WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2010
KLMNO
THE FED PAGE
Census Bureau doubles up to raise response
by Ed O’Keefe
People who completed and mailed back questionnaires for the 2010 Census might wonder why they’ve received one, maybe two additional forms in the mail. The Census Bureau mailed ad- ditional questionnaires last week to parts of the country with low response rates during the 2000 Census. In the Washington area, that meant more forms were sent to neighborhoods in the District (especially Northeast and South- east); Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland; and Arlington and Fairfax coun- ties and Alexandria in Virginia, among other nearby jurisdic- tions. Other parts of the region with slightly better but still low response rates in 2000 will re- ceive at least one duplicate form starting Saturday, the agency said. In the 2000 Census, the bureau also sent additional forms, as in- ternal research suggested they could boost response rates by as much as 7 to 10 percent. Printing the extra forms will cost taxpayers about $42 million, but officials say the additional ef- fort ultimately will save more than $500 million that would have been used to hire temporary census takers.
If people already filled out a form and receive another one, they should destroy it, the bureau said. But the agency said it can avoid processing duplicates from the same address by tracking the bar codes on each form.
ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.com
AL KAMEN
In the Loop
he Obama administration has a good shot at setting a couple of modern indoor records for a president halfway through his first term: fewest number of judicial nominees and, with strong assistance from Senate Republicans, fewest number of judges placed on the bench. As of the Senate’s return
T
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
Monday, President Obama will have officially nominated 56 judges for the federal district and appeals courts (not counting one for the Supreme Court), according to Capitol Hill data. That’s fewer than either
Bill Clinton (77) or George W.
Bush (98) had in mid-April of their second years. Even though the Democrats had a supermajority in the Senate of 60 votes until three months ago, the Senate has confirmed only 18 of Obama’s nominees, far fewer than half those confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate in mid-April in Clinton’s first two years (46, not counting a Supreme Court pick) or the (barely) Democratic majority Bush dealt with (43). One might argue that Obama nominated fewer people because he started with far fewer judicial vacancies than did Clinton or Bush. (Credit for that goes to Senate Democrats, an especially thoughtful and considerate lot, who were determined to confirm as many conservative judges as possible during the last months of the Bush presidency.) But the pace of nominations and confirmations has not kept up with the increasing number of retiring judges. So while Obama took office with 53
On the plus side, the robe-and-gavel savings are huge
Judicial nominations
Nominations of district court judges by the Obama administration lag behind comparable Clinton and Bush numbers through mid-April.
Number of judges nominated by mid-April
=confirmed by mid-April
DISTRICT COURT
Bill Clinton George W. Bush
President Obama
SOURCE: Staff reports
vacancies, the number of empty chairs on the federal bench now totals more than 100. Several factors may help the administration reach these new records, especially the one for fewest folks nominated. It’s most likely, really almost certain, that
Justice John Paul Stevens, who
will be 90 on April 20, is going to retire. That will tie up the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the full Senate for many weeks. Also, this being an election
year, the Senate is not going to be doing much business after the Fourth of July, when a third of its members, a number of them facing difficult races, will be focused on scrounging for money and votes. The Republican minority may
let a few nominations go through, especially for district court seats, which, with all due respect, don’t count for much. But the GOP’s general slowdown strategy, so wildly successful thus far, is likely to resemble a full halt as the elections near and the prospects for substantial GOP gains in Congress materialize. It’s related to the broader opposition strategy, as former Bush counselor Dan Bartlett explained last week with regard to Obama’s announcement on offshore oil drilling. “A shrewd move,” Bartlett called it, but he said it wouldn’t bring
Republicans on board to support an energy bill. “No. Republicans in the Congress have made a calculation,” he observed, “that
Problems at mine safety agency
Inspector training,
backlog of appeals impede oversight
by Ed O’Keefe
The federal government’s mine
safety agency is not properly tracking the retraining of its vet- eran inspectors and is facing a mounting backlog of appeals of health and safety violations from mining companies, according to concerned government auditors and lawmakers. Monday’s deadly blast at a
West Virginia coal mine, where at least 25 workers died, has focused new attention on the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administra- tion, which has more strictly en- forced mine safety regulations in recent years. The agency stepped up its efforts after the 2006 Sago (W.Va.) mine disaster killed 12 workers and prompted the feder- al government’s first major re- forms in almost three decades. A little over half of MSHA’s roughly 2,400 employees per- form inspections of the nation’s coal mines, gravel pits, quarries and gold and silver mines, the agency said. Hundreds of new in- spectors have joined the payroll since the Sago blast, expanding MSHA’s inspection force by more than 26 percent. But a government audit re- leased last week faulted the agen- cy for poorly retraining its veter- an inspectors. Fifty-six percent of them failed to attend required re- training courses during a two- year training cycle that started in 2006, the audit said. MSHA failed to track and ensure completion of retraining courses and did not punish inspectors who failed to attend courses, according to the report by the Labor Department inspector general. MSHA is part of the Labor Department. Enforcement was so lax that a new recruit performed inspec-
tions without completing mini- mum entry-level training and without defined circumstances that permitted recruits to skip training, the report said. Audi- tors recommended that MSHA hold supervisors accountable if inspectors failed to complete re- training and suggested suspend- ing an inspector if they failed to complete retraining. Agency leadership agreed with the rec- ommendations and said they will hold district managers, assistant district managers and field su- pervisors accountable if inspec- tors fail to complete retraining. MSHA staffers must inspect mines on a quarterly basis, and they completed all mandated in- spections in the last two years, ac- cording to MSHA Deputy Direc- tor Greg Wagner. Citations issued by inspectors have grown by about 30 percent since 2006, the agency said. But stricter enforcement has prompted more appeals from mining companies looking to avoid paying bigger penalties. The companies may challenge vi- olations and penalties to the Fed- eral Mine Safety and Health Re- view Commission. Commission Chairwoman Mary Lu Jordan told a House
cooperating with this administration at this time is not necessary for them to pick up seats.” But let’s assume that, for some bizarre reason, the GOP senators were willing to confirm every last judicial nominee pending in committee or on the floor. The administration would still end its first two years with far fewer judges placed on the bench than either Bush or Clinton. Bush managed to put 100
judges on the district (83) and appeals (17) courts in his first two years, according to Congressional Research Service data. Clinton did better, putting the black robes on 127 folks — 108 on the district courts and 19 appeals judges (plus one on the high court). Ronald Reagan was able to fill 88 seats, while Bush I filled 70. Unless the Obama administration quickly nominates 14 more judges and the Senate confirms them and those pending at the Senate, the prize for fewest judges will go to this administration. (With some effort, the White House may end up at least nominating more judges than Bush I, who nominated only 73. )
Diplomatic debauchery
Important word from Kabul. Seems a recent embassy Mardi Gras party was such an out-of- control, drunken bash — we’re told that one diplomat, possibly from Turkey, relieved himself on the side of the yellow chancery
building — that Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has banned big parties at the sprawling complex, at least until the Marine Corps ball in a few months. Unclear what the problem
was. After all, it was Mardi Gras. And if it was a Turkish diplomat, well, the Turks are staunch NATO allies, so they should have some privileges. In an e-mail, the embassy folks said they would “take a pass on commenting.”
National security blanket
The older things get, the more
they’re secret? The Pentagon has been holding back some documents, requested by the independent researchers at the National Security Archive 18 years ago, about a project that has come to be known as “Poodle Blanket.” This is about contingency plans in 1961 for a possible confrontation over West Berlin. That would be “a city that is no longer divided, a confrontation with a country that no longer exists and a war that ended 20 years ago,” said the archive’s director, Thomas Blanton.
Apparently the Pentagon’s poodle documents, although many related papers were released years ago by the State Department, somehow could still damage national security. Lore has it that the project initially generated so many plans and paper that someone complained they were
41 41 35 11 11 35 38 65 70
APPELLATE COURT
5
8 7 18
SUPREME COURT
12 28 1
THE WASHINGTON POST
producing a horse blanket when what was needed was a pony blanket. The numbers were whittled down to make the info more usable to top officials, and
1
S
A15
THE WASHINGTON POST
The Kennedy administration’s secrets about West Berlin remain safe for now.
the effort’s code name became “Pony Blanket.” From there it got further abbreviated, and the code name became “Poodle Blanket.” Maybe they’d give up the
documents if the code name became “Teacup Yorkie Blanket”?
kamena@washpost.com
KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Massey Energy, which owns the mine in West Virginia where 25 people died this week, had been cited for hundreds of violations.
panel in February that the length of the appeals process has grown in the past three years from an average 178 days to 401 days. The Obama administration’s
fiscal 2011 budget includes fund- ing to add four more judges to the commission’s 10-judge panel, but the commission has said it needs a total of 26 judges to signifi- cantly reduce the backlog. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, credited the agency for beefing up en- forcement and faulted companies for delaying the process. “Miners’ lives are in the cross-
hairs,” Miller said at the hearing. In a conference call Tuesday,
Wagner told reporters that the agency’s employees have a sense of mission. “A number of people have told
me — even people who are in of- fice jobs — that they have rela- tives, fathers, brothers, cousins, who have been miners and how that’s motivated them to really devote their careers to improve protection for the health and safety and well-being of miners,” he said.
ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.com
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