Page 4A
NATION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
NATION
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Congress ushers in new
era of all-Republican rule
By DONNA CASSATA
Associated Press
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Melania Trump, right, looks on as her husband President-elect
Donald Trump talks to reporters during a New Year’s Eve party
at Mar-a-Lago, Saturday in Palm Beach, Fla.
Obama boosted White House
technology; Trump sees risks
By JULIE PACE
AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON
—
As
Barack Obama began preparing
to leave office, the first smart-
phone-toting U.S. president or-
dered his team to upgrade the
White House’s aging technology
for his successor. New computers
were purchased and faster inter-
net was installed.
Not included in the modern-
ization plans? A courier service.
But that delivery method of a
bygone era may be in for a come-
back under Donald Trump. De-
spite his voracious use of Twitter,
the president-elect appears to be
leaning toward old tech to ensure
the security of sensitive messag-
es.
“It’s very important, if you
have something really important,
write it out and have it delivered
by courier, the old-fashioned
way because I’ll tell you what,
no computer is safe,” Trump told
reporters Saturday in response to
questions about Russia’s alleged
hacking of Democrats during
the presidential election. Trump,
who doesn’t email or surf the in-
ternet, said days earlier that com-
puters “have complicated lives
very greatly.”
Trump’s skepticism of some
technology marks a sharp con-
trast from the president he’ll re-
place on Jan. 20. Obama, who
was a youthful 47 years old when
he took office, carries a specially
outfitted Blackberry, emails with
a small number of friends and
aides, and has received some of
his daily security briefings on an
iPad. He celebrated technologi-
cal innovations at an annual sci-
ence fair, created the job of chief
technology officer in the White
House and viewed technology as
key to making the sprawling fed-
eral government more efficient
and responsive to the public.
A much less frequent Twit-
ter user than Trump, Obama let
loose Sunday with a volley of
tweets highlighting some of his
accomplishments as president:
boosting clean energy, bringing
troops home, delivering “the lon-
gest streak of job growth in our
history,” passing a law to make
health care affordable, reducing
dependence on foreign oil and
working “to reaffirm that all are
created equal.”
But technology has also been
a burden for Obama. Online
sign-ups for his health care law
were crippled by massive tech-
nical issues, resulting in one of
the most embarrassing episodes
of his presidency. National Se-
curity Agency contractor Ed-
ward Snowden stole classified
information that he leaked to
journalists, revealing the Obama
administration’s bulk collection
of millions of Americans’ phone
records, as well as U.S. spying on
some friendly foreign leaders.
Trump, 70, rarely uses a com-
puter and sifts through stacks
of newspapers, magazines and
printed articles to read the news.
He panned candidates’ reliance
on data and technology in pres-
idential campaigns, preferring to
make decisions in part based on
the reaction from audiences at
his rallies. While Trump’s tweet-
storms are already legendary, he
utters some of his messages out
loud and leaves the actual typing
to aides.
Incoming White House press
secretary Sean Spicer said he ex-
pects Trump to continue using
Twitter and other social media
sites as president, casting it as an
effective way to communicate
with Americans.
“Absolutely, you’re going to
see Twitter,” Spicer said Sunday
on ABC’s “This Week.” ‘’I think
it freaks the mainstream media
out — that he has this following
of 45-plus million people that
follow him on social media” and
he “can have a direct conversa-
tion” with them.
WASHINGTON — Congress ush-
ers in a new era of all-Republican rule.
On Tuesday at noon, with plenty
of pomp and pageantry, members of
the 115th Congress will be sworn in,
with an emboldened GOP intent on
unraveling eight years of President
Barack Obama’s Democratic agen-
da and targeting massive legacy
programs from Franklin D. Roos-
evelt and Lyndon B. Johnson such
as Social Security and Medicare.
In the election, Republicans kept
their tight grip on the House and
outmaneuvered the Democrats for a
slim majority in the Senate. In less
than three weeks, on the West Front
of the Capitol, Chief Justice John
Roberts will administer the presi-
dential oath to Donald Trump, the
GOP’s newfound ally.
First up for Republicans is repeal
and delay of the health care law, ex-
pediting the process for scrapping
Obama’s major overhaul but hold-
ing off on some changes for up to
four years. The tax code is in the
cross-hairs. Conservatives want to
scuttle rules on the environment and
undo financial regulations created in
the aftermath of the 2008 econom-
ic meltdown, arguing they are too
onerous for businesses to thrive.
The only obstacle to the far-reach-
ing conservative agenda will be Sen-
ate Democrats who hold the power to
filibuster legislation, but even that has
its political limitations. Twenty-three
Democrats are up for re-election in
2018, including 10 from states Trump
won, and they could break ranks and
side with the GOP.
By the numbers. Vice President
Joe Biden, in one of his final official
acts, will administer the oath to 27 re-
turning senators and seven new ones.
Republicans will have a 52-48 advan-
tage in the Senate, which remains pre-
dominantly a bastion of white men.
There will be 21 women, of
whom 16 are Democrats and five,
Republicans; three African Amer-
icans, including California’s new
Democratic senator Kamala Harris,
and four Hispanics, including Neva-
da’s new Democratic senator Cath-
erine Cortez Masto.
Across the Capitol, the House is
expected to re-elect Rep. Paul Ryan
as Speaker, with all the campaign-sea-
son recriminations involving the Wis-
consin Republican and Trump largely
erased by GOP wins. Once sworn in,
Ryan will then administer the oath to
the House members.
The GOP will hold a hefty 241-
194 majority in the House, includ-
ing 52 freshmen — 27 Republicans,
including Wyoming’s Liz Cheney,
daughter of former Vice President
Dick Cheney, and 25 Democrats.
Confirming the cabinet. The
Senate will exercise its advice and
In this Feb.
4, 2009,
file photo,
Maricopa
County
Sheriff Joe
Arpaio,
left, orders
approxi-
mately 200
convicted
illegal im-
migrants
handcuffed
together
and moved
into a sep-
arate area
of Tent City,
for incar-
ceration
until their
sentences
are served
and they
are de-
ported to
their home
countries,
in Phoenix.
Independent ethics office gutted
WASHINGTON (AP) —
House Republicans on Monday
voted to eviscerate the Office of
Congressional Ethics, the inde-
pendent body created in 2008 to
investigate allegations of miscon-
duct by lawmakers after several
bribery and corruption scandals
sent members to prison.
The ethics change, which
prompted an outcry from Demo-
crats and government watchdog
groups, is part of a rules package
that the full House will vote on
Tuesday. The package also in-
cludes a means for Republican
leaders to punish lawmakers if
there is a repeat of the Democratic
sit-in last summer over gun control.
Under the ethics change pushed
by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the
non-partisan Office of Congres-
sional Ethics would fall under the
control of the House Ethics Com-
mittee, which is run by lawmakers.
It would be known as the Office of
Congressional Complaint Review,
and the rule change would require
that “any matter that may involve
a violation of criminal law must
be referred to the Committee on
Ethics for potential referral to law
enforcement agencies after an af-
firmative vote by the members,”
according to Goodlatte’s office.
Lawmakers would have the fi-
nal say under the change. House
Republicans voted 119-74 for the
Goodlatte measure despite argu-
ments from Speaker Paul Ryan,
R-Wis., and Majority Lead-
er Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.,
against the change. They failed to
sway rank-and-file Republicans,
some of whom have felt unfairly
targeted by the OCE.
consent role and consider nomina-
tions of 15 department secretaries
and six people tapped by Trump to
lead agencies or serve in roles with
Cabinet-level status, such as the
EPA and U.N. ambassador.
Democrats won’t make it easy.
Several in the party have been
highly critical of several of Trump’s
choices, from Rick Perry, who for-
got during the 2012 presidential
campaign that the Energy Depart-
ment was the one he wanted to
eliminate, to Treasury pick Steve
Mnuchin, the former Goldman
Sachs executive whom Democrats
have dubbed the “foreclosure king”
for his stake in OneWest Bank that
profited from the foreclosure crisis.
Others nominees, such as retired
Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis
for defense secretary, should easi-
ly win confirmation. First, though,
Congress must pass a law allowing
the former military man to serve in
“The amendment builds upon
and strengthens the existing Of-
fice of Congressional Ethics by
maintaining its primary area of
focus of accepting and reviewing
complaints from the public and
referring them, if appropriate, to
the Committee on Ethics,” Good-
latte said in a statement.
Democrats, led by Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi, reacted an-
grily.
“Republicans claim they want
to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night
before the new Congress gets sworn
in, the House GOP has eliminated
the only independent ethics over-
sight of their actions,” the California
lawmaker said in a statement. “Evi-
dently, ethics are the first casualty of
the new Republican Congress.”
Chris Carson, president of
the League of Women Voters,
said Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.,
should be ashamed of himself and
his leadership team.
“We all know the so-called
House Ethics Committee is
worthless for anything other than
a whitewash — sweeping corrup-
tion under the rug. That’s why the
independent Office of Congressio-
nal Ethics has been so important.”
The OCE was created in
March 2008 after the cases of
former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cun-
ningham, R-Calif., who served
more than seven years in prison
on bribery and other charges; as
well as cases of former Rep. Bob
Ney, R-Ohio, who was charged in
the Jack Abramoff lobbying scan-
dal and pleaded guilty to corrup-
tion charges and former Rep. Wil-
liam Jefferson, D-La., convicted
on corruption in a separate case.
a civilian post.
There is a limit to what Demo-
crats can do. Rules changes in 2013
allow some nominees, including
Cabinet picks, to be confirmed with
a simple majority, preventing Dem-
ocrats from demanding 60 votes to
move forward.
Supreme court vacancy. Justice
Antonin Scalia died last February
and Republicans refused to consider
Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland,
insisting that the next president should
fill the high court vacancy that’s now
lasted more than 10 months.
Trump released a list of potential
choices during the campaign that
included Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who
clerked for Justice Samuel Alito.
Since the election, the president-elect
also has met with Texas Sen. Ted
Cruz, who clerked for former Chief
Justice William Rehnquist, prompt-
ing talk about a possible nomination
for the onetime presidential rival.
East Oregonian
AP Photo/Ross D.
Franklin, File
Bully or modern-day Wyatt Earp?
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s mixed legacy
By JACQUES BILLEAUD
Associated Press
PHOENIX
—
The
full-throated bravado that made
Sheriff Joe Arpaio a household
name in debates over illegal im-
migration and the treatment of
jail inmates was missing as he
started his last news conference
in a law enforcement career that
spanned a half-century.
After being charged with a
crime and booted from office by
voters, the 84-year-old Arpaio
looked tired and dispirited as
he defended his investigation of
President Barack Obama’s birth
certificate — a debunked con-
troversy that critics say Arpaio
exploited to raise funds from his
supporters.
The sheriff mispronounced
several words as he attacked the
birth record of the president he
blames for his political demise.
The media-savvy lawman ended
the news conference by unchar-
acteristically declining to mix it
up with reporters about the cred-
ibility of the five-year Obama
investigation by his volunteer
posse.
He told his 75 supporters in
the room that the investigation
wasn’t about whether Obama
was born in the U.S. and instead
focused on a claim that the birth
certificate was fraudulent.
“This is tough for me to
say — believe me, all of you
media know me,” Arpaio said.
“Sometimes I get diarrhea of
“He was an elected sheriff — he didn’t have to
worry about a town council firing him. He could
be straight up with people, and he was.”
— State Sen. John Kavanagh
the mouth. But I am going to tell
you, we are not going to answer
any questions. There is more
sensitive information that we
have regarding this matter, and I
am not going into it.”
The investigation was anoth-
er questionable tactic in Arpaio’s
24-year tenure as the sheriff of
metro Phoenix that ended Sun-
day and was also marked by traf-
fic patrols and business raids that
targeted immigrants; decisions
to house jail inmates in tents,
dress them in pink underwear
and make them work on chain
gangs; round up dead-beat par-
ents; and arrest animal abusers.
Arpaio’s critics say he was a
bully who was driven by a hun-
ger for publicity and who treated
powerless people harshly be-
cause it was popular with voters.
Attorney Mike Manning,
who filed several lawsuits
against the sheriff over in-custo-
dy deaths, said the lawman will
be remembered for bringing a
“culture of cruelty” to his jails.
Arpaio stepped over the line
when he treated inmates await-
ing trial as if they were hard-
ened criminals, even though the
Constitution prohibits punishing
people before they are convicted
of crimes, Manning said.
“He wanted those jails to
punish and hurt those detain-
ees,” Manning said.
Supporters counter that Ar-
paio is a standup guy who did
what the public wanted and was
the only local police official to
do something about illegal im-
migration.
Tom Morrissey, a retired
chief U.S. marshal who has been
a friend of Arpaio for more than
two decades, believes history
will be kind to the sheriff.
“He will be celebrated and re-
membered 100 years from now,
like Wyatt Earp was,” Morrissey
said, referring to the Old West
sheriff credited with taming
Tombstone.
Arpaio took big chances in
using jail tents and dressing in-
mates in pink underwear and
was correct in taking on illegal
immigration a decade ago when
voters demanded action and
state lawmakers passed laws to
confront the problem, Morrissey
said. But in doing so, he said,
Arpaio was unfairly portrayed as
anti-Latino.
“Believe me, there is a lot of
support for him in the legal Lati-
no community, but it just didn’t
get played that way,” Morrissey
said.
Lydia Guzman, a Latino civ-
il rights advocate who helped
organize volunteers to video-re-
cord encounters between offi-
cers and motorists during the
immigration patrols, said Arpaio
turned his back on the Hispanic
community by caving in to pub-
lic pressure to crack down on il-
legal immigration.
“Joe is a politician and has to
get re-elected, so he did what he
had to do to get himself elected,”
Guzman said.
Arpaio, through a spokes-
man, declined a request to speak
about his legacy.
“I built a reputation in this
world,” Arpaio said in an in-
terview days after his defeat in
November. “Everyone knows
who the sheriff is. That’s one
advantage. I’ve worked hard in
this life.”
State Sen. John Kavanagh,
an Arpaio friend and proponent
of tough crackdowns on illegal
immigration, said the lawman
gained popularity because he
created a law-and-order persona
that connected with voters.
“He wasn’t afraid to speak
his mind, even if it was politi-
cally incorrect,” Kavanagh said.
“He was an elected sheriff —
he didn’t have to worry about
a town council firing him. He
could be straight up with people,
and he was.”
That base of devoted support-
ers and impressive fundraising
helped Arpaio get elected to six
terms.
Page 5A
Sen. Warren seeks
to pull pot shops out
of banking limbo
By STEVE LEBLANC
Associated Press
BOSTON — As marijuana shops sprout in
states that have legalized the drug, they face
a critical stumbling block — lack of access
to the kind of routine banking services other
businesses take for granted.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachu-
setts Democrat, is leading an effort to make
sure vendors working with legal marijuana
businesses, from chem-
ists who test marijuana
for harmful substances to
firms that provide securi-
ty, don’t have their bank-
ing services taken away.
It’s part of a wider ef-
fort by Warren and others
to bring the burgeoning $7
billion marijuana industry
in from a fiscal limbo she
said forces many shops to Sen. Warren
rely solely on cash, mak-
ing them tempting targets for criminals.
After voters in Warren’s home state ap-
proved a November ballot question to legal-
ize the recreational use of pot, she joined nine
other senators in sending a letter to a key fed-
eral regulator, the Financial Crimes Enforce-
ment Network, calling on it to issue addition-
al guidance to help banks provide services to
marijuana shop vendors.
Twenty-eight states have legalized mari-
juana for medicinal or recreational use.
Warren, a member of the Senate Banking
Committee, said there are benefits to letting
marijuana-based businesses move away from
a cash-only model.
“You make sure that people are really pay-
ing their taxes. You know that the money is
not being diverted to some kind of criminal
enterprise,” Warren said recently. “And it’s
just a plain old safety issue. You don’t want
people walking in with guns and masks and
saying, ‘Give me all your cash.”’
A spokesman for the Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network said the agency is re-
viewing the letter.
There has been some movement to ac-
commodate the banking needs of marijuana
businesses.
Two years ago, the U.S. Department of the
Treasury gave banks permission to do busi-
ness with legal marijuana entities under some
conditions. Since then, the number of banks
and credit unions willing to handle pot money
rose from 51 in 2014 to 301 in 2016.
Warren, however, said fewer than 3 per-
cent of the nation’s 11,954 federally regulated
banks and credit unions are serving the can-
nabis industry.
Taylor West, deputy director of the Na-
tional Cannabis Industry Association, a trade
organization for 1,100 marijuana businesses
nationwide, said access to banking remains a
top concern.
“What the industry needs is a sustainable
solution that services the entire industry in-
stead of tinkering around the edges,” Taylor
said. “You don’t have to be fully in favor
of legalized marijuana to know that it helps
no one to force these businesses outside the
banking system.”
Sam Kamin, a professor at the University
of Denver Sturm College of Law who stud-
ies marijuana regulation, said there’s only so
much states can do on their own.
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