Clinton Files: Advisers pushed to 'humanize' Hillary, soften 'stern' image

Even in the early days of the Clinton White House, consultants and political advisers were scrambling to soften Hillary Clinton's hard-edged image, looking for ways to "humanize her" for the press and public.
In the latter years, as the media turned, the advice was far more blunt. "Be real," media consultant Mandy Grunwald told her in a 1999 memo. Grunwald told the first lady the public tends to see her only in "very stern situations," and warned her not to let the press see her "uncomfortable or testy."
The advice was contained in roughly 4,000 pages of previously confidential documents from the Clinton administration years, released Friday by the National Archives. The document dump is just the first batch of Clinton papers that will trickle into the public domain in the coming weeks.
The materials will be closely combed by political operatives on both sides of the aisle, as Hillary Clinton weighs a presidential bid in 2016. What the documents reveal about former President Bill Clinton may be less important, politically, than what they reveal about his wife.
The 1999 memo was a particularly frank example of advisers looking to style Clinton for the public. At the time, Grunwald was with the Grunwald Communications firm she founded and was trying to smooth relations between retiring New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Clinton -- who would later win Moynihan's seat. The memo referred to an upcoming "Moynihan event." Grunwald urged Clinton to stay "conversational" and not raise her voice.
Her advice was to stay "chatty, intimate, informal."
"Don't be defensive," she wrote. "Look like you want the questions: The press is obviously watching to see if they can make you uncomfortable or testy. Even on the annoying questions, give relaxed answers."
Touching on what could be called a trade secret, she also chided Clinton for often answering "just the question asked."
"That's good manners, but bad politics," Grunwald wrote. "Take every opportunity you can to shift your response to an area you want to talk about and then be really expansive on that part of the answer."
Another memo from her press secretary, Lisa Caputo, encouraged the Clintons to capitalize on their 20th wedding anniversary as "a wonderful opportunity for Hillary" and also suggested she spend more time doing White House events celebrating first ladies of the past.
Placing Clinton in a historical context "may help to round out her image and make what she is doing seem less extreme or different in the eyes of the media," Caputo wrote in a lengthy August 1995 memo about courting better press coverage as the president looked toward re-election.
Caputo also proposed the "wild idea" of having Clinton do a guest appearance on a popular sitcom of the day, "Home Improvement."
The memo urged the first lady to have a much bigger presence in "women's media," at one point advising that she should "own" it. The memo also stressed that the "Internet has become a very popular mode of communication," and Hillary Clinton could use it to reach young women.
"I think Hillary could have fun with this," she wrote.
Other documents offered a glimpse into the juggling of priorities early in Clinton's first term.
Friday's documents release included memos related to the former president's ill-fated health care reform proposal in 1993 and 1994, a plan that failed to win support in Congress and turned into a rallying cry for Republicans in the 1994 midterm elections. As first lady, Hillary Clinton chaired her husband's health care task force, largely meeting in secret to develop a plan to provide universal health insurance coverage.
White House aides expressed initial optimism about her ability to help craft and enact a major overhaul of U.S. health care.
"The first lady's months of meetings with the Congress has produced a significant amount of trust and confidence by the members in her ability to help produce a viable health reform legislative product with the president," said an undated and unsigned document, which was cataloged with others from April 1993. The document urged quick action, warning that enthusiasm for health reform "will fade over time."
But the documents also showed the growing concerns among Clinton's fellow Democrats in Congress. Lawmakers, it said, "going to their home districts for the August break are petrified about having difficult health care reform issues/questions thrown at them."
By September 1993, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged the obstacles in a Capitol Hill meeting with House and Senate Democratic leaders and committee chairs. "I think that, unfortunately, in the glare of the public political process, we may not have as much time as we need for that kind of thoughtful reflection and research," the first lady said, citing "this period of challenge."
The new documents offer only glimmers of Clinton's internal national security deliberations. The most detailed material, contained in files from then-national security speechwriter Paul Orzulak, show top Clinton officials wrestling with how to deal with China's emergence as a world financial power.
Notes from an undated meeting with National Security Adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger show Berger pushing for China's membership in the World Trade Organization despite concerns about human rights abuses.
A series of emails pertaining to the 9/11 Commission's research into Clinton-era handling of Al Qaeda attacks were all apparently withheld by Archives officials, citing national security and confidential restrictions. The only memo released was a single July 1998 email about whether to send a high-ranking diplomat to Minnesota with a presidential message to greet ailing Jordanian King Hussein. "Sounds like too much crepe hanging," said a dismissive State Department official.

Court rules school can ban American flag shirts to avoid racial strife

Bailey Comment: "Hell, you mean California is now in Mexico. Why didn't someone tell me?"

A federal court ruled Thursday that a northern California high school did not violate the constitutional rights of its students when school officials made them turn their American flag T-shirts inside out on Cinco de Mayo or be sent home due to fears of racial violence.
The three-judge panel unanimously decided the officials’ need to protect the safety of their students outweighed the students’ freedom of expression rights.
Administrators at Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, feared the American-flag shirts would enflame Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday, and ordered the students to either turn the shirts inside out or go home for the day.
The school had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day, and also had a documented history of violence between gang members and between racial groups. The court said these past problems gave school officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for their actions and that schools have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety.
"Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence," Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel. The past events "made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real," she wrote.
The San Jose Mercury News reports the parents of the students represented in the lawsuit claim their children’s First Amendment rights were violated. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based American Freedom Law Center, a politically conservative legal aid foundation, and other similar organizations took up the students' case and sued the high school and the school district.
"This is the United States of America," the mother of one of the students Kendall Jones told the San Jose Mercury News. "The idea that it's offensive to wear patriotic clothing ... regardless of what day it is, is unconscionable to me."
The parents have said in previous interviews with several publications that their children were only trying to be patriotic, not start a fight with Latino students.
William Becker, one of the lawyers representing the students, said he plans to ask a special 11-judge panel of the appeals court to rehear the case. Becker said he and the parents of the children are prepared to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

Obamacare Victims Are ‘Liars,’ Says Top Democrat

Remember “I feel your pain” - Bill Clinton’s plaintive response to the woes of Middle America turned into a signature line for his administration, which became a cliché in American politics? 

Every politician wanted to connect to the pain of Americans, even in good economic times, and especially during and after the Great Recession. The biggest political attack against Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election related to the exposure of his remarks about the “47 percent” and how out of touch it made the wealthy Republican nominee to the plight of the struggling working classes. 

That was then … this is now. Instead of feeling your pain, Harry Reid stood on the Senate floor to tell millions of Americans impacted by skyrocketing premiums, incompetent administration, and policy cancellations from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act that they don’t really feel pain at all.  

Related: Consumers Hit with Surprise Tax in Obamacare Premium 

Democrats find themselves hammered by an avalanche of data and personal anecdotes that demonstrate the damage done by Obamacare. Instead of addressing those – which granted, would take most of the time between now and the midterm elections – the Senate Majority Leader angrily dismissed all such information as “untrue.” 

"Despite all that good news,” Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday, “there's plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America.” Reid specifically referred to an ad from Americans for Prosperity featuring the case of Julie Boonstra, a leukemia patient whose new plan disrupted her ability to budget for medications.    

Reid blamed the brothers who own Koch Industries and who are major contributors to AFP. He dismissed Boonstra and apparently every other horror story as just “stories made up from whole cloth, lies distorted by the Republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements.”

Related: Ten Worst Places to Live for Obamacare

It’s true that Boonstra’s story turned into a dispute when others looked into her claims. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler gave the AFP ad two Pinocchios, noting that the premium decrease for Boonstra’s new plan (her existing plan, which she preferred, got canceled under Obamacare) added up to the out-of-pocket limit, negating her claims of extra expense. News media reported on that interpretation, and a Democratic incumbent filed a complaint with the FCC to force stations to stop airing the ad.

However, Boonstra disputes that interpretation, because while it might balance out by the end of a year, the immediate out-of-pocket expenses are much higher in the new plan – and there is no guarantee that the new plan will cover her current medication regime. In fact, they declined to do so when Boonstra tried to renew the prescription.
“I went in to have a prescription filled, thinking well it's never been a big deal,” Boonstra told The Dexter Leader. “I never gave it a thought, and now it's no longer covered.” That means she will pay the full price of the medication up front, and she can’t afford to do it – even if the insurance eventually covers the cost later in the year.
Related: Obama’s Health Care Mandate - My Whim Is My Command
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Harry Reid’s dismissal of Boonstra’s pain was entirely justified. What about the pain of Catherine Blackwood, who also lost her insurance due to Obamacare and lost coverage for her cancer medication as a result?

Her previous insurance covered Sandostatin as a treatment for her terminal carcinoid. But despite being repeatedly assured during the problem-plagued enrollment process that her new Obamacare-approved plan would cover the drug, she found out this month as she was going into surgery that her plan would not cover the drug. It costs $14,000 just since the beginning of the year, and now Blackwood will have to cover it all herself. 

What about the pain of Katherine Cadman? She signed up for coverage through Covered California, expecting to have access to doctors listed for her plan on the exchange. Instead, out of 41 doctors supposedly in her network and in her area, only four were taking new Covered California patients – and only one of those was board-certified. Julia Turner made a similar discovery after selecting her Covered California plan. The only doctors who will see the San Francisco resident are clinics in the high-crime East Oakland area.   

These are just the anecdotes from the last week.
Related: Obamacare Penalty - 4 Things You Don’t Know
The data looks even worse for the “don’t believe your own lying eyes” messaging strategy. When the initial rollout of Obamacare took place, the Obama administrations oft-repeated claim that the currently insured would be able to keep their plans went out the window, as insurers were forced to cancel insurance for five to six million people under now-forbidden coverage. To this day, the Obamacare exchanges have only had four million sign-ups, with as many as 20 percent of those failing to complete enrollments.
This week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated that another 11 million people with coverage from small-business group plans will see their premiums rise as a result of the law – 65 percent of all those with such coverage.

That follows a rapid rise in small-business group plan premiums that coincides with the passage and implementation of Obamacare. The year before the bill passed (2009), the National Small Business Association found that the average cost for health insurance was $590 per employee. Four years later, that average more than doubled to $1,274 per employee – a far cry from the White House promise to “bend the cost curve downward” in health care.  

Related: Finally Doing Real Math on Obamacare Policies 

When costs increase again, as the CBO predicts, many of those small-business employers will simply opt to dump health-insurance coverage for their employees. The workers will have to fend for themselves in the individual markets that are inflicting pain on millions of Americans already. Since most small businesses won’t be required to provide coverage, the financial incentives will all be in favor of cutting their losses. 

That doesn’t take into account the tens of millions who will lose their current group insurance plans when the employer mandates come into full force, a development predicted not by Obamacare critics but by the HHS itself – nearly four years ago. “The department’s mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013” – meaning those plans will be cancelled. 

Given the rapidly escalating costs for providing insurance, even the penalties for opting out of coverage for employees will not stop many from bailing out of group coverage. If so, many more will end up experiencing the same pain as Boonstra, Blackwood, Cadman, and Taylor. 

Harry Reid and the Democrats can keep ignoring that pain at their own electoral peril. It’s amazing how quickly they have gone from feeling our pain to causing it, and then trying to convince us that pain doesn’t actually hurt anyone. Not even Bill Clinton can sell that nonsense.

Reid hammered by GOP after claiming all ObamaCare 'horror stories' untrue

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is being hammered by Republican lawmakers after he claimed on the Senate floor that all the ObamaCare "horror stories" being circulated are untrue.
Reid tried to clarify his remarks late Wednesday by saying he was only referring to the “vast majority” of stories featured in ads funded by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, and not the complaints of everyday Americans. However, he added fuel to the fire by continuing to slam the group’s backers, the Koch brothers, calling them “un-American.”
Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, in response, said Reid had effectively "attacked the character and integrity of every American who had the courage to share how they're being hurt by the president's health care law."
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called Reid's original remarks "astounding and offensive."
Reid said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor that he believes Americans for Prosperity hires actors in their ads to tell fake stories about canceled policies, higher premiums and ruined lives under ObamaCare.
“There’s plenty of horror stories being told,” Reid said. “All of them are untrue. But they’re being told all over America.”
It was an apparent reference to, among other instances, an AFP ad that featured a woman with cancer who claimed her health care became unaffordable under the law. Her story was called into question by critics, but she and AFP are standing by the ad.
The outcry over Reid's comments from Republican lawmakers was swift. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said he is demanding Reid apologize to those who have felt ill effects from ObamaCare.
“The majority leader, and any Democrat who agrees with him, owes an apology to all Americans who are suffering under this disastrous law and whose personal stories he has dismissed as ‘untrue,’” he said.
The communications director for Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., noted in a press release Blunt has taken it upon himself numerous times to read personal stories of ObamaCare’s negative impact on the Senate floor.
“A fair question for the Majority Leader’s office today: Does Harry Reid believe Missourians are making this up?” spokeswoman Amber Marchand said.
Reid in his speech urged Americans to focus on what he says are the true stories: stories of Americans whom the law has helped.

Employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs destroyed veterans’ medical files

Employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) destroyed veterans’ medical files in a systematic attempt to eliminate backlogged veteran medical exam requests, a former VA employee told The Daily Caller.
Audio of an internal VA meeting obtained by TheDC confirms that VA officials in Los Angeles intentionally canceled backlogged patient exam requests.
“The committee was called System Redesign and the purpose of the meeting was to figure out ways to correct the department’s efficiency. And one of the issues at the time was the backlog,” Oliver Mitchell, a Marine veteran and former patient services assistant in the VA Greater Los Angeles Medical Center, told TheDC.
“We just didn’t have the resources to conduct all of those exams. Basically we would get about 3,000 requests a month for [medical] exams, but in a 30-day period we only had the resources to do about 800. That rolls over to the next month and creates a backlog,” Mitchell said. ”It’s a numbers thing. The waiting list counts against the hospitals efficiency. The longer the veteran waits for an exam that counts against the hospital as far as productivity is concerned.”
By 2008, some patients were “waiting six to nine months for an exam” and VA “didn’t know how to address the issue,” Mitchell said.
VA Greater Los Angeles Radiology department chief Dr. Suzie El-Saden initiated an “ongoing discussion in the department” to cancel exam requests and destroy veterans’ medical files so that no record of the exam requests would exist, thus reducing the backlog, Mitchell said.
Audio from a November 2008 meeting obtained by TheDC depicts VA Greater Los Angeles officials plotting to cancel backlogged exam requests.
“I’m still canceling orders from 2001,” said a male official in the meeting.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/24/va-employees-destroyed-veterans-medical-records-to-cancel-backlogged-exam-requests-audio/#ixzz2uQL6IqsY

Holder gives nod to state AGs to drop defense of gay marriage bans amid court challenges

Attorney General Eric Holder has given the nod to his state counterparts that they do not have to defend laws against constitutional court challenges if they consider them discriminatory -- effectively giving the green light for states to stop defending bans on gay marriage.
Holder addressed the issue during a gathering of state attorneys general on Tuesday, after detailing his position in a New York Times interview.
Speaking to the National Association of Attorneys General, Holder said that any decision not to defend individual laws in court must be "exceedingly rare" and reserved for "exceptional circumstances." He indicated that legal challenges to gay marriage bans would qualify as such a circumstance.
"In general, I believe that we must be suspicious of legal classifications based solely on sexual orientation," he said.
His remarks, while already generating backlash from conservatives, could fuel a wave of legal challenges at the state level. In the wake of the federal Defense of Marriage Act being struck down by the Supreme Court last year, several Democratic state attorneys general have taken the unusual step of abandoning their defense of state gay marriage bans.
Among the most recent is Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who stood by as a U.S. District Court ruled against his state's prohibition on same-sex marriage. However, his office said Monday that it would appeal that ruling -- in the interest of expediting the appeals process.
The U.S. attorney general's comments could encourage other state officials to follow in Herring's footsteps.
Members of the Republican Attorneys General Association blasted Holder's remarks in a statement Tuesday afternoon.  
"A state attorney general has a solemn duty to the state and its people to defend state laws and constitutional provisions against challenge under federal law. To refuse to do so because of personal policy preferences or political pressure erodes the rule of law on which all of our freedoms are founded. A government that does not enforce the law equally will lead our society to disrespect the rule of law," Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said.
Holder, in the Times interview, reportedly said that attorneys general should apply a high level of scrutiny on whether to defend a state law when constitutional issues are at stake.
"Engaging in that process and making that determination is something that's appropriate for an attorney general to do," Holder said.
He added, in reference to the Brown v. Board of Education case challenging school segregation: "If I were attorney general in Kansas in 1953, I would not have defended a Kansas statute that put in place separate-but-equal facilities."
A half-dozen Democratic state attorneys general have abandoned their defense of same-sex marriage bans.
But some Republican officials and gay marriage foes have sharply criticized this approach.
After Oregon's attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, decided not to defend such a marriage amendment, National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown called the move shameful.
"She swore an oath of office that she would enforce all the laws, not just those she personally agrees with. The people are entitled to a vigorous defense of the laws they enact, and the marriage amendment is no exception to that solemn obligation," he said in a statement.
As for Holder's comments, Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, disputed Holder's guidance and said in a statement following the speech that "state attorneys general are obligated to defend state marriage laws."
He added: "It's unfortunate and outrageous that Attorney General Holder doesn't understand that, but it's hardly surprising."
In Virginia, the federal court case could have major implications for similar laws throughout the southeast.
Adam Umhoefer, executive director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, urged the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the lower-court decision.
"Loving gay and lesbian couples and their families should not have to live one more day as second-class citizens under unjust laws," he said in a statement.

Labor unions upset with Obama's plan for 1 percent federal worker pay hike

Federal labor unions are crying foul over President Obama's proposal to raise federal employee pay by 1 percent next year, arguing the increase is inadequate.
David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the nation's largest federal employee union, said Monday that the 1 percent increase is "pitiful" and fails to compensate for sacrifice by government workers.
“Federal employees have endured years of pay freezes and cuts in retirement benefits,” Cox said in a statement. “Federal employees deserve a meaningful pay raise, not a token increase that will be more than eaten up by rising living costs, including higher retirement and healthcare costs.”
The increase would mark the second year in a row that civilian federal workers would get a 1 percent hike after three straight years of pay freezes. Pay went up in January. The Pentagon said military pay would go up by 1 percent as well.
Obama actually sets the pay increase by presidential order but his budget, which comes out on March 4, sets aside the money for it.
Union leaders argue the planned increase is not enough to compensate for recent hardships endured by federal workers, who will see an estimated $120 billion in lower wages and benefits during the next decade due to the pay freezes, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.
"A 1 percent pay raise for federal employees who have seen more austerity than anyone else is pitiful. It’s time for the country to invest in all its workers, including the dedicated federal employees who protect and serve the American people,” Cox said.
Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said a 3.3 percent increase is "fair and reasonable," and said union members would make their case before Congress this week, The Washington Post reported.
“I strongly believe that federal employees deserve more, and this amount is inadequate,” Kelley told the newspaper. "There is no question in my mind that inadequate raises will have consequences on recruitment and retention.”
An Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Post the budget would include "other measures important to ensuring that federal employees are fairly compensated and have the training and tools needed to succeed."
The official said the increase for federal workers "reflects the tight budget constraints we continue to face" and "recognizes the sacrifices they have already made through prior pay freezes, reductions in awards and furloughs due to sequestration last year."
Obama recently signed an executive action increasing the hourly minimum wage for federal contractors from $7.25 per to $10.10 in an effort to spur Congress to take up a bill to raise the federal minimum wage by the same amount, over two years.

Proposed budget will reportedly shrink Army to pre-WWII numbers

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will reportedly propose a Pentagon budget that will shrink the U.S. Army to its smallest number since 1940 and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets. 
The New York Times reported late Sunday that Hagel's proposal, which will be released to lawmakers and the public on Monday, will call for a reduction in size of the military that will leave it capable of waging war, but unable to carry out protracted occupations of foreign territory, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Under Hagel's plan, the number of troops in the Army will drop to between 440,000 and 450,000, a reduction of at least 120,000 soldiers from its post-Sept.11 peak.
Officials told the Times that Hagel's plan has been endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and protects funding for Special Operations forces and cyberwarfare. It also calls for the Navy to maintain all eleven of its aircraft carriers currently in operation. However, the budget proposal mandates the elimination of the entire fleet of Air Force A-10 attack aircraft, as well as the retiring of the U-2 spy plane, a stalwart of Cold War operations.
The budget plan does keep money for the F-35 warplane, a project which has been beset by delays and criticism over design flaws.
Other characteristics of the budget will likely draw further ire from veterans groups and members of Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Hagel would recommend a limit on military pay raises, higher fees for health-care benefits, less generous housing allowances, and a one-year freeze on raises for top military brass.
"Personnel costs reflect some 50% of the Pentagon budget and cannot be exempted in the context of the significant cuts the department is facing," Defense Department spokesman Adm. John Kirby told the Journal. "Secretary Hagel has been clear that, while we do not want to, we ultimately must slow the growth of military pay and compensation."
"This is a real uphill battle with Congress," Mieke Eoyang, director of the National Security Program at Third Way, a centrist think tank in Washington, told the Journal
"God bless [Hagel] for trying to get a handle on these costs," she said. "But in this political environment, in an election year, it's going to be hard for members of Congress to accept anything that's viewed as taking benefits away from troops."