Category Archives: Energy Agenda

America Recovery Reinvestment Act, NOT SO Much

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When one visits the government website www.recovery.gov, these description reads that the board is a non-partisan, non-political agency and then in bold letter in a heading it also reads ‘The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board’.

Additionally the site mission statement reads: “To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information.”

Sheesh note the one particular case below and then ask yourself if there is a violation.

From Watchdog.org:

Company that got millions from U.S. taxpayers now profits Chinese owners

The good news is electric car battery maker A123 Systems is finally on track to turn a profit.

The bad news is taxpayers don’t figure to see any of the $133 million the federal government spent and the estimated $141 million in tax credits and subsidies secured from Michigan to help the company take off in 2009, only to see A123 Systems crash, declare bankruptcy in 2012 and then get purchased by a privately held Chinese conglomerate.

“In the case of A123, they created some jobs and a year or two later those jobs were gone, so taxpayers weren’t getting that money back,” said Jarret Skorup, a policy analyst at Michigan’s Mackinac Center, a free-market think tank .

Earlier this month, CEO Jason Forcier announced that A123 Systems’ parent company, the China-based Wanxiang Group, will spend $200 million to double the capacity of three lithium-ion battery plants, including two in suburban Detroit.

Forcier told Crain’s Detroit Business that A123 Systems is expected to generate $300 million in revenue this year and plans to double that amount by 2018. The company, Forcier said, will turn a profit for the first time in its history in 2015.

“The strength of A123 has never been greater and we are honored to be expanding our existing customer relationships and establishing new ones at the same time,” Forcier said in a company news release.

It would mark a dramatic turnaround for the company that was on the verge of collapse when Wanxiang bought it a little more than two years ago at a stripped-down price of $256.6 million. 

But finding out if taxpayers will ever see any of their money back is another matter.

Watchdog.org sent an email and left two voicemail messages with A123 Systems, asking whether any refunds are coming or if — under the terms of the bankruptcy — Wanxiang is under no financial obligation to do so.

The one-sentence response from Paulette Spagnuolo, A123’s marketing and communications manager: “A123 continues to meet and exceed all of the terms of the state and federal grants including all job creation, repayment and investment requirements.”

Spagnuolo did not respond to inquiries asking her to elaborate.

Skorup says the money is gone for good.

“There are a lot of local and state rebates and they are largely upfront costs, so yes, taxpayers are sunk on those,” Skorup told Watchdog.org in a telephone interview. “They’re not going to be getting money back from them … Michigan doesn’t require (A123 Systems) to pay them back anyway.”

How much money?

On the federal level, A123 Systems was originally slated to receive $249 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2009 to build production facilities in the towns of Romulus and Livonia, Michigan — just $7.6 million less than Wanxiang eventually bought the entire company for four years later.

But A123 Systems ran into trouble early on. After some of its batteries were involved in a recall for the company’s biggest customer, the electric car company Fisker Automotive, the company’s federal grant was cut off after A123 received $133 million. 

Figuring out how much Michigan passed out has been more difficult.

The Detroit Free Press and the Mackinac Center have been rebuffed in attempts to see how much of an investment the state made in A123 Systems because the Michigan Economic Development Corporation will not disclose specifics.

Skorup estimates Michigan approved A123 Systems for $100 million in a tax credit program and another $41 million in subsidies.

“How much they actually cashed in those we don’t know,” Skorup said. “We’ve tried to find out, but the state won’t give it to us … they say it’s a private contract.”

The federal money was part of the stimulus package and a green-tech initiative the Obama administration touted would spur economic success.

A123 Systems was one of a number of Michigan battery companies that received a surge of tax credits from the state in 2009, but the incentives did not spur the jobs and dollars that were promised.

Detroit Free Press estimated $861 million in Obama administration grants were awarded in the fledgling Michigan battery industry and another $543 million in state tax credits were awarded during the administration of then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat.

Most of the Michigan business tax credit program was eliminated by current Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican. However, companies that had already secured the tax incentives were allowed to keep them.

“The general lesson for policy makers is that they make very poor venture capitalists because they’re not spending their own money,” said Skorup. “They’re spending other people’s money and those politicians weren’t putting their own stock portfolios into A123 Systems. They were putting taxpayer money into them.

“And the lesson for taxpayers should be, when politicians are making these claims about job projections they should be extremely skeptical. In Michigan, almost none of those — we’ve done multiple studies, other news organizations have done multiple studies — reach the actual projections that they promise.”

“Just because the jobs haven’t happened ‘yet,’ it doesn’t mean that cracking the code to vehicle batteries was the wrong strategy,” Granholm told the Free Press in March 2014.

President Obama appeared by remote broadcast for the grand opening of the A123 Systems Livonia plant in the fall of 2010, an event hosted by Granholm.

“Thanks to the Recovery Act, you guys are the first American factory to start high-volume production of advanced vehicle batteries,” Obama said at the time.

Skorup told Watchdog.org  the video of the event was taken down by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, but the Mackinac Center, a sharp critic of the battery plan from the start, retained a copy of it:

 

The ‘Who’ Lobbying for the ObamaTrade Deal

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Hillary cant play the middle on the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks and deal, as John Podesta left the White House to work for Hillary’s campaign and yet he is a paid lobbyist for advancing the deal.

Bipartisan Agreement: Foreign Governments Pay Former Senate Leaders to Sell TPP

In a scene all too typical in present day Washington, the culmination of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, along with the push for passage of related legislation such as Trade Promotion Authority (or Fast Track) have set off a lobbying frenzy.

While liberal organizations and members of Congress deride the TPP as the biggest boondoggle since NAFTA and President Obama defends it as “the most progressive trade treaty ever,” the influence peddlers who populate K Street see opportunity.

Policy makers aren’t simply facing a lobbying barrage from the typical slate of domestic interest groups. Foreign governments are running sophisticated operations to influence Congress and gather intelligence in Washington as the negotiations proceed.

This is now “par for the course,” according to Lydia Dennett, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight [POGO], a nonprofit watchdog. “If a certain country wants trade legislation that will be beneficial to them they can hire an American lobbyist to get them the access the need.”

Leading the way among TPP nations seeking to sway American policy makers is Japan, which signed up former Democratic Leader Tom Daschle’s firm as well as well-connected public relations firm DCI.

We won’t know the full extent of Mr. Daschle or DCI’s work on behalf of Japan until their next series of Foreign Agent Registration Act [FARA] disclosure reports are filed with the Department of Justice in a few months.

One concern among good government advocates is that a lack of timely FARA reporting could obfuscate some of the lobbying going on at the behest of foreign clients. A 2014 report by POGO found that 46 percent of the reports were filed late. Enforcement is rare for these relatively minor infractions and the DOJ’s website states it “seeks to obtain voluntary compliance with the statute.” Ms. Dennett called on Congress to add civil penalties to the FARA Act that to encourage more aggressive enforcement of its statutes.

Common Cause, an open government advocacy organization, sounded similar alarms. “Our concern is in ensuring that the process is fully transparent and that the laws barring foreign nationals from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly, are fully observed,” said Dale Eisman, the organization’s communications director.

While we don’t yet know the extent of Mr. Daschle or DCI’s work, filings from other firms working on behalf of Japan, paint a picture of the country’s efforts.

For much of their direct lobbying Japan relies on Akin, Gump, Strauss Hauer & Feld, whom they paid $388,000 during the most recent six-month reporting period. In that time the firm’s lobbyists contacted Congressional offices at least sixty times and engaged in at least eight exchanges with the United States Trade Representative’s office specifically focused on the TPP, TPA, and related issues. Seventeen of those contacts were with one particular staffer, Kaitlin Sighinolfi, a trade policy advisor for Republican Louisiana Congressman Charles Boustany.

Mr. Boustany’s office did not respond to a request for comment on these contacts, but they are likely related to the desire of Louisiana farmers to lower tariff barriers, enabling them to export more of goods to Japan.

Japan’s team also includes Hogan Lovells, which was paid $216,895.29 during the last six-month reporting period. The firm’s FARA filing states that the law firm “advises and represents the foreign principal [Japan] on general diplomatic representation, laws, regulations, policies, proposed congressional measures, treaties and other international agreements, and actions by the U.S. Congress, Executive Branch, U.S. Government agencies and certain state and local governments.”

Prior to recruiting Mr. Daschle, the highest profile lobbyist on Japan’s team was Tony Podesta, brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. His firm, The Podesta Group, receives $15,000 per month to counsel Japan on U.S. policy.

Another TPP country, Vietnam, received more hands-on service from the Podesta Group—paying them $180,000 during the same six-month period. On Vietnam’s behalf, the firm made contact with government officials at least 90 times. They also engaged with media outlets ranging from The New York Times to the Food Network on behalf of Japan.

Working at the behest of foreign governments is a lucrative practice area for the Podesta Group which billed a total of $2,096,666.05 to more than nine overseas governments, including Azerbaijan, India, Iraq, Korea, Somalia, and Hong Kong during the last six month of 2014.

Japan’s aggressive lobbying efforts in Washington are part of an overall increase in foreign nations seeking to purchase influence in Washington. According to Frank Samolis, co-chair of the international trade group at DC behemoth Squire Patton Boggs, there has been a measurable “uptick [in business under the Foreign Agent Registration Act] due to TPA and related bills in Congress.”

Mr. Samolis is a veteran of Capitol Hill trade fights. He previously worked on behalf of Korea, Columbia, and Peru during their trade negotiations with the United States. He now represents Temasek, Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, which paid his firm $132,055.72 during the last six-month filing period, as the country engaged in TPP talks.

SPB represents multiple foreign principals with an interest in the TPP including, China, which paid the firm $392,014.17 over the same period.

Mr. Samolis explained that when working on behalf of foreign powers, lobbyists “need to find a confluence with [United States government] interests wherever possible.”

“US policy makers understand that a client is foreign, so they are aware and need to be convinced how [the clients] interest comports with [United States government] objectives,” Samolis told me. “For that, we need to make a strong legal and policy case, backed up by the facts.”

Insiders like Mr. Samolis play another critical role. “At least half of my time is devoted to providing intel on US developments and likely future actions,” he stated.

This points to the reason Japan and other countries are eager to hire former senior members of Congress and well-connected insiders. The ability to glean information from former colleagues and contacts is just as important as their skill at influencing legislative and administrative outcomes. This expertise is particularly crucial during complex foreign negotiations requiring approval of a finicky and partisan Congress.

Mr. Samolis’ firm has a platoon of ex-lawmakers including former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Republican, along with former Louisiana Sen. John Breaux, a Democrat. Pocketing money from foreign governments seems to one of the few things both parties agree on.

With numerous trade treaties on the horizon, Mr. Samolis and his colleagues’ workload is only likely to increase because ultimately foreign governments spend significant amounts of money on lobbying and relate activists for the same reason that domestic corporations and other interest groups do. They know in Washington, DC influence can be bought.

*** The Unions are against the bill.

WASHINGTON –  Union-backed Democrats launched a last-ditch effort Thursday to scuttle President Barack Obama’s trade agenda by sacrificing a favored program of their own that retrains workers displaced by international trade.

The retraining program is linked to the Democrats’ real target: legislation to help Obama advance multi-nation trade agreements. In hopes of bringing down the whole package, which they say imperils jobs at home, numerous House Democrats said they would vote Friday against the retraining measure.

There is bi-partisan legislators opposition on this authorization which is the first part of the vote. Read here to determine who stands where and why.

 

 

 

EPA to Destroy the Entire Transportation Industry

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The White House climate change, greenhouse emissions and clean air act is about to be completely out of control. The question is where is the Congress and where are you? Remember Barack Obama said in his commencement speech that climate change was the top threat to national security.

Washington (CNN)The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday it will propose a declaration that says carbon emissions from commercial planes contribute to climate change and hurt human health.

EPA also said it was working with the International Civil Aviation Organization, which includes 191 member states, to develop carbon dioxide standards for planes that would impact airlines in the U.S. and across the world.

“The EPA administrator is proposing to find that (greenhouse gas) emissions from certain classes of engines used primarily in commercial aircraft contribute to the air pollution that causes climate change and endangers public health and welfare,” the agency said in a statement, announcing an Aug. 11 hearing on the proposal and a 60-day window for the public to weigh in.

The move was the first step towards regulating air pollution from commercial airlines, but the ICAO standards aren’t expected to be adopted until early 2016. The earliest the EPA would be able to put out a notice of new standards would be in 2017, after President Barack Obama is out of office, and a final rule wouldn’t go into effect until at least 2018.

The future regulation would apply to commercial aircraft and business jets, but not military aircraft, which the EPA does not have jurisdiction over.

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest in a series of moves from the Obama administration geared at combating climate change, which Obama has characterized as an immediate national security threat.

*** WSJ: The Obama administration is planning a series of actions this summer to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions from wide swaths of the economy, including trucks, airplanes and power plants, kicking into high gear an ambitious climate agenda that the president sees as key to his legacy.

And in August, the agency will complete a suite of three regulations lowering carbon from the nation’s power plants—the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda.

The proposals represent the biggest climate push by the administration since 2009, when the House passed a national cap-and-trade system proposed by the White House aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

Anticipating the rules, some of which have been telegraphed in advance, opponents of Mr. Obama’s regulatory efforts are moving to block them. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), is urging governors across the country to defy the EPA by not submitting plans to comply with its rule cutting power-plant emissions.

Nearly all Republicans and some Democrats representing states dependent on fossil fuels say the Obama administration is going beyond the boundary of the law and usurping the role of Congress by imposing regulations that amount to a national energy tax driven by ideological considerations.

“The Administration seems determined to double down on the type of deeply regressive regulatory policy we’ve already seen it try to impose on lower-and-middle-class families in every state,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “These Obama administration regulations share several things in common with the upcoming directives: they seem motivated more by ideology than science, and they’re likely to negatively affect the economy and hurt both the cost and reliability of energy for hard-working American families and small-business owners.”

Two factors are driving the timing of the push this summer. The administration wants to complete it ahead of December’s United Nations summit on climate change, where world leaders will meet in Paris to decide whether to agree on a global accord to cut carbon emissions. The EPA’s regulatory agenda represents nearly everything Mr. Obama is set to offer world leaders on what the U.S. is doing to address climate change.

Secondly, once the EPA rules on emissions by power plants become final, states will have a year to submit plans while lawsuits challenging the rule are expected to be heard by the courts. The administration wants to make sure that its officials can oversee as much of these two developments as possible instead of relying on the next president, especially if it is one of the GOP White House candidates who have expressed opposition to the EPA’s climate agenda altogether.

 

Meet Bernard Aronson and Venezuela Blackouts

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Bernard Aronson, a Goldman Sachs insider with assignments in Latin America. It is especially cool that Barack Obama calls on Aronson to end the rebel fighting in Latin America. Or how about using Bernard to normalize Cuba with Hillary Clinton’s approval? John Kerry uses Aronson to handle matters with Columbia.

The intrigue begins. This is rather convoluted, so be patient as you read on.

Aronson has deep ties to Thomas Pritzker of Hyatt hotels fame same as Penny Pritzker who is Barack Obama’s Secretary of Commerce.

The Pritzker dynasty looks like this:

Family tree: Pritzker is the son of Jay Pritzker, founder of Hyatt Hotels Corporation.
Areas of interest:
nonprofits

College: Pritzker received a B.A. from Claremont Men’s College, and an MBA and J.D. from the University of Chicago.

Report: billionaires collect farm subsidies
Fifty billionaires were direct or indirect recipients of farm subsidies, according to a report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.
November 7, 2013
The Pritzker fortune and the Obama campaign
Tonight, President Obama will speak at a ceremony honoring this year’s winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, named for the family that built a fortune with the Hyatt Hotels chain.
Back to the intrigue and Bernard Aronson….

Bernard W. Aronson past relationships:

Jimmy Carter – speechwriter
Freedom House – trustee
Global Hyatt Corporation – director
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – international adviser
Hyatt Hotels Corporation – director
Mariner Energy Inc. – director
Walter F. Mondale – speechwriter
U.S. Department of State – assistant secretary
Now Venezuela:
There were power black-outs in Venezuela? But why? Answer here.
Derwick Associates:
Defendants are U.S. residents who have amassed enormous fortunes through an illicit scheme to secure energy-industry contracts in Venezuela for their various U.S.-based companies, Derwick Associates USA LLC and Derwick Associates Corporation (together with these

companies’  predecessors, successors, assigns and affiliates, “Derwick  
Associates” ). Known in the press as the “ChavezKids, ” “BoliBoys,”
 and “the  mafiosi of the Fifth Republic ,”  Defendants Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez (“Betancourt”),  Pedro Jose Trebbau Lopez (“Trebbau”),  and Francisco D’Agostino  Casado (“D’Agostino)
 have profited wildly from their ongoing illegal bribery scheme designed to exploit for their personal financial gain the corrupt and anti-democratic Chavez regime.
+++ 
By: Dan Rosenau
Venezuela/U.S. energy sector scandal involving J.P. Morgan, ProEnergy Services (partially-owned by Obama appointee), Derwick AssociatesThe U.S. Department of the Treasury’s FINCEN recently announced that Banco Privada d’Andorra was favored by criminal enterprises from Russia, China, and Venezuela. In the case of Venezuela, government officials reportedly deposited more than $4Bn into personal accounts—most of it siphoned off from PDVSA, the state-owned oil company of Venezuela.

I’m painfully aware of the embezzlement and overbilling involving Venezuela’s energy sector given that, until recently, I was employed at Sedalia, Missouri-based ProEnergy Services. ProEnergy was the contractor responsible for the construction of one dozen power plants in deals involving gross overbilling, multiple offshore transactions, and a murky association with Derwick Associates, a Venezuelan start-up with zero experience in power plant construction. I’m making available here more than 10GB of material directly from the company hard drive. The metadata on each document can be traced directly to Pro-Energy’s computers. My hope is that “crowdsourcing” the enclosed data will allow interested parties to assist in exposing a multi-billion dollar fraud.

From 2009-2012 ProEnergy billed to the tune of $2Bn almost all of it flowing from a single client: Derwick Associates. Our company sold more than $1Bn in turbines (most of them used or refurbished–but sold as new) to Derwick which then resold them hours later at a significant mark-up to the government of Venezuela through entities such as their electricity ministry, their Guyanese state enterprise CVG, their state-owned oil company PDVSA, and the SIDOR iron-ore producer.  In addition to turbine sales to Derwick, ProEnergy built the power plants that Derwick marketed as their own and for which both companies overbilled the Venezuelan government in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Derwick is now under criminal investigation by federal authorities and by local authorities in New York. (This prompted Derwick to immediately hire Adam Kauffmann, former head of the Manhattan DA investigation division. Kauffmann is already representing several Venezuelan government officials who embezzled hundreds of millions).

Working in ProEnergy’s sales department, I learned our company had hit paydirt when a group of connected Venezuelans chose to ignore Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) such as Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney, and General Electric and instead used ProEnergy as a middleman. In other words, a middleman used a middleman.

Inexplicably, the IT department at ProEnergy had blocked access to internet sites when I googled  “Derwick” and “corruption.” This stirred my curiosity and so I explored the company’s shared computer drive for the term “Derwick.”  What I found there shocked me: dozens of proposals to Derwick for generators, for power plants, for upgrades to those power plants. It was odd given that ProEnergy has never built a power plant in the United States (ProEnergy fails to meet American standards and so has offices in places like Angola, Argentina, Pakistan, and Venezuela).  Shockingly, ProEnergy’s proposals reflected a mark-up ranging from 20-74%.  In my industry, profit margin usually hovers between 2 and 5%. At these prices someone was being ripped off.  ProEnergy was overbilling Derwick.

My sense of disbelief only grew the more I read. I discovered document drafts on Derwick letterhead. ProEnergy was writing the proposals and preparing the invoices that Derwick sent Venezuelan clients for the exact same equipment described in the proposals to Derwick from ProEnergy. This included actual invoices from Derwick to Venezuela’s state-owned enterprises like PDVSA. These invoices, the Microsoft Word documents indicated, were created on ProEnergy computers in Sedalia. On some of the Derwick invoices, the bank wiring instructions went to bank accounts belonging to ProEnergy. Some to offshore bank Davos International and others to JP Morgan in New York.

When I learned that the owners of Derwick were barely out of college and friendly with the son of the Electricity Minister of Venezuela I realized why ProEnergy had prepared the Derwick invoices: because our 20-something Venezuelan clients lacked the technical know-how. After all, how does a person draft an invoice for a product with no knowledge about the item in question?

Remarkably, these invoices prepared by ProEnergy and purportedly from Derwick also revealed mammoth markups over and above the prices that ProEnergy charged Derwick.  So, an item like a set of three FT8 Swift Pac turbines bought by ProEnergy from Pratt and Whitney for $67.5M were sold one day later for $78M to Derwick who then sold it two days after that to Venezuela for $97.5 million.  And so in four days an item with a retail cost of $67.5M had $30M added by ProEnergy and by Derwick Associates. In another instance three Rolls Royce Trent 60 turbines originally sourced for $66M from Rolls Royce were sold to Derwick for $79.3M, which in turn resold them hours later for $97.5M, adding another $31M profit to the bottom line of both Derwick and ProEnergy. Like these transactions there are scores of instances on every item imaginable—from spare parts to construction costs, from turbines to generators, from transformers to transportation costs and employee training.  I stopped counting the total on the invoices after two billion dollars.

One colleague told me that the FBI had visited ProEnergy on several occasions. I was tortured, week after week, knowing that ProEnergy was robbing a nation where poverty and crime are rampant.  I spent sleepless nights agonizing about what to do.  Company-wide layoffs solved my immediate dilemma. The truth is that with no more Venezuelan cash flow, ProEnergy suffered a long-standing cash crunch. So much so that Washington, D.C.’s Acon Investments, made a capital injection into ProEnergy.  Acon is run by Obama appointee to Latin America Bernard Aronson.

Months went by and I could not shake the disgust of what transpired.  I blew the whistle by sharing the information with celebrated Venezuelan investigative reporter Cesar Batiz who verified the material and allowed a blogger to post some of it on Scribd.

The sensational revelations about money-laundering activities of Venezuelan energy officials at the Andorran bank would explain why Venezuelan state officials agreed to overpay Derwick and ProEnergy. The men addressed in the letters (written by ProEnergy and) and sent by Derwick are accountholders exposed to criminal charges in Spain for amassing illegal fortunes in “consulting fees.”

It is disheartening that American energy executives would display such appalling greed and be so quick to partake in the looting of Venezuela.  My hope is that by going public with the 10GB of information more of my former colleagues will come forward and blow the whistle on one of the most troubling international scandals in Venezuelan (and Missouri) history. I’ve learned that Derwick Associates has persecuted numerous bloggers in Venezuela and abroad as well as mainstream journalists including having stories about their misdeeds “spiked” at the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Economist, Huffington Post, and the Miami Herald.

Then there is Davos and JP Morgan. Sheesh…ties that bind in covert actions.

Obama Not Stopping Russia

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Putin Aggression:

There are several people in the Ukraine that are hunting down Soviet loyalist soldiers and providing evidence of Putin’s continued aggression towards Ukraine. They are using social media, photos, tracing steps and following Russian troops footsteps.

The United States needs to take new steps to respond to the Ukraine conflict because economic sanctions and other Western actions have failed to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to reverse course, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said June 5.

Carter, speaking after conferring with U.S. diplomats and military officers in Stuttgart, Germany, said the Pentagon was concerned about “further things happening” after the worst upsurge in fighting in months broke out this week in eastern Ukraine.

Carter’s warning comes after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused Moscow of sending sophisticated new weapons to Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, including artillery and anti-aircraft systems.

“What’s clear is that sanctions are working on the Russian economy,” causing considerable hardship for ordinary Russians and a deep recession this year, Carter told reporters on his plane back to Washington.

“What is not apparent is that that effect on his economy is deterring Putin from following the course that was evidenced in Crimea last year,” when Moscow annexed the Ukrainian territory, he said. Read more here.

Then without any warning or briefing from the State Department, a Russian violation has not been corrected as it relates to intermediate ranged ground launched missiles from a 1987 arms deal.

WASHINGTON — The State Department reported on Friday that Russia had failed to correct a violation of a landmark arms control accord between Washington and Moscow that prohibits intermediate-range ground-launched missiles.

At issue is the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the I.N.F. Treaty, which the Obama administration says the Russians breached by testing a cruise missile. But American officials have made no discernible headway in persuading the Russians to acknowledge the compliance problem, let alone resolve it.

In December, the Pentagon told Congress that it had developed a range of military options to pressure Russia to remedy the violation or neutralize any advantages it might gain if the diplomatic efforts fail. But no Pentagon countermeasures have been announced.

The American allegation was outlined in the State Department’s annual report on compliance with arms control agreements. It comes as the Obama administration has sought to identify new areas for potential cooperation with Russia, including the crisis in Syria, even as it has continued to object to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine.

The State Department did nothing to draw attention to the report. An unclassified version of it was posted on the agency’s website late on Friday afternoon with no advance notice, and no officials were made available to discuss it. (A classified version of the report was provided to Congress earlier this week.)

Representative Mac Thornberry, the Texas Republican who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that the Obama administration had not been forceful enough in pressing Moscow to comply with the agreement.

“Russia’s development of intermediate-range nuclear platforms is designed to hold our interests at risk and enable Putin’s expansionist policies,” Mr. Thornberry said in a statement, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin. “It is not a situation we should accommodate for two years running. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has proposed meaningful military options to deal with Russia’s I.N.F. violations. The president should order their implementation without delay.”

American officials say that Russia began carrying out flight tests of the missile as early as 2008, and Rose Gottemoeller, the State Department’s senior arms control official, first raised the possibility of a violation with Russian officials two years ago.

Despite the allegation of a violation, the State Department report asserted that it was in the interest of the United States not to withdraw from the agreement, which it said “contributes to the security of our allies and to regional stability in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region.” The accord bans American and Russian ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles that are able to fly 300 to 3,400 miles.

It is unclear what steps the Obama administration might take next. Ms. Gottemoeller told Congress in December that the development of ground-launched cruise missiles had proceeded far enough that Russia had “the capability to deploy it.”

Those concerns are not the only ones about Russian compliance with arms control accords. The State Department report asserted that Russia may have violated troop notification requirements under the Vienna Document, an agreement between the member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Russian forces who were massed near Ukraine last year, the State Department report said, “exceeded personnel and/or equipment levels intended to trigger notification requirements.” But when Russia was asked for additional information, “It failed to provide responsive replies.”

The report also faulted Russia’s adherence to the Open Skies Treaty, which seeks to reduce the risk of war by providing for unarmed observation flights.

In 2014, the report noted, Russia imposed new restrictions on such flights over Kaliningrad, a heavily militarized Russian enclave near the Baltic Sea.

“Russia continues to fail to meet treaty obligations to allow effective observation of its entire territory,” the report said.

Russia has leveled its own charges against the United States, including that the Aegis missile defense system that is being deployed in Europe is able to launch intermediate-range missiles.

The State Department report said that this system did not have any “offensive capability” and was allowed by the treaty.