02/20-02/27

This week flew by because we had President's Day off on Monday. It also happened to be my birthday which was a double bonus for the week. At work, my responsibilities included two projects: The Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act (CHIA) and research on intellectual property rights.

My boss has pro bono clients of the Northern Panhellenic Council (NPC) and the Northern Inter-fraternal Council (NIC). (someone told me yesterday that they were using a bunch of acronyms when explaining a story about the government shutdown and mentioned that if he was talking to anyone outside of Washington DC then they would have been totally lost) So basically, every fraternity and sorority that is registered with their national headquarters is represented by a lobbying firm in DC. Among the many things that Patton Boggs does for fraternities and sororities, each year they try to get CHIA to become a law. Until actually being involved in the process of passing a bill, I never knew how much work it actually was. Everyone has seen the cartoon "a bill on capitol hill" or something like that but never did I know how much actual work it takes to get a bill through the house, through the senate, and have the president sign it. I will explain the bill and some initial steps that Patton Boggs has taken in order to get this bill passed. 

The Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act changes the tax code regarding charitable contributions made to student housing. Right now, if I were to write a check to the University of Illinois for Scott Hall, then I can write that donation off on my tax returns. However, the same check written to other not-for-profit student housing such as fraternities and sororities does not fall under the same tax provision. CHIA changes the tax code to allow such contributions to be tax-deductible. 

The first thing you need to do in order to have a bill introduced is to have a lead sponsor. Meaning someone in the house and senate must agree to introduce the bill and in a certain time line. After the bill is introduced, an effort to persuade as many members of Congress to co-sponsor the bill is the next step. There are many different many different ways to influence a member of Congress and one of them is to appeal to their constituencies. Members of Congress are always concerned about their constituents because they have the ability to throw them out of Congress. So if you can get constituents to talk with their members of Congress about CHIA then it is easier to persuade them to sponsor the bill. Knowing this students from across the United States are chosen to represent their schools to work on getting the bill passed. There are wonderful things about asking student from Universities to come and lobby on behalf of a bill. First, they have the possibility of appealing to four members of Congress. If you live in any state in the US you have two senators and one Congressman or Congresswoman from the district which you live. Even better, if you go to a University outside of the district to which you live, then you will have another representative in Congress. Second, is being from a university allows you to represent that schools interest. Since you are at the school, it is possible for you to go to the President/Chancellor/Vice President and ask them to sponsor the bill. Having a letter from a President of a university is a powerful motion knowing that members of Congress realize the potential power of a university. 

So 83 students from around the US are selected to come to DC and lobby on behalf of their school and home. They are asked for letters of support from Presidents of their schools along with some ideas on how to help get the bill passed. At the firm, we have to organize all the meetings with 435 representatives and 100 senators, provide training material for the students, help them draft letters to their university presidents, provide information about the bill, help get sponsors for the bill, and other things as well. They are coming in April.....

That was one part of my week and the other was intellectual property work. I think that intellectual property is widely interesting and definitely an area of interest for future study. The thing about intellectual property is that from now on it will only get more complex and provide more work. The Internet is always changing and new devices and gadgets come out every week that feed the intellectual property work. Right now, advertisements on the Internet from online tracking is being targeted by the FTC. They published a report on how they were going to introduce "Do Not Track" legislation, allow individuals to surf the Internet free and clear of tracking. The advertisement companies as you can image are not too happy about all this legislation. They ask, why do you think you don't have to pay for google, facebook, amazon, youtube, and other websites? Why do you think that Google has the best search engine in the world? Why do you think you can have a street view of an entire city and the Internet has made it virtually impossible to be lost? ADVERTISEMENTS!! They pay for it all. Its a trillion dollar industry and only getting larger. And the way that it is so profitable and companies want to invest is because of online tracking. It provides high quality adds that appeal to the user. If i log into my gmail account I am not getting Victoria Secret Ads (I promise I have never shopped there), I get LSAT review courses, sports illustrated reviews, and Spanish courses. Why? can they read my mind? no, they have computers that look at where I have been on the Internet and know that I am interested in certain things. If there must be ads on the Internet to have it paid for, then why wouldn't I want ads that i might use. Take this for example.

I am a photographer from Texas and I want to expand my photography business. I pay Facebook money to advertise on people's pages that have just changed their status to engaged. I get a potential client, the engaged couple doesn't need to look for a photographer (they can obviously choose someone else if they want), and facebook stays open for free and public use. Everyone wins. Was your privacy violated? Did you want to keep your engagement a secret? If it was a secret and you never want to have any advertisements follow you around about photographers then don't be a member of Facebook and don't update your profile. 

Obviously, there is a difference between putting information up about yourself and simply surfing the net, but there is a quick explanation of how advertisements benefit everyone. 

Carolyn February 14-18

Last week started out with Valentine's Day, a good opportunity to make some baked goods and have a little Valentine's Day party at the office. Monday set the tone for a good, if hectic week at Amnesty International.

The first few things I did last week were in relation to the rally that was planned in front of the White House for Saturday the 12th. The rally was planned to show solidarity with the Egyptian protestors after Mubarak's speech Thursday night when he said he was not willing to step down. However, on Friday Mubarak actually did step down, so the significance of the rally went from supporting the protests to celebrating the victory of the Egyptian people. Amnesty is very hopeful about democracy in Egypt, however its first priority is still to protect human rights of citizens.

As I am sure you all know, the protests in Egypt have sparked protests all over the Middle East that continue to spread every day. Amnesty has been extremely cognizant of the developing unrest in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain because of the brutal tactics that have been employed by police officers to quell protestors. I am constantly reading reports about human rights violations and mortalities in these countries, and while democracry it is undoubtedly a worthy cause, it is difficult to read about the carnage that is resulting.

I also got the chance to attend a lecture about Amnesty's work to promote women's rights and those of impoverished people. The campaign is called 'Demand Dignity' and it is a large movement with several specific tactics that is aimed toward lessening the disparity in human rights and maternal mortality in different parts of the world. I have always been interested in the idea of economic development as being an integral factor in promoting fair government, civic freedom and human rights so the lecture was very interesting for me. It was also nice to get a break from doing media work for a few hours to hear about one of the overall goals of Amnesty; one that gives me daily satisfaction in being part of this organization.

In between these interesting events I have also been developing my abilities to perform administrative work and multitask. My supervisor had his last day yesterday, and for the past few weeks I have been being trained to take over almost all of his tasks. In addition to my intern jobs I am not managing our news subscriptions, in charge of paying the company credit card bill, and facilitating journalists' interaction directly with our representatives. I feel competent about my ability to perform these tasks, but I know that some days it will be overwhelming. I will write my next post about how my first week with my new responsibilities goes! Have a good week!

Michael: Week 2 (Feb 7th to Feb 11th)

My second week at the State Department consisted not only of the daily Early Alerts, but also several other activities. Monday morning’s Early Alert focused primarily on Egypt, which was divided into three main topics: the European reaction to the unprecedented meeting between Vice President Suliman and the still-banned Muslim Brotherhood, the European perceptions of Suleiman’s reform proposals, and about the future of Palestinian-Israeli talks in the midst of the Egyptian crisis. We also briefly reviewed European reporting on the Munich Security Conference last weekend. Monday afternoon consisted of a presentation by Dr Daniel Hamilton, the Director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, titled “Europe 2020: Competitive or Complacent.” A number of officials from various departments at the embassy attended the talk, including Ambassador Kennard. I heard several of the officials there remark on how Dr Hamilton regularly gives presentations at the USEU and that employees there highly value his team’s research. The presentation itself had a ton of information, which I won’t repeat here, but if you are interested a link to the executive summary of his book is available (http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu/bin/k/u/europe_2020_exec_summary.pdf).

Not surprisingly, Tuesday morning’s Early Alert also focused primarily on Egypt. We divided our cover of Egypt into three sections: commentary on what the protests might mean for Israel (the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty being a core component of Israel’s defense policy), perceptions of the nascent transition in Egypt, in which the opposition lacks a clear leader and Mubarak remains entrenched in power, and of the continued upheaval across the Arab world. I also wrote a section on South Sudan, the world’s newest country after an overwhelming majority of the predominantly-Christian south voted in favor of a referendum on independence from the predominantly-Muslim north. While I was working on the Early Alert, other employees in the office were interviewing Ambassador Philip L. Verveer, the United States Coordinator for International Communications & Information Policy. Prior to the interview I helped research the Ambassador’s background and brainstorm possible questions to ask during the interview.

Wednesday was easily the busiest day of the week. For starters, because one of the two officials who works on the Early Alert had been gone since Monday helping to brief and train officials in Oslo, and since the other Early Alert employee normally does not work on Wednesdays, I was tasked with doing the Early Alert on my own. Luckily, however, the director of the Media Hub was available for some guidance – in particular recommending to me to devote a section of the report to Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive who had been arrested by Mubarak. “The revolt now has a hero” hailed Spain’s El Pais, a call echoed by many other European papers. The other section I wrote on Egypt dealt more generally with discussions of Egypt’s inevitable transition from Mubarak. Like Tuesday, I wrote again on the European perception of South Sudan’s future, which largely focused on the highly complicated questions the two Sudans would have to agree on (most controversial: how to divide the large oil fields that lie near or across the uncertain border). The last section I wrote was on the Moscow airport bombing. The bombing itself wasn’t news – it occurred on January 24th – but many European papers had photos of Doku Umarov, a leader of one faction of Chechen terrorists who claimed responsibility for the bombing (though, many papers noted, “Umarov is known for assuming responsibility for any miseries befalling Russia”).

After lunch, I headed out with the Media Hub director and one of the interns to the 2011 French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) conference on energy, titled “Speed Bumps on the Road to Sustainability” with a focus on energy technology and geopolitics. We went there to try to interview some of the participants in attendance – including Juho Lipponen, who heads the carbon capture and storage unit of the International Energy Agency, and Barbara Buchner, director of the Climate Policy Initiative Venice office. It was quite interesting to be at the conference and getting a chance to talk to various officials there, though unfortunately our team was a bit disorganized, since the director of the Media Hub had to leave abruptly to join a conference call. Eventually, however, the administrative assistant from our office came out to the conference to help me and the other intern find people to interview. I helped brainstorm with the intern what questions to ask a few of the people we interviewed, but otherwise I was pretty useless other than carrying equipment. Still, it was nice to get a chance to see what much of the rest of the office is up to.

While the other Media Hub employees/interns returned to the office after the IFRI conference, I went directly to a conference put together by the EU interns (or as they are called here, “stagiaires”) about European Foreign Policy. Titled “European Foreign Policy: Pulling Europe’s weight on the global stage,” it consisted of a roundtable by a number of speakers:

• Mr Michael Emerson, Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
• Ms Paula Abreu Marques, European Commission, DG Energy, Head of Unit International Relations and Enlargement
• Mr Elmar Brok, Member of the European Parliament and its rapporteur on the EEAS
• Mr Christopher Davis, Minister-Counsellor for Political Affairs at the United States Mission to the EU
• Mr Álvaro de Vasconcelos, Director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)
• Mr Andrey Panyukhov, Senior counsellor for political affairs at the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the EU

Some were definitely more interesting than others, but overall it was an interesting presentation. In particular, I thought Christopher Davis’s overview of US-EU relations was quite interesting: he talked in broad terms about the similarities between the United States and the European Union – both being entities founded on ideas. Just as the founding fathers of the US envisioned the new nation’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ to expand across the continent, the founding fathers of the EU envisioned that the Coal and Steel Community they set up between Germany, France, etc would expand both in membership and in integration. In any case, Davis remarked something along the lines of that the promise of EU membership is the most powerful foreign policy in the world – and given the vast multitude of reforms an applicant country has to make before joining, I’d say that sounds right to me. He and some of the other speakers addressed and were asked questions about the EU’s lack of any significant or decisive response to the events in Egypt – in particular, the weak response of Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (essentially the same position as Secretary of State in the US, except that Ashton has far, far less power or responsibilities than does Hilary Clinton). Basically the response of all the speakers was that Ashton is going to be weaker on issues than some member-states because she has to seek and representative the consensus of all 27-members of the EU... that said, not all EU interns sounded convinced.

However, what I was most looking forward to was meeting some of the EU interns. Initially I chatted with one of the event organizers, from who I learned that the term of the current group of EU interns ends at the end of the month. Later, after finding a seat in the conference hall, I was joined by an intern from Britain who works in the EuropeAid Development and Co-operation Directorate-General (basically the equivalent of USAID). During Q and A, she asked the roundtable an interesting question. Earlier, Michael Emerson talked about the problem of duplication in Europe – specifically, how many of the EU member-states maintain separate embassies to different countries around the world. Emerson emphasized that, in the 'age of austerity' in Europe, cutting down on this duplication by having joint European delegations is a way to save money. The intern, however, questioned whether the public really would appreciate such a move, monetary savings notwithstanding. The roundtable then took several more questions before taking turns giving answers, and for whatever reason no one wound up addressing her question. So after the conference ended and everyone went out into the main hall for refreshments, she and I went to ask her question directly to Emerson. The two of them went back and forth on the question, with the intern emphasizing how, in her view, many Europeans would much rather have consular officials of their own country abroad, rather than just officials working for the EU. Eventually the two seemed to reach an understanding, since it turned out that Emerson was primarily thinking along the lines of, for instance, the lack of a need for Portugal and Finland, fellow EU member-states, to have embassies to one another. In the course of their debate, however, we were joined by a Belgian intern who works for the Directorate-General for External Relations, and the three of us stuck around for a few minutes to chat after finishing talking to Mr Emerson.

Thursday’s Early Alert again centered on events in Egypt. In particular: the renewed protests that were now spreading from Cairo to other cities in the country, the fact that protestors see negotiations with the Mubarak regime as “a ruse to gain time,” and several commentaries on the subject of the Western powers’ role in the protests. To a lesser extent I also wrote about the reaction in Europe to the newly released 2011 US National Military Strategy report – mainly disagreements in the Russian media as to whether it was a sign that relations are improving between the two countries or whether US strategy threatens Russia. Otherwise the day was comparatively not all that eventful. However, towards the end of the day I heard continued rumors that Mubarak would be stepping down that night, and it was announced that in several hours he was going to address to nation. Ultimately, that did not happen: instead, Mubarak was defiant, and reiterated that he would remain in power until a "peaceful transition" that would take place in September.

Needless to say, this did not placate that protestors, and thus on Friday we ran a two-page special of the Early Alert, covering the reaction to Mubarak’s speech and the question of what would happen in what many said would be “the explosion of the people.” We also looked at aftermath of Obama’s speech – Mubarak’s declaration that he ‘would not bow to international pressure’ and his general defiant attitude was taken to be a “direct snub to the US president”. We also explored commentary on whether the Egyptian Army is “the brake or the accelerator of the transition” in Egypt, and of the potential domino effect of protests spreading across North Africa and the Middle East. Friday afternoon I had my much-anticipated ‘courtesy call’ – i.e. meeting one-on-one – with Ambassador William E. Kennard. Everyone around the office had a high impression of him, and certainly my impression from his questions and comments during and after the presentation on Monday was that he clearly earned his position and knows what he is talking about. At the meeting I introduced myself and we discussed my motivations and expectations for the internship and how I am settling in to Brussels so far. The Ambassador also discussed his background and offered his assistance should I need it in the future.

Patrick: Week 3 (January 31- February 4)

This week, my boss approached me with an idea for a book project he wants to pursue. In light of all the complexities surrounding our country's financial crisis of 2008, he wants to write a "layman's guide" to understanding the crisis. Given our organizational interests, the work will be written from a "free-market" perspective. I hope to get the chance at a writing role on the project. For now, however, I have been tasked with locating various "free-market" theories and commentaries on the crisis. This research process has proven to be extremely enlightening.

Without becoming overly long-winded or technical, I must admit my frustration at individuals and groups who continue to rely on misguided understandings about the origins of the crisis to vilify the free market, deregulation, and limited government as the "culprits" of it. There is no point in trying to deny the fact that numerous financial institutions and their executives acted recklessly in the series of events leading to the collapse of some of these very institutions. However, very few individuals and groups care to acknowledge the fact that government intervention into the economy incentivized such recklessness. In an effort to spur home ownership among low-income families, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (government-sponsored enterprises created by Congress) encouraged banks to loan large sums of money to individuals who could not pay them back. Fannie and Freddie did this by promising to purchase the seemingly "bad debt" back from the lending banks. Fannie and Freddie hoped to turn a profit of their own by packaging the "bad debt" together with safer investments to create mortgage-backed securities. Although the "bad debt" inherent in these securities never disappeared, it was masked by various government-sponsored financial rating services (i.e. Moody's) when they attached "AAA" ratings to these securities and injected "false confidence" into the purchase of them. By solidifying the purchase of these investments, the ill-advised lending practices that made these investments possible were--by extension--also solidified. Finally, as the low-income families mentioned earlier began to default on their exorbitant mortgages, the institutions and investments designed around these mortgages began--not surprisingly--to collapse as well.

By explaining the financial crisis of 2008 in this fashion, I am not arguing that the financial institutions and executives at the forefront of the larger crisis deserve no blame for it. These institutions and executives did indeed pull the "trigger" on the crisis. However, our government's intervention into the housing market provided "the gun and bullets." In this vein, our country's current financial woes must not be attributed to a systemic failure of free market capitalism and deregulation. Rather, they must be attributed to a combination of ill-timed government intervention into the U.S. housing market as well as poor isolated decision-making by various financial institutions and professionals in response to such intervention. In short, any supposed “systemic failure” of free-market capitalism and deregulation is an indefensible concept that only remains sensible in socialistic fantasy worlds.

Ok, this ends my rant.

I hope everyone is doing well.

-Patrick

February 18th/ INTERNET

So I want to write about something a little different then my normal posts. Maybe (if anyone reads these) people are growing tired about reading about Democrats and Republicans and the budget and health care and on and on. This will be about the Internet!

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security examined a proposal by the Obama administration to expand online surveillance. The administration is seeking to update the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which required telephone companies to shift to a central network allowing phones to be wire-tap ready. Essentially, the update would require the same central network requirement for the Internet. The concerns of a central Internet network are being weighed against its proposed attempt to increase cybersecurity.

No one can deny that technological shifts in communication are unprecedented. Shifts in communication have caused a social revolution allowing anyone to tweet, IM, Facebook at any time and has taken control of our interactions. The obsessions of "old school" interactors and information age skeptics are what this does to our intelligence. I tend to work half way through these claims.(its only a blog post).

After the electric toaster was invented there was no doubt supporters and skeptics. Some certainly said that this was the opening up of the world and a new age of breakfast was upon us. Others probably said this has to be the worse thing ever invented, soon uniformity will reign and this is the end of creative breakfasts as we know it. The cost for discovering what would happen was simply to go out and buy a toaster.

Some believe that we are at this stage with the Internet and increased communication resources. Some think we are at the crest of democratized information and others believe the end of real, interpersonal relationships will be the cost. For me, I think it is presumptuous to think we are at the crest of democratized information and here is why.

History of democratized information...... Started with the printing press which drove the Reformation, which led to the Scientific Revolution, leading to the Enlightenment, finally leading to the Internet. People for centuries have been joined by new technologies which have created new communities and new routes for conversation. "the printing press enabled huge segments of the population to speak freely and increased the intellectual potential of the whole network" simple right? one technology leading to more democratic ideas, to the next, and so on?

When people say movements move from one to the next, that is not to say that these changes did not come at a cost. The printing press did not bring about a rapid democrat movement. It propelled Martin Luther's absolutist anti-semitism. Following the reformation wasn't the Enlightenment. It brought the counter-revolution which led to 100 years of religious warfare. Changes come at a cost and buried in these statements are millions of bodys.

From the printing press to the radio to the movies, all were used in some way by authoritarians and totalitarians to limit freedoms and reduce liberty. In the 17th century during Europe's printing revolution, royal critics were not running around with pamphlets denouncing King Louis. Exactly the opposite, everything printed was filtered through King Louis.

Totalitarians didn't burn books, only the ones that talked about freedoms. Stalin was said to have more books printed then J.D. Salinger. Before you give credit to all the good things that new media produces, you must give credit to the bad things it does to. The Internet may lead to more democracy 100 years from now, but no one knows what "bad things" we will go through before we get there.

Carolyn February 7-11

Last week was full of administrative work and preparing for my supervisor's final week at Amnesty. I am going to take on a significantly larger amount of work when he leaves as his jobs will be divided between me and the other Media Relations intern. The biggest new job that I have is managing my other supervisors' company credit cards and paying bills. It is not a particularly exciting job, but I know that it will be helpful for almost any entry level position I get after school.

We have begun preparing several events for Amnesty International's general meeting in San Francisco, where school chapters and regional offices all meet to discuss campaign progress and new developments. There is a lot to do and several different aspects that need to be coordinated for an event of that size, so we have been really busy working on the media aspect of it. The main task that I have to do now is to update different lists of media contacts to inform about the event so that it is covered in the press. This involves researching different regional and state outlets of media; even the small ones like university papers and minor radio stations. The basic idea is to get the event as much publicity as possible, while in turn should increase attendance, which will increase involvement and revenue. The only step of that process I need to work on is informing the media. It is interesting to be part of an organization with so many different departments that work together on such a large scale. I work for Amnesty International USA, but Amnesty has a presence in almost every country and over 3 million members. We work pretty closely with the Amnesty International Secretariat in London, and are in constant contact with our office in New York City. I knew that Amnesty was an extensive organization, but I am now realizing its scope more than I did before. This week I will be learning even more about my new responsibilities and planning for our AGM in less than a month.

February 7th - February 13th

Among the events that I attended this week, a breakfast with Senator John Barrasso was the most interesting. The firms ability to host fundraisers and bring members of Congress into the office is impressive and facilitated by the many former members of Congress that currently work in the firm. Among the most powerful players in this respect are former Senator Lott and former Senator Breaux who were just recently aquired by the firm.

The story behind their acquistion is this. After leaving the Senate, the two Senators listed above started their own Lobbying group with a hand full of others including Senator Lotts' son. Within a few months, the Lott-Breaux Group became hugely successful and moved to 8th most profitable lobbying group in Washington, DC. In terms of the public policy world, this level of success in this amount of time with such small numbers was unheard of. What this shows is former Senators' ability(especially Senators that both held leadership positions) to influence members of congress and current legislation. Apart from influence, knowledge of how the system works, the rules, the people, etc are incredbiliy important as well. For these reasons, and among others, the firm desires people with governmental experience and more specifically Senate Leadership expereience which is why they bought the Lott-Breaux Group last year.
So anyways, Senator Lott (R) brought in Senator John Barrasso (R) from WY into the office Thursday morning. The first thing Barrasso said was how great an influence that Senator Lott has been and reading Senate Lott's book is what encouraged him to run for Senate....

Barrasso was an orthopedic surgeon for 24 years and served as medical director of the Wyoming Health Fairs. He serves as Vice-Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Chairman of the Western Caucus, Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Environment and Public Works Committee, Indian Affairs, and Senate Foreign Relations. He ranks as the number one most conservative Republican in the Senate, but does not know if he is conservative enough for Wyoming (a joke that was well recieved by his guests). Among the things he spoke about, I found that the environment and health care were the most interesting subjects, and for the most part I agreed with his points.

For the environment, EPA is a fantastic organization so long as it does not hinder the US economy and hurt the American job market. President Obama loves to mention that his new iniatives for renewable energy and sustainability are creating green jobs all across America. What the President doesn't realize is that it is costing Americans red, white, and blue jobs in the process.

For health care, people do not realize where revenue from the bill is actually coming from. It is 10 years of taxes with 6 years of spending. This is how you get $230 Billion and where Democrats get this number if the bill is repealed. The Senator has his weekly "Second Opinion" in front of the Senate to discuss the health care bill's unintended consequences to providers, patients, and taxpayers. His stance has remained strong supporting that the bill is unsastainable, unaffordable, and unconstitutional. A physican for 24 years, he has supported a bill that will allow state officals to challenge Federal Regualtions in order to block the governments effort to overhaul the entire health care system. 

Clearly, there are positons on both sides on the environment and health care debates which I would be love to talk about. 25 inches of snow in Chicago does not support global warming and rising cost of care, losing employer based coverage, and doctors dropping patients at rates never before seen does not justify the health care bill.

Michael: Week 1 (Jan 31st to Feb 4th)

On January 28th I arrived in Brussels, Belgium to complete an internship with the US State Department's Mission to the European Union (USEU). While in Brussels I am renting a room from a couple living in the Woluwe-Saint-Lambert municipality of Brussels. They have a dog, Happy, and a daughter and several months-old grandson who live just outside Brussels in the village of Tervuren, who I visited with the grandparents the Saturday after I arrived. Outside of briefly leaving Brussels, I spent much of my first weekend here exploring the city. Which, of course, mainly meant me wandering around getting a feel for the city. I did, however, accomplish some useful tasks, such as scoping out where my internship is located and purchasing a new SIM card and a metro card (which amusingly has the word 'Illinois" over my head in the photo section since the employee scanned my driver's license for a photo). I also stopped by the European Quarter, where several of the main institutions of the European Union are located. The metro stop was right beside the European Commission, and across the street from the European Council.

January 31st was my first day on the job. To my surprise, the department of the US Mission to the EU that I am working in is the US-European Media Hub. The Media Hub's mission statement is to “promote transatlantic relations by connecting U.S. policy makers and experts with European radio and television broadcasters. The Hub also provides information on U.S. policy and positions in video format to media outlets and the European public.” Thus the Media Hub contains a video studio, and the other interns working there are tasked with interviewing visitors and promoting the work of the US Mission. While formally a part of the US Mission to the EU, the Media Hub also works with the two other American embassies located in Brussels – the bilateral American Embassy to Belgium, and the US Mission to NATO.

As a political science student concentrating in international relations, my role at the Media Hub is a bit different. My primary responsibility as the Media Analysis Intern is to assist Foreign Service Officers in drafting the 'EUR Early Alert', a daily analysis of the European press read by senior policy-makers in Washington and at posts in Europe. Each day, the Media Hub receives a large quantity of information from US embassies in Russia, Turkey, and 8 EU member-states about the media environment in those countries, on the commentary coming out of the European press on the major happenings of the day, and on public views and perceptions in those countries of American policies. Our task at the Media Hub is to sift through all this information and create a one or occasionally two page report that succinctly summarizes what the Europeans are saying about the issues of the day for senior officials in Washington and elsewhere – and to do so early enough that the Early Alert will be received by officials in Washington at the start of their day. The Early Alert would generally focus on three or four topics that are being talked about across the European press, but with everything going on in the Middle East and North Africa, this week has been the exception. As a result, thus far we have focused on reactions and analysis of what is going on in Egypt and elsewhere in the region, with special attention to perceptions and evaluations of US policy towards what is happening.

I contributed a little to the Early Alert on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I was listed as a co-drafter on the reports. Monday I did not make a contribution, as upon arrival I did not even have access to the internal State Department network. Nor did I have a security badge. So my first day interning at the State Department primarily consisted of being led around by the administrative assistant to complete all the necessary registrations and paperwork to be able to work autonomously. The bit of productive work I accomplished on my first day was to help the director of the Media Hub research and plan what she should cover at the Munich Security Conference, which she would be attending on Thursday. I also had the chance to sit in on Media Hub interviews of three Afghans – among them a head of an Afghan human rights organization and a member of the Afghan Parliament.

Tuesday began with orientation and security briefings, which eventually led to me receiving a security badge. I also took advantage of one perk of working for the government – being able to exchange in the embassy my American Express Traveler's Checks at the actual Dollar-Euro exchange rate, rather than the highly inflated rates I had seen elsewhere in Brussels. With the security badge in hand I was able to enter the bilateral embassy to pick up lunch at the cafeteria on my own – I was pleasantly surprised that the paninis served there are quite good (and include some unexpected combinations like cheese, ham, and pineapple). I arrived back at the Media Hub (which is down the street from most of the other embassy buildings) in time to contribute to Tuesday's Early Alert. After work I met up with some of the other USEU interns for a movie night – the film we watched was rather appropriately the political Frost/Nixon from 2008.

Wednesday was the first day I was available to help work on the EUR Early Alert from start to finish. The first step in the process is sending out a tasker email to the 10 embassies with a list of topics we want information on from the national media. To create the tasker we at the Media Hub skim the International Herald Tribune (the global version of the New York Times) and several European newspapers to get a sense of what reporters and commentators are focusing on that day. After sending out that guidance I spent the time waiting for feedback from the embassies by reading up on how the situation in Egypt and the broader region has evolved and what commentators in the English-language publications I can read are saying about, among other things, the US response to the protests in Egypt, whether Western leaders should negotiate with or fear the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and what the likelihood is of the protests in Egypt causing a domino effect across the region that topples similar authoritarian regimes. Probably the most strongly debated topic is whether we are seeing the beginning of the Arab version of the revolutions of 1989 (when the Eastern European communist regimes fell, to be replaced by stable democracies that are mostly members of the EU and NATO today) or whether we are going to see a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution (when a brutal secular dictatorship that was aligned with the United States was toppled by a broad range of protestors, only to be replaced by an equally or even more brutal and strongly anti-American theocracy).

After we completed Wednesday's Early Alert, I attended a conference I had been invited to the previous day. It was a briefing by Matthew Cassetta, the Program and Exchange Officer for the USEU Public Affairs department, and Apar Sidhu, the head of the USEU Political-Military section, for a class of Swedish students from a school that has sent students to the embassy previously. The former explained the relationship between the three US embassies in Brussels, and pointed out the US Mission to the EU’s unique distinction of being the only American embassy to an organization that the US is not a member of, and the latter talked about the American view on issues concerning the European Union's Common Foreign and Security policy and how the USEU works with and towards the EU. The person who had invited initially talked about me possibly giving a speech on what an internship is like at the USEU, but since it was only my third day we decided against that.

Thursday and Friday were less eventful, and mainly consisted of me working on the EUR Early Alerts. On Thursday, we primarily focused on Egypt, dividing our coverage into four sections:

• Reaction in the European press to what Spain's El Pais termed Mubarak's “brutal counterattack” against demonstrators.
• The implications of the situation in Egypt for the United States (Belgium’s Le Soir headlining “Developments in Egypt are a nightmare for U.S. Administration”).
• Speculation as to what will happen in Egypt after Mubarak leaves (the Italian Il Tempo warned “After Mubarak the risk is either chaos or sharia,” while the German Tagesthemen argued “The argument that Mubarak must stay because there is nobody there for the transition is nonsense expressed by political cowards”).
• And the general consensus across all of that European media we monitor that, as Spain's Cadena SER headlined, “Everything hinges on the Egyptian Army.” 

I also wrote a smaller section on Yemen, focusing on the fact that the president “sacrificed the idea of staying in office for life in exchange for not being kicked out immediately” (France's Les Echos), amidst more general speculation of a “domino effect” of protests and potentially revolutions in the Middle East/North Africa.

Friday also focused on Egypt and Yemen, but this time around was a special two-page edition of the Early Alert. I'm told the Media Hub rarely sends more than a page, but given everything happening in Egypt we wanted to leave officials in Washington with extra information to absorb over the weekend. Commentators in Europe for the first time on Friday described the situation in Egypt as “civil war,” with Spain's El Mundo headlining “[Vice President] Suleiman threatens protesters with an 'Iron Fist' to ‘avoid paralysis’.” Some in the European press were positive on American efforts in the crisis while other opinions were more mixed. Like Thursday, there was also a focus on the position of hte Egyptian military, and the question remains: whose side will the military take? We also briefly outlined attention in the European press to protests across the Arab world, such as those in Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and Syria.

In addition to working on those reports, next week I will be attending three additional events. The first, on Monday, is a presentation at the USEU by Dr. Daniel Hamilton, the Director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, titled “Europe 2020: Competitive or Complacent.” The second, on Wednesday, is a conference organized by the EU Commission for their interns. The conference, which starts in the evening a bit after quitting time at the internship, consists of a roundtable by the following officials on the key challenges for the European Union's foreign policy in the aftermath of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty.

• Mr Michael Emerson, Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (Moderator)
• Mr Christopher Davis, Miniter-Counselor for Political Affairs
• Ms Paula Abreu Marques, European Commission, DG ENER, Head of Unit International Relations and Enlargement
• Mr Elmar Brok, Member of the European Parliament and rapporteur on the External Action Service
• Mr Álvaro de Vasconcelos, Director of the EU Institute for Security Studies

Perhaps more interesting than the presentation itself is that I will have an opportunity before and after the conference to meet some of the 60 to 80 EU interns who will also be there. Finally, on Friday I will be meeting one-on-one with Ambassador William Kennard, who heads the US Mission to the EU. In short, there’s a lot going on next week...

Carolyn January 31-February 4: More problems in Cairo

I hope everyone had a good day. Last week at Amnesty was really hectic because of the crisis that was continuing to grow in Egypt. On Tuesday I got to attend a protest that Amnesty was holding in front of the Egyptian embassy. As media relations intern, my job was to assist our representative in speaking with the press. I am obviously not qualified to make statements on behalf of Amnesty, but my job was to see which news and media outlets were in attendance, talk to the reporters and photographers, and help them to get the information they needed from our representative. It was a pretty interesting experience because there were huge news organizations there, like ABC and the Daily Show. We got to take a picture with Aasif Mandvi!

The craziest part of this experience was the fact that there were two Egyptian men (I think they worked at the embassy) who were trying to get on the news and make statements in support of the Egyptian government. I had to explain to the reporters that they were not affiliated with Amnesty International. It was really interesting to see how they reacted to the statements that Amnesty and the other human rights activists were making.

Throughout the week we also began working on press and media lists for the events Amnesty is going to have for its 50th Anniversary this year. It is going to be a huge event and it is going to take a lot of planning to complete. It will be an interesting change of pace to do projects related to musical artists and acts to recruit as opposed to my usual tasks like reading the news.

Late in the week two researchers from Amnesty International were detained in Cairo. They are safe now but they were detained for nearly two days and Amnesty was very concerned, especially considering what has been happening to American journalists in the past few days. The week went by at a slightly frenetic pace, and ended on Friday making last minute pitch calls to the major news networks in Washington, DC about a follow-up rally Amnesty was participating in on Saturday. Over the weekend there was an impressive spread in the New York Times that Amnesty helped to produce. It gives a comprehensive and easy to understand overview of the conflicts erupting in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/06/weekinreview/06marsh.html

I hope everyone has a great week!

01/31-02/06

This will be my post for the week. It has been a very interesting week at work due to changes in government rules and procedures. As an intern for the public policy department, one requirement is to learn about these changes and determine how it will effect the firm and its clients. Among changes that have gone into effect over this past week have been the removal of 1099 of health care reform, changes in Senate rules, and proposal accepted by Congress and the White House to remove all earmarks for FY 2011-FY 2012. All three of these changes have a significant impact on the advocacy performed by the firm across many departments but mostly affecting its most notable, public policy. I will explain these three changes and what the firm has done in response.

First, removal of 1099 requirement in the Health Care Bill. For those of you who are not familiar with 1099 Requirement, basically what it requires is that anytime a business spends or receives more than $600 a form with the IRS needed to be filled out. Initially, this was supposed to get rid of underground business sector that was costing the government money, but ended up becoming a huge hassle for small business owners and the IRS. All the sudden, the IRS could not process the amount of forms that were coming in and business owners were bogged down by filling out all the paperwork. Overall, the 1099 requirement proved to be a burden on the system and both Democrats and Republicans wanted it gone. But there was one problem. The 1099 requirement made the government money. People were paying taxes on every expenditure of $600 and the government was collecting it. There is a rule in Congress called the cut go rule that requires for every cut something has to replace it. In other words, if a bill that returns profit to the government is removed, something else has to be taxed in order to make up for this loss of money, which is exactly what the Democrats wanted. The Republicans say that the money received by the 1099 taxes was phantom money anyways and there is no reason why something else should be taxed. Anyways, they came to a compromise and the 1099 repeal went through. 

Second, there were rules that have been made in the Senate to facilitate bipartisanship and cooperation. The elimination of secret holds, removal of forced reading of amendments, and a reduction of necessary appointees by the Senate where among these changes. It seems that Senator Reid and Senator McConnell have demonstrated the ability to work together and although, the Senate is known for its deliberation, it seems that this Congress will have better cooperation than the rest. 

And finally, the loss of earmarks. Earmarks are important for many public entities including state governments, cities, universities, and companies. Although, earmarks are important for government to give out, there are many other forms in which the government can give out aid. Federal grant support, municipal disclosure, agency rule making, and policy proposals can all be ways in which the public and still receive money from the government. 

The firm is acutely aware of all action that occurs inside of government and modifies their approach to what procedures and rules are in place. With previous Senators, Members of Congress, Ambassadors, and many other people with long history in government, from what I have noticed, seems to stay one step ahead of the game. 

ie. On Tuesday, I attended a fundraiser for Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member Dick Lugar. Former Senator Trent Lott, who recently joined the firm, hosted the event.

Patrick: Week 2 (January 24-28)

After finishing the record keeping tasks I wrote about last week, I moved to the task of organizing our organization's credit card receipts by month and scanning them as PDFs so that we can easily access back-up copies of them in the event that the physical copies become damaged or lost. With the receipts scanned and organized by month, I created monthly expense reports using Microsoft Excel. With this essential task completed, I then moved to the task of updating a master list in Excel of all the donations our organization has received since its founding. As part of updating this list, I also updated our mailing list concurrently to reflect both new donors and new non-donor "friends," who are typically interested in ACLGF's programming and opportunities each semester. Overall, this week provided me with hands-on experience concerning both the practice and importance of keeping accurate and usable donation records when either working for an existing non-profit organization or starting one from scratch.