for-profit colleges and faced intense opposition from the industry. The gainful employment rule was challenged several times in court over the past several years before finally becoming law.

Even after it was implemented, the gainful employment rule faced a court challenge from the American Association of Cosmetology Schools, which argued that its member schools were at a disadvantage in proving their students earned enough to meet the regulations standards because the Departments methodology for calculating a debt-to-earnings ratio doesnt properly account for cash tips, a hefty share of cosmetology graduates income. The judge in the case ordered the Department to give these schools more time to appeal their debt-to-earnings ratios.

In their announcement, Department officials cited the court order as a factor in their decision to extend the deadline for schools to appeal their debt-to-earnings ratio as calculated by the Department. In January, the Obama-era Department announced that about 800 programs were failing to meet the rules requirements.

Miller said he found it concerning that the Department was using a narrow court order that applies only to certain types of schools to delay implementation of the regulation as it applies to all programs. This is not a good faith interpretation of what the judge said, Miller said.

Advocates for for-profit colleges have argued that the Obama administrations approach to regulating them unfairly targeted the sector, focusing more on the tax status of a school than its outcomes. Theyve said that theyre serving a population of students that wouldnt have anywhere else to turn for higher education without these schools.

It appears DeVoss Department of Education has embraced this point of view. In their announcement, Department officials described the gainful employment regulations as overly burdensome. In her statement, DeVos also said, we need to expand, not limit, paths to higher education for students.

The for-profit college industry praised DeVoss approach. Steve Gunderson, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group representing for-profit colleges, said in a statement that his association applauded the delay of the gainful employment regulation.

The rule is clearly flawed, the statement reads. Recent studies and court rulings prove this rule needs to be revisited.

Originally posted here:
Another Obama legacy Trump wants to undo: Cracking down on for-profit colleges - MarketWatch