Opinion
Republicans’ Selective Memory
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ERNIE F OSTER
Founder/Publisher
B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER
Executive Editor
J ERRY F OSTER
Advertising Manager
L ISA L OVING
News Editor
H ELEN S ILVIS
Multimedia Editor
P ATRICIA I RVIN
D AVID K IDD
Graphic Designer
M ONICA J. F OSTER
Seattle Office Coordinator
J ULIE K EEFE
S USAN F RIED
Photographers
The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
IMM Publications Inc.,
415 N. Killingsworth St.,
T
o paraphrase Ronald Rea-
gan, arguably the most
overrated U.S. president in
history, there they go again. They,
of course, are Republicans in the
House of Representatives. And
they are going after President
Obama yet again, this time over
his use of executive orders, presi-
dential directives that have been
issued by every president over the
past 73 years.
First, let’s brush up on our high
school civics.
According to a report by the
Congressional Research Service
(CRS), “Presidents from Franklin
D. Roosevelt through Barack
Obama have issued orders that
seek to leverage the government’s
procurement spending to promote
socio-economic policies that some
commentators would characterize
as extraneous to contractors’ pro-
vision of goods or services to the
government.”
The report, titled “Presidential
Authority to Impose Requirements
on
Federal
Contractors,”
explained, “Presidential power to
issue executive orders must derive
from the Constitution or from an
act of Congress. Contractor-relat-
ed executive orders historically
have been issued based upon the
President’s powers under Article II
of the Constitution or the powers
delegated to the President by
FPASA,” a reference to the Feder-
al Property and Administrative
Services Act of 1949.
The CRS report noted. “FPASA
states that its purpose is to ‘pro-
vide the Federal Government with
an economical and efficient sys-
tem for … [p]rocuring and
federally funded construction con-
tracts in the Philadelphia area
T HE C URRY valued in excess of $500,000 to
R EPORT
submit ‘acceptable affirmative
action program[s],’ including ‘spe-
cific goals’ for ‘minority
George E.
manpower utilization’ in six con-
Curry
struction trades prior to contract
award.”
Of the past 10 presidents, begin-
ning with Franklin D. Roosevelt,
supplying property and nonper- President Obama has issued the
sonal services’ and authorizes the fewest executive orders per
President to prescribe any ‘poli- year. According to the American
cies and directives’ consistent with Presidency Project, Obama issued
the act that he ‘considers neces- 147 executive orders during his
sary to carry out’ the act’s goals of first term, compared to 504 by
FDR, 266 by Dwight D. Eisen-
efficiency and economy.”
One of the most significant pres- hower, 247 by Richard M. Nixon,
idential actions was Executive 213 by Ronald Reagan, 200 by
Of the past 10 presidents, beginning
with Franklin D. Roosevelt, President
Obama has issued the fewest
executive orders per year.
Order 11246, which was signed by
President Lyndon B. Johnson on
Sept. 28, 1965. It requires federal
contractors to “take affirmative
action to ensure that applicants are
employed, and that employees are
treated during employment, with-
out regard to their race, color,
religion, sex or national origin.”
According to CRS, “Under the
authority of Executive Order
11246, officials of the Department
of Labor issued two orders com-
monly known as the Philadelphia
Plan. The Philadelphia Plan
required bidders for federal and
Bill Clinton, and 173 by George
W. Bush over a similar period.
As of June 20, Obama had
issued 35 executive orders during
his second term.
His executive actions have
stopped the deportation of immi-
grants who entered the U.S.
illegally as children, affected cli-
mate change by compelling power
plants to reduce their emissions by
30 percent by 2030, raised the
minimum wage for federal con-
tractors to $10.10 an hour,
extended rights for same-sex cou-
ples and impacted gun control
with 23 separate executive orders.
Strangely, Republicans, who
have voted 54 times over four
years to repeal or alter the Afford-
able Care Act, are not planning to
sue President Obama on any of
those issues. Instead, House
Speaker John A. Boehner (R-
Ohio) has asked Congress for
permission to sue Obama because
he suspended the start date of the
employer mandate provision of
the health care law.
It doesn’t get more ridiculous
than this. Unable to repeal what
they call Obamacare, House
Republicans are moving faster
than the lips of an auctioneer on
crack to sue the president because
he is making it easier to comply
with what everyone except anti-
Obama Republicans recognize as
the law of the land.
As Sabastian Payne wrote in
the Washington Post, “… For all
the accusations of abuse of power,
his [Obama] actual uses of his
executive authority so far aren’t
that far-reaching: Not so much the
smack of firm government, more
nudging in a certain direction.
George W. Bush for example man-
aged to gut the Presidential
Records Act (greatly reducing
access to presidential records),
limit federal funding for stem cell
research and sidestep the Geneva
Convention on interrogation tech-
niques – all through executive
orders, even when he had Con-
gress on his side. Interestingly, all
of these orders were later rescind-
ed by Obama.”
Read the rest online at
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Drop in Black Homeownership Rate
E
ach year the Joint Center for
Housing Studies at Harvard
University assesses the
nation’s housing outlook. The
recently-released The State of the
Nation’s Housing in 2014reveals
that troubled housing areas remain
in the midst of rising prices, higher
interest rates and low inventories.
According to the report, “Mil-
lions of homeowners, particularly
in minority and high-poverty
neighborhoods, are still underwa-
ter on their mortgages, while
millions more renters have been
forced to live in housing they can-
not afford or is structurally
inadequate. And with the ongoing
growth in low-income households,
housing assistance reaches a
shrinking share of those in need.”
A few more data points from the
2014 report reveal:
• Homeownership rates have fall-
en six percentage points among
Black households — double that
among White households;
• In 2011-12, Black applications
for conventional mortgages
were denied 40 percent of the
time; among Hispanics, the
denial rate was 25 percent –
nearly two to three times that for
whites; and
• More than 25 percent of mort-
gage homeowners in both
high-poverty and minority
neighborhoods were underwater
– owing more than their homes
are now worth – in 2013. This
rate is nearly twice the shares in
Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner July 16, 2014
R ESPONSIBLE
L ENDING
Charlene
Crowell
either white or low-poverty
neighborhoods.
For Mike Calhoun, president of
the Center for Responsible Lend-
ing,
these
homeownership
disparities reflect a devastating
generational loss of wealth. Partic-
moderation is likely to persist
until job growth manages to lift
household incomes. Even amid a
broader recovery, though, many
hard-hit communities still strug-
gle and millions of households
continue to pay excessive shares
of income for housing.”
The combined effects of stu-
dent loan burdens and lower
median incomes for younger and
middle-aged adults are also cited
as key factors in the nation’s hous-
ing recovery. Median incomes are
at their lowest levels in records
dating back to 1970, according to
the report.
With the ongoing growth in low-
income households, housing
assistance reaches a shrinking share
of those in need
ipating in a panel discussion with
the Joint Center and other housing
policy experts, Calhoun noted that
the loss of homeownership in
Black communities really reflect-
ed a one in six reduction, as Black
homeownership peaked at 49 per-
cent before the housing crisis.
“With promising increases in
home construction, sales, and
prices, the housing market gained
steam in early 2013. But when
interest rates notched up at mid-
year, momentum slowed. . . . This
“Between 2001 and 2010, the
share of households aged 25-34
with student loan debt soared from
26 percent to 39 percent, with the
median amount rising from
$10,000 to $15,000 in real terms.
Within this group, the share with
at least $50,000 in student debt
more than tripled from five per-
cent to 16 percent. For these
borrowers, the need to pay off
these outsized loans will likely
delay any move to homeowner-
ship.”
For the ninth consecutive year,
the rate of homeownership contin-
ues to decline. According to the
Housing Vacancy Survey (HVS),
it is the lowest level since 1995.
Housing rentals, by contrast, show
growth doubling the average pace
in any decade since the 1960s.
Whether owning a home or rent-
ing, nearly 41 million households
are now paying more than 30 per-
cent of their income for housing –
1 million more than last year and 9
million more than a decade earlier.
A household is considered ‘hous-
ing burdened’ when their monthly
housing costs exceeds 30 percent
of income. Severely housing bur-
dened households where 50
percent or more of income is for
housing, now number 5.8 million
households.
The most cost-burdened house-
holds – whether renting or owning
in 2012 – earned less than $30,000
per year.
Working households would need
to earn at least $42,200 a year to
afford the $1,052 median monthly
gross rent charged for new units
built in the past four years – well
above the income of many renters.
Further in 2012, there were only
3.3 million rental units that were
affordable and available to 11.5
million extremely low-income
households.
Read the rest online at
www.theskanner.com