US home-builder confidence rises in May from April.Confidence among U.S. home-builders rebounded this month, reflecting improved sales trends during the spring home-selling season and the strongest outlook for sales over the next six months in more than six years. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index climbed to 44 this month from 41 in April. It was the first increase since December. Measures of customer traffic and current sales conditions also improved from April’s reading. Readings below 50 suggest negative sentiment about the housing market. The last time the index was at 50 or higher was in April 2006. Concerns over rising costs for land, building materials and labor have dimmed builders’ confidence in recent months. Regardless, steady job creation, near record-low mortgage rates and rising home values have spurred sales this year.
Obama Besieged on Many Fronts.
Circling the Wagons at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: The recent history of second term U.S. presidents indicates trouble will come at some point. You just don’t expect it to come three at a time with roots both foreign and domestic. But for the moment that is where the Obama administration finds itself. All of sudden last November’s easy re-election victory over Republican Mitt Romney seems like a galaxy far, far away. And that soaring rhetoric from the second Obama inaugural about all of the hoped-for accomplishments now sounds a bit off key. Second term presidents often find that their relevance begins to wane after the second congressional midterm election, in the final two years of their presidency. But in some ways it feels like it’s already waning with this president.
The IRS and Ghosts of Nixon:
President Obama was rightfully indignant about attempts by America’s taxation authority, the Internal Revenue Service, to target Tea Party and other conservative groups for special scrutiny. The president told a news conference this week that operating the IRS in “anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way” would be “outrageous,” and he quickly added that he wouldn’t tolerate it. He also said he wasn’t aware of it until recently and there is no suggestion the White House was behind the idea. Allegations of abuse by the IRS conjures up memories of the administration of President Richard Nixon and his efforts to intimidate and punish political opponents, sometimes by threating IRS audits as political payback. Nixon is the only president who ever resigned the presidency and the last thing any president wants, especially a Democrat, is to be lumped into the same category with the man who left the office in disgrace back in 1974. In fact for both parties, using the IRS as a political tool is one of those accepted “no-no’s” that would invite certain political peril.
The IRS has already apologized for scrutinizing the tax-exempt status of some of the conservative groups. But this has already set off a firestorm over on the political right and it’s hard to imagine a dumber political move than to play right into the hands of your harshest critics, the Tea Party groups, by putting them in the position of playing the victims. This is likely to rekindle some of the Tea Party true believers and get them fired up for the 2014 congressional midterm elections. A pretty neat trick given how distraught and bummed out they were when the president won a second term at the White House last November. Given the Tea Party influence among Republicans in the House of Representatives, it could also make it even less likely that some of the president’s major domestic goals like immigration reform will have much of a chance getting through the House. The politics of Washington went sour some years ago but this kind of thing just gets everyone on the political right “fired up and ready to go”, to borrow a phrase from the Obama campaign, circa 2008.
Targeting the AP:
Add into the mix the revelations that the Justice Department last year secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors at the Associated Press, supposedly in connection with an AP story a year ago that focused on a foiled terror plot. AP officials described the act as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into their news gathering operation and are demanding explanations from the Justice Department. The irony here is that it was congressional Republicans who were demanding an investigation into leaks about the Obama administration’s anti-terror efforts that appeared to portray it in a positive light. Federal prosecutors have been known to request reporter phone records in the past. But the extent of the Justice Department sweep encompassing so many AP staffers and different bureaus is considered unusual. So now you’ve got civil libertarians on both ends off the political spectrum spitting mad about both the IRS missteps and the apparent fishing expedition targeting the Associated Press. News organizations are usually notified in advance when the government is seeking phone records and very often a negotiation ensues as to what in the end will be turned over. But the fact this was done secretly and covered a two month period has sparked an angry reaction, not just from the AP but from journalist watchdog groups around the country.
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