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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Daily Political Wire

George Wenschhof 

Biden, NRA to Meet Today - expectations are not high anything of merit will be accomplished.  The NRA has made it clear it does not support any gun control legislation.

"I hope a tragedy like this one will get more and more people who’ve kowtowed to the gun lobby to rethink that, but it’s hard to be very optimistic,” said former Rep. Mike Barnes (D-Md.), who duked it out with the NRA as head of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in the early 2000s. “It’s very hard to see anything meaningful passing in this House of Representatives.”

President Barack Obama said after the shooting that he wanted concrete proposals in front of Congress by mid-January.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration still has high hopes for the meetings. “I don’t want to and the president doesn’t want to prejudge the actions of organizations or groups who are stakeholders in this discussion,” Carney told reporters Wednesday.  Politico.com has more here.

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Connecticut Governor Says No To Guns in Schools - Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) choked up Wednesday when addressing the Newtown elementary school shooting that left 20 students dead, and bluntly rejected the notion of putting more guns in classrooms as protection. 
 
"When it comes to preventing future acts of violence in our schools, let me say this: more guns are not the answer," he said in his state of the state address. "Freedom is not a handgun on the hip of every teacher and security should not mean a guard posted outside every classroom."  CNN.com has a video here.
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Lack of diversity in Obama Cabinet - With the recent nominations of Senator John Kerry (R-Mass.), former Senator Chuck Hagel and Jack Lew for three open cabinet positions, President Obama is coming under scrutiny for a lack of diversity.

This morning appearing on MSNBC, Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel said the lack of diversity in President Obama's Cabinet is "embarassing as hell."

The Obama administration pushed back with reminding people of the two women nominationed and conformed as Supreme Court justices.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced yesterday she will be resigning, creating another opening for an Obama nomination in his cabinet.

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DSCC Announces New Hires for 2014 Election - intending to maintain the majority Democrats enjoy in the Senate, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee announced new hires today.  TPM.com has more on the hires here.

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Obama Campaign To Help Push Policy - President Barack Obama’s campaign is set to be reconfigured into an operation that will assist the White House’s policy goals in a second term.

The operation could be converted to a 501(c)(4) or a super PAC. The restructured organization will be led by former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina and other top operatives from the campaign, including Stephanie Cutter and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon.

The grass-roots infrastructure put in place since the president’s first campaign in 2008 includes what is likely an unprecedented number of email addresses and cellphone numbers, an extremely valuable resource for messaging.

With the midterm election cycle under way, it’s unclear what, if anything, the organization will do to assist the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which plans to cut further into the GOP majority in the House, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is working to hold the party’s Senate majority.  RollCall.com has more here.

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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Issues New Mortgage Rules - Banks and other lenders will be prohibited from making home loans that offer deceptive teaser rates or require no documentation from borrowers, and will be required to take more steps to ensure that borrowers can repay, under new consumer protections to be announced on Thursday.

The new rules are also aimed at getting banks to lend again, something they have been slow to do since the financial crisis and since the Dodd-Frank Act required new limits on bank activities. The NY Times has more here.

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