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C-SPAN released a survey Friday that asked historians to rank past presidents and former-President Obama was voted the country's 12th best, right behind Woodrow Wilson and in front of James Monroe.

Historians were asked to essentially grade the presidents on items like public persuasion and moral authority. Politico reported that Obama rated high in the category of equal justice for all, but received low marks for his relationship with Congress.

Of course, it is difficult to determine the effectiveness of a presidency so soon after the president left office.

"Although 12th is a respectable overall ranking, one would have thought that former President Obamas favorable rating when he left office would have translated into a higher ranking in this presidential survey," Edna Greene Medford, a Howard University professor and member of C-SPAN's historical advisory board, told Politico.

Abraham Lincoln retained the top position, and George Washington came in a close second.

Read this article:
Historians rank Obama 12th best president in new survey ...

The resolution is astart of rolling back harmful Obama-era regulations, which have cost the American business consumers a staggering $890 billion, making our companies less competitive and even driving some of them out of business. White House press secretarySean Spicer, press briefing, Feb. 14, 2017

The White House spokesman, in speaking about a House resolution signed by President Trump to roll back regulations enacted in the closing months of the Obama administration, cited an interesting statistic that Obama-era regulations have cost the American business consumers a staggering $890 billion.

That seemed like a rather specific number, so we wanted to explore how valid it might be.

A White House spokesman said Spicer gotthe figure from a calculation done by the American Action Forum, a right-leaning issue advocacy group run by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Sam Batkins, AAFs director of regulatory policy, wrote that with a last-minute flourish of $24 billion in final regulatory costs in the last three weeks, the Obama Administration passed $890 billion in cumulative burdens. He said that the George W. Bush administration averaged $42 billion in average annual final-rule costs, compared with$111 billion for President Barack Obama. Under Obama, the agencies with the biggest regulatory impact were the Environmental Protection Agency ($344 billion) and the Department of Energy ($194 billion).

These numbers are supposed to represent net present value estimates, Batkins said, based onthe published costs during the Obama administration. Some of those regulations have been delayed by courts or the administration and have not imposed costs, but its just a measure of what regulators publish in the Federal Register, he said.

On its website, the AAFhas a nifty interactive feature called the Regulation Rodeo, which provides links to the costs and benefits of every rule cited. We used this to spot-check how the AAF calculated its numbers. Whenever possible, AAF used the net present value provided by the administration, but otherwise it would do its own calculation based on the range of cost estimates provided.

For instance, a Renewable Fuel Standard Program rule published in 2015 listed its annual costs as $203 to $240 million in 2015 and $480 to $1,182 million in 2016. The AAF listed the total cost as $1.4 billion ($240 million + $1.182 billion) which is the high end of the estimate. Thats the number that was part of the $890 billion. For the annual cost of the rule, AAF used a midpoint ($711 million). We try to capture those ranges in our annual and total figures, Batkins said.

Another nuance in the AAF data is that the estimated benefits of the rules clearly outweigh the costs. From AAFs data:

Total Costs: $890 billion Annual Costs: $139 billion Annual Benefits: $458 billion

We realize that some experts have raised serious questions about how some of the benefits are calculated and whether they are valid but the fact remains that regulators who developed the cost estimates determined that the benefits would outweigh the costs.

Susan Dudley, director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center and administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Bush, said that there arent glaring errors in the AAF calculation, but it suffers from the flaws all such estimates do. Those are ex ante estimates, rather than actual measured costs.

Batkins noted that there is little research done to see whether an agencys estimates actually came close to reality. A comprehensive approach would conduct a retrospective review of everything during the Obama administration to determine actual costs imposed versus benefits generated, likely an impossible task, he said. A 2015 retrospective study of environmental regulations found that most costs and benefits were often overestimated.

Dudley said anyflaws in the estimates are even more likely in the agency calculations of the benefits. I dont think its wrong per se to speak only of the costs, she said. Its equivalent to the fiscal budget, where we talk of the size of the budget while recognizing that those expenditures also have benefits.

The Obama administration certainly imposed many regulations. But Spicer errs in suggesting that these costs have already been paid by consumers and businesses, when in fact some are in the future, and in claiming that this is an absolutely (staggering) solid figure. The number is derived from agency estimates, but in some cases, the high end of an estimate was used. Moreover, the estimates often have significant ranges and it is unlikely that the actual costs of the rules will ever be determined.

Spicer would have been on more solid ground if he had said the regulations were estimated to cost as much $890 billion, since that would have signaled this was both an estimate and possibly a high-end one at that.

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The resolution is a start of rolling back harmful Obama-era regulations, which have cost the American business consumers a staggering $890 billion."

Sean Spicer

White House Press Secretary

at a press briefing, Washington, D.C.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

02/14/2017

Original post:
The White House claim that Obama-era regulations have cost $890 billion - Washington Post

President Donald Trump and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (center) play golf in Florida on Feb. 11. | Getty

The new president, who attacked Obama for golfing and personal travel, spends his first month outdoing his predecessor.

By Josh Dawsey

02/21/17 05:11 AM EST

Donald Trump regularly assailed President Obama for playing golf, then spent the first weekends of his own presidency doing just that. He attacked Obama for using Air Force One to campaign, and did it over the weekend just a month into the job. He mocked Obama for heading out of Washington at taxpayer expense, but appears to have no qualms about doing so himself.

One month in, Trump is using the presidency to boost his political and personal goals not breaking laws or ethics rules, experts say, but disputing his past criticisms and vows.

Story Continued Below

"Donald Trump has zero worry about contradicting himself because he does it all day long," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian who has met with Trump. "He figures he can get away with it because he does it all the time. There is no worry about it. He says one thing and then says another, and his supporters don't hold it against him."

The new president has taken three weekend getaways in the first month of office, spending millions of taxpayer dollars in Secret Service protection and about 25% of his time away from the White House. The Secret Service has also paid for security for expensive business trips for his sons' business ventures to foreign countries.

The actions seem to fly in the face of how he mocked Obama's travel. "President Barack Obama's vacation is costing taxpayers millions of dollars -- unbelievable!" he wrote in one of many tweets criticizing Obama for taking a trip.

Trump has also headed to the golf course at least six times since he took office, another favorite criticism against Obama. Trump mocked Obama more than two dozen times for golfing amid problems in the White House.

"Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter, Trump said in 2014.

Trump said last August that if he became president, he wouldnt have time for golf. "I'm going to be working for you, I'm not going to have time to go play golf," he said at an event in Virginia.

Aides have tried to block reporters from seeing Trump play in recent weeks, even covering a basement room with black plastic bags to obscure views.

His spokespeople have frequently refused to confirm he was playing, even as he stayed at the course for almost five hours the usual time it takes to play a round. They have sometimes said he is playing a "few holes" of golf.

After reports that he golfed a full 18 holes with Rory McIlroy on Sunday, his spokeswoman confirmed the much longer round on Monday, but noted he also "had a full day of meetings, calls and interviews" about picking a new national security adviser.

Obama has said vacations were important to him because the presidency requires constant work, and that he was never off duty. The president often golfed with old friends from Chicago, who he said kept him grounded, and would do work before and after just like Trump does.

To be sure, there is nothing illegal or unethical with presidents frequently playing golf. They are allowed to vacation as much as as they want. George W. Bush went frequently to his Texas ranch. The elder Bushes went to Kennebunkport.

They can use Air Force One for whatever they'd like to use it for, said ethics expert Richard Painter, though they do have to reimburse some of the costs.

"Are we going to have a four-year campaign? Are we going to pay for that? Are we going to pay for him to be there every weekend?" asked Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer who worked for President George W. Bush. "We have always accepted that presidents campaign in the year of an election, but he has been in office one month."

When Air Force One nosed its way to an airport hangar in Melbourne, Fla., on Saturday beneath a blazing Florida sky, the crowd whooped, snapped pictures, gasped and raised babies on their shoulders at the most powerful of American symbols approached. The soundtrack from "Air Force One" blared in the background.

"It was absolutely unbelievable," said Rick Lacey, the chair of the Brevard County Republican Party. "Air Force One had never landed here. Everyone was on cloud nine."

Two days earlier, the White House told the Washington Post the plane would not be used as a prop at a political rally. And Trump frequently criticized Obama for campaigning with the plane, particularly when Hillary Clinton was on board during the 2016 race.

"Taxpayers are paying a fortune for the use of Air Force One on the campaign trail by President Obama and Crooked Hillary. A total disgrace!" he wrote in summer of 2016.

"Looking at Air Force One @ MIA. Why is he campaigning instead of creating jobs & fixing Obamacare?" he tweeted in November.

The rally, his supporters say, was a necessary move for the president, who left energized after a rough first month. "It is a battery-charger for him," said Barry Bennett, a consultant who worked for his campaign. "He goes out there and has his message unfiltered and talks to the American people for 45 minutes, and it's all over cable TV."

Lacey, the Brevard County Republican, said the rally helped Trump remind his voters he was working for them. Roger Stone, a longtime political adviser, said "with all the political carping in Washington, it shows people he can get 10,000 people to come out and that he has a powerful political base."

"It gets him past some of the Washington bureaucracy and to the American people," said Lacey. He added that he understood the president had to fly on Air Force One because it was safer. "If he started doing that every week, I'd have a problem with it. But I think it's good for him to get out."

White House aides say the trips to Mar-a-Lago are healthy for a president who often spends 12 hours or more in the White House every day, barely breathing fresh air. They have encouraged him to get away from the White House more.

"The golf is refreshing for him," Bennett said. "Anywhere he can go to decompress is good."

Aides say to expect frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago, and that Trump won't give up golfing anytime soon. He expects to play more with foreign leaders and others he is negotiating with.

Whether Democrats begin attacking Trump for golfing and vacationing remains uncertain.

Stone said Trump deserved "time away," just like Obama deserved the time away. His message before he was president was that "the country is going to hell, and Obama is out golfing."

"It was rhetorically very successful," Stone said.

See more here:
Trump forgets his Obama criticisms - Politico

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai, Googles C.E.O., was born in Chennai, India, immigrating to the U.S. to attend Stanford in 1993.

By Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Alphabet president and Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and lived in the Soviet Union until he was six, immigrating with his family to the United States in 1979.

By FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, was born and raised in South Africa. He obtained Canadian citizenship in 1989 and briefly attended college at Queen's University in Ontario. He transferred to University of Pennsylvania, in part because such a move would allow him to get an H-1B visa and stay in the U.S. after college.

By Justin Chin/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Safra Catz, who served as co-C.E.O. of Oracle, was born in Israel. She resigned from her executive role in December after joining Donald Trumps presidential transition team.

By David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

The founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, was born in France to Iranian parents. He immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s.

By Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang moved from Taiwan to San Jose, California, in 1978, at the age of 10.

by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

Brothers John Collison and Patrick Collison, twenty-something college dropouts who emigrated from Ireland, co-founded Stripe, a $9.2 billion payments start-up.

By Jerome Favre/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Adam Neumann, raised on an Israeli kibbutz, moved to the U.S. in 2001, after briefly serving in the Israeli army as a navy doctor. Now hes the chief executive of the $16.9 billion New York-based WeWork, which sublets space to individuals and companies.

by Noam Galai/Getty Images.

The co-founder and C.E.O. of health insurance start-up Oscar, Mario Schlosser, came to the United States from Germany as an international student, receiving his M.B.A. from Harvard.

By Kholood Eid/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who has expressed support for the presidents executive action restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries, is an immigrant himself. Before he co-founded PayPal and made one of the earliest large investments in Facebook, Thiel moved with his family from Germany, where he was born. In 2011, he also became a citizen of New Zealand, adding a third passport to his growing collection.

By Roger Askew/Rex/Shutterstock.

Born in Hyderabad, India, Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella came to the U.S. to study computer science, joining Microsoft in 1992.

By Stephen Brashear/Getty Images.

Garrett Camp helped co-found Uber. He was born in Alberta, Canada, and now resides in the Bay Area.

By Justin Lane/EPA/Rex/Shutterstock.

Read this article:
Uber Hires an Obama Alum to Save It from Another PR Disaster - Vanity Fair

As the world waits to get a sense of the contours of the Trump administrations policies in Syria, reports have surfaced that the Pentagon may propose ramping up U.S. involvement and sending in ground troops.

In the retrospective, it is axiomatic among Washingtons foreign policy establishment that the Obama administrations response to the chaos in Syria will be a lasting stain on his legacy. With nearly 500,000 dead since the March 2011 uprising that sparked the war, the foreign policy elite have blamed Barack ObamaBarack ObamaVa. gov vetoes bill to defund Planned Parenthood Yes, it's war: How the media should fight back against Trump How will history judge Obamas actions in Syria? MORE for not doing more.

But how will history view Obamas Syria policy? Unlike so many other instances during his presidency, when it came to Syria, Obama defied the Washington playbook and kept the United States from getting mired in another Middle East conflict, sure to unleash a host of unintended consequences.

In a much ballyhooed Atlantic interview last year, Obama criticized what he called the playbook that comes of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, which prescribes responses that tend to be militarized. He relied on a prominent group of liberal interventionist foreign policy advisers, including his secretary of State, Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonJudd Apatow compares Trump election to rape in stand-up Yes, it's war: How the media should fight back against Trump Clinton to Trump: Speak out against anti-Semitic attacks now MORE, national security adviser, Susan Rice, and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha PowerSamantha PowerHow will history judge Obamas actions in Syria? Russia's ambassador to the United Nations dies Trump's top diplomat enters pressure cooker MORE, who had these same tendencies throughout his presidency.

Clinton, Rice and Power led the push to intervene in Libya in 2011, and were equally vociferous in their advocacy for greater U.S. engagement in Syria. But the pressure to ramp up U.S. support to Syrian rebels did not just come from within the administration. Indeed, most of the foreign-policy establishment in Washington, both Democrat and Republican supported a larger effort in Syria.

In 2011, Obama called for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, and as the civil war became increasingly complex and bloody, calls for intervention grew markedly. Yet, many of the critics of the presidents Syria policy articulated exaggerated views about the United Statess ability to shape events in Syria. According to Josh Landis, one of the foremost Syria analysts in the U.S., There is no way that the United States was going to solve the Syria Problem in any constructive way and just keeping us out of it to the extent he [Obama] did was a boon.

After significant pressure, Obama eventually relented somewhat and in 2014 asked Congress for funds to train and equip approximately 15,000 rebels in Jordan. The program was colossal failure, and the administration was eventually forced to admit that only four or five of the recruits in the program returned to fight in Syria.

The failure to build a credible rebel force in Syria is not some outlier: U.S. efforts to arm insurgent groups rarely succeed, and often come back to bite.

According to several CIA studies beginning in 2012, past attempts by the agency to arm insurgent forces had little impact, and were particularly ineffective without direct U.S. support on the ground. Obama was always deeply dubious of the rebels ability to be an effective fighting force, arguing that the moderate opposition was made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists going up against a well-armed state backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

Those in favor of greater support for the Syrian rebels were enamored with the notion of moderate rebels. The problem all along was that such a contingent would have never been effective: The Assad regimes violent and draconian response to the early peaceful protests helped to quickly suppress moderate voices. According to Landis, America failed not because it didnt try, but because its moderates were incompetent and unpopular. Overall, Landis argues that extremist groups won out in Syria because they were better fighters with more strategic vision.

Although the president was widely excoriated for damaging U.S. credibility by not following through on his red line remark on the use of chemical weapons, a 2013 U.S.-Russian agreement to destroy Syrias chemical weapon arsenal was hugely important to long-term regional stability. The red line comment was not an enunciation of policy, and the deal was perfectly consistent with Obamas assertion that he would not sit by if the regime was to use chemical weapons.

While the mission to rid Syria of all its chemical weapons came up short, it did dramatically lighten the regimes arsenal. Suppose that instead of reaching the agreement with Russia, the U.S. began an earnest effort to overthrow the Assad regime. Filling the vacuum would have been radical militias, like the Islamic State, who were ascendant in 2013 and would have scrambled for control of the chemical weapons arsenal, threatening the entire Middle East.

In deciding to intervene in Libya in 2011, Obama failed to apply the lessons of the Iraq War. While Moammar Gadhafi may be gone, its arguable that the country is even worse off than under his rule. With the exception of Tunisia, throughout the region, regime changes sparked by the Arab Awakening have only resulted in new or reinforced authoritarian regimes, brutal conflict and anomie. Why would Syria have been any different? If the U.S. had toppled the Assad regime, who would have filled the vacuum? Even before the civil war, the Syrian opposition was weak and hopelessly divided, and the ensuing conflict only deepened those divisions.

For a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize and decried the Washington playbook, Obama resorted to military force far too often. In Syria, however, he believed it was his responsibility to ensure the U.S. was not bogged down in another Middle East war.

Washingtons foreign policy establishment continually fails to learn an important lesson: There are limits to American power, and American engagement does not necessarily result in desirable outcomes. Its a point that is clearly lost on those who continually call for American military engagement to solve the all the worlds problems.

The Syrian civil war has been an utter tragedy. If anything, the Obama administration should have done much more to address the refugee crisis that is wreaking havoc across the Middle East and Europe. The temptation to intervene in situations like the Syrian civil war is humane and understandable. But, in these thorny cases, leaders with circumspection are vital to preventing further conflagration. Fortunately, President Obama was able to do just that and keep the U.S. out of Syria.

With President Trump promising enhanced cooperation with Russia to battle the Islamic State, we can only hope that moving forward the U.S. does not entangle itself in the Syrian quagmire.

Adam Gallagher is a writer and analyst focusing on U.S. foreign policy. He is a senior writer forTropics of Metaand has his work has appeared in The American Prospect, The Huffington Post, The National Interest, The Diplomat, International Policy Digest, Mondoweiss and for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among other outlets. He has been an officially accredited election observer in Tunisia (2014) and Myanmar (2015). Follow him on Twitter @aegallagher10.

The views of contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

Read more here:
How will history judge Obama's actions in Syria? - The Hill (blog)