Category: White House

SNATCHING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY

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The Democrats, Again, of course.

After Boehner’s surprise statement, it looks like the Obama White House is trying to take advantage of this, and paint the Republicans with the “Daddy Warbucks” brush and splinter the Republican caucus, which is good, but a aide for the House leadership just said that the house will not vote on the tax cuts, which is significant because the Constitution says that tax bills have to start with the house.

My guess is that this is someone Steny Hoyer’s office, who is attempting to suck up to the Blue Dog types, who are trying to insist on tax cuts for the big donors.

And on the Senate, we have the preening sociopath narcissists Ben Nelson says that he might support a filibuster, while Mr. “That contemptible rat-f%$# who isn’t with us on everything but the war” Joe Lieberman both saying that he will support a filibuster.

What is good politics and good policy right now is for Barack Obama to say that he will veto any bill that grants tax breaks to people making more than a $¼ million.

It would be useful to show that Obama can draw a line in the sand, because at this point, no one believes that he can.

How Barack Obama Could Appoint Elizabeth Warren, and Why He Won’t

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Under the Dodd-Frank bill, there is a provision that allows Timothy Geithner to appoint a head to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until such time as the Senate approves a nominee:

According to the bill’s language, the Treasury Secretary has sole authority to build the new agency before it’s ultimately transferred to the Federal Reserve. That includes anointing a person to head the effort on his behalf, and under his authority. The interim head would serve until the President’s nominee is confirmed by the Senate.

That person could be Elizabeth Warren.

And the legislation doesn’t appear to contain a deadline for a Presidential nomination, experts say, which means Warren could start the agency from scratch, put her people in, begin cracking down on predatory and abusive lenders, and initiate a culture that would put consumers’ interests above those of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions.

What is interesting here is that this is not a recess appointment, and so is not subject to the limitations, such as the requirement that their appointment expires at the end of the current Congress in January, 2010.

Theoretically, if Warren were appointed, she could serve for decades without Senatoriual approval.

So, Warren could be appointed, and be on the job, tomorrow, and the only way to remove her would be for the Republicans not to filibuster her in the Senate, and hope that she is defeated by 51 votes on the floor, which won’t happen, because any Democrat who votes against her has the party base campaigning against him or her in the next election cycle.

So, why don’t I think that Obama will do this? Because in so doing, he would energize the Democratic Party base, who would then come out and vote for Democrats in 2010:

Within hours and possibly minutes I expect the president will name Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer protection agency, and if he does, the Democratic base will erupt and turn out to vote in far greater numbers than any current poll suggests.*

The thing is that I believe that there are two dominant schools of thought in the White House:

  • Those who believe that appealing the the base will always be a net loser in terms of elections. (Rahm)
  • Those who actively hate the Democratic Party base, which they see as irrational, unrealistic, a part of the hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington, and terrifying to the fictitious middle of the road voters in off year elections. (Barack Obama)

Basically, in order for such an act to be taken, the core philosophies of the power centers in the White House have to be repudiated by the people who hold them.

This won’t happen, because even if these decisions help the party, they diminish the power of Emanuel and Obama’s philosophies within the party, which makes it a sort of perverse manifestation of the Iron Law of Institutions, (on edit see this Google link, because one of the purity asshole brigade at Wikipedia deleted the link) which states that, “the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.”

*I would note that the author is already wrong, having posted this on Thursday, September 9, and we have had no announcement.

It Looks Like a Commenter on the Blog Will Become Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors

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Austan Goolsbee, who I’ve posted about a dozen times or so, objected to a post of mine, and I (with permission) posted his response to my blog.

Well, Goolsbee has written extensively suggesting that things like Obama’s proposed R&D tax cut don’t offer a whole bunch of bang for the buck, though he has argued that he thinks the current situation **cough** incipient deflationary spiral **cough** create a somewhat different dynamic.

Well, the scuttlebutt is that Dr. Gooolsbee is going to replace Christina Romer as the chairman of the President’s CEA, and J.W. Mason has the best line that I’ve heard in a while about this:

Looks like Goolsbee is the perfect pick to succeed Romer — his advice is already being ignored even before he’s been hired.

It’s a reference to the fact that Romer’s thoughts on the stimulus were not even passed on to Barack Obama for review, and the point being made is that in a choice between economists and the economy (Goolsbee, Volker), and shills for finance and the finance industry (Summers, Geithner), that Obama will go with the latter unless absolutely forced to do so.

It’s a great line.

Obama Calls for Weak Tea, and Cedes Ground to the Right Wing

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So now, instead of trying for something that works to reduce unemployment, Obama is calling for a modest public works program, $50 Billion over 6 years, significantly less than what we are flushing down the toilet on the unnecessary F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.*

What’s more, once again, he throws a bargaining chip to the Republicans, who have shown their unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, by also proposing that the R&D tax credit be extended and made permanent.

Once again, when trying to put forward even the most modest proposal, he kneecaps himself by taking what could have been used as a lever to derive support, and handing it to his enemies so that they can use it as a cudgel against him.

Week tea, constructed to make it even weaker, once again.

*This is not meant to be a commentary on the capabilities of the F-35, simply a statement that these capabilities are simply not necessary in current of foreseeable future conflicts, and the same goes for the F-22, so please don’t make this a Raptor/Lightning II pissing contest.

Kremlin Elizabeth Warren Watching

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One of the big questions out there is who Barack Obama will appoint to appoint to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The leading candidate has always been Elizabeth Warren, who literally wrote the book on predatory finance in the age of the mega-banks, but the mega-banks, along with Tim Geithner, just don’t like her, because, she might actually, you know, protect consumers.

That being said, the democratic wing of the Democratic Party has rallied behind her to an astonishing degree, and so it has increasingly appeared that Obama will nominate her, if only to allow the nomination to be filibustered, as they did in the case of his nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.

Given just how demoralized the party base is, politics demands it.

Nothing has been announced yet though, so the press is engaging in a process similar to Kremlinology, and we have another data point: Ms. Warren has pulled out of the contract law class that she was teaching at Harvard.

I still expect that if Obama nominates Warren, he won’t fight for her, but it is beginning to look like he will nominate her.

Someone Has a Clue

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Specifically, Laura Tyson, who is calling for another round of stimulus.

Of course, you can find a lot of people calling for another round of stimulus, but what makes Ms. Tyson different from people like Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is the fact that people at the White House actually listen to her, she is a member of the White House’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Of course, that paragraph raises a question for me: Why is the White House studiously freezing out people like Nobel Prize winning economists Krugman and Stiglitz?

It would seem to me that these are the sort of people one should listen to.

Obama Throws the Environmental Movement Under the Bus

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This is a distressingly familiar refrain

I’m sure that there are a lot of “eleventy dimensional chess” folks out there, but when you look at Obama’s record, both in terms of his support for coal and for his full throated endorsement of the fiction that is “clean coal,” the fact that the administration filed an brief urging the Supreme Court overrule the appellate court decision does not surprise me one bit:

The Obama administration has urged the Supreme Court to toss out an appeals court decision that would allow lawsuits against major emitters for their contributions to global warming, stunning environmentalists who see the case as a powerful prod on climate change.

In the case, AEP v. Connecticut, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a coalition of states, environmental groups and New York City. The decision, handed down last year, said they could proceed with a lawsuit that seeks to force several of the nation’s largest coal-fired utilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

……

In a brief (pdf) filed yesterday on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority, acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal agreed with the defendants, saying that U.S. EPA’s newly finalized regulations on greenhouse gases have displaced that type of common-law claim.

……

Matt Pawa, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the case, said he and his colleagues expected the White House to stay out of the matter. During a meeting with more than 30 administration lawyers at the solicitor general’s office on June 24, it seemed they had “a lot of friends in the room,” he said.

“We feel stabbed in the back,” Pawa said. “This was really a dastardly move by an administration that said it was a friend of the environment. With friends like this, who needs enemies?”

I would also note that the regulations that the Solicitor General is touting, which he says should preempt this suit, only applies to new power plants, and these new plants are not the subject of the nuisance suit.

I suppose that a lot of folks will blame Rahm, who has a history of sucking up to miscreant industries for campaign cash, but remember, Obama knows who and what Rahm is, and hired him. Remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.

As gay activist Joe Sudbay noted at Americablog:

Welcome to our world.

Now, what these environmentalists don’t understand — yet — is that Team Obama isn’t really on their side. Not in the way they think, anyway. It’s a tough lesson and hard to swallow. The gays learned it early on, between Rick Warren and the DOMA brief.

(Mr. Pawa and Mr. Bookbinder should be prepared. They’ll see a lot of their colleagues in the environmental movement make excuses and apologize for what the Obama administration did.)

If the Obama were serious about carbon emission regulation, then it should see this suit would be a wonderful lever to get Congress to move on comprehensive legislation.

The only two justifications for this brief are that they aren’t serious, or, once again, they are trying to expand the reach of the executive branch.

What Barack Obama Wants

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So, after Alan Simpson has repeatedly shown an implacable hostility to Social Security spanning decades, and referred to every person in the us as freeloaders sucking at the tits of society, the Obama administration has decided to double down on this biased nutjob:

But at the White House, Jennifer Psaki, the deputy communications director, said, “Alan Simpson has apologized and while we regret and do not condone his comments, we accept his apology and he will continue to serve.”

The only reason to appoint him in the first place, and the only reason to keep him on after this incident is because Barack Obama wants, and, based on his behavior, what he wants is to gut Social Security.

Remember That Alan Simpson Was Always Thus, and Obama Picked Him

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So, a few weeks back, Anal Alan Simpson, the co-chair of Barack Obama’s so called “Cat Food Commission,” ostensibly charged with reducing the deficit, but in reality given a mandate to trim Social Security, hence leaving seniors surviving on cat food,* was referring to recipients of the pension program as “Lesser People,” in society.

That was pretty offensive, but Barack Obama knows his way around Washington, and he knows who and what Alan Simpson is, and so I figured that he selected him to co-chair the committee because he wants to cut Social Security.

Today however, I look back at that truly repugnant statement by former Senator Simpson as a high water mark on his civility, because in an email exchange with the president of the Older Woman’s League in which he ridiculed her organization and its membership, and described Social Security as a, “Milk Cow with 310 Million Tits.”

By this, he means that he thinks that every single American who might be eligible for the program is in his mind a moocher.

Of course, we now see the non-apology apology:

I can see that my remarks have caused you anguish, and that was not my intention. I certainly did not intend to diminish your hard work for the Older Women’s League. I know you care deeply about strengthening Social Security, and so do I, just as deeply. I remember your testimony at our public hearing in June about the importance of retirement security for women. Over the last 40 years, I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two. To quote my old friend and colleague, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, when I make a mistake, “It’s a doozy!”

You see, it’s not his fault, it’s her fault for being offended, and Simpson is just a good old boy who sometimes misspeaks.

You now have a number of advocacy groups calling for his resignation, saying, with a lot of justification, that this shows that Simpson has already pre-decided this matter, while the AARP has indirectly done so as well:

The vast majority of the 310 million Americans he insulted – particularly 156 million women and younger Americans for whom the traditional pension will be a relic of history – don’t have access to the type of traditional pension retirement security that Sen. Simpson has from his decades in Congress. Perhaps that’s why his comments demonstrate a woeful disconnect from or disinterest in the challenges facing many American families for whom Social Security is literally a lifeline.

“Sen. Simpson’s most recent departure from reality would be easy to dismiss if not for his position co-leading a Presidential commission that will likely recommend changes to Social Security. Sen. Simpson’s remarks not only cross the line of good judgment, but they undermine the serious work of the commission and give us little confidence the commission can fairly look at important programs such as Social Security.”

I am not going to join into any dead pool on Simpson. He’s going to stay on the board, because Barack Obama wants him on the board, and given his long history on the social safety net, the only reason that Barack Obama wanted him is because he wants to gut the program.

Expect the deficit commission to propose a few token taxes, no defense cuts, and draconian cuts to programs that help the needy, because that’s how the White House rolls.

*In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.

Shirley Sherrod to USDA: Go Pound Sand

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So the US Department of Agriculture, after unceremoniously firing her on a trumped up controversy, offered a new job, the “Deputy Director Of Advocacy And Outreach,” but she declined the offer.

I’m sure that Ms Sherrod was polite and gentle in her denial, but she is not an idiot, and I think that anyone with this experience with any organization would be inclined to believe that the political appointees of the USDA are a bunch contemptible weasels who cannot be trusted.

Of course, the civil service staff of the USDA were a bunch of contemptible bigots, in the not too distant past, as Ms. Sherrod is no doubt aware, being one of the recipients of proceeds from the Pigford settlement.

Well, Obama Mans Up On Somethng

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I have always felt that Obama has been profoundly ambivalent on the matter of abortion rights, so I figured that their response to a judge’s injunction against funding embryonic stem cell research would be to wring their hands, bleat a bit, and suggest that “Congress” do something.

I appear to have been too cynical, because the DoJ has announced that it will appeal this ruling:

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it would appeal a court ruling challenging the legality of President Obama’s rules governing human embryonic stem cell research, as the head of the National Institutes of Health said the decision would most likely force the cancellation of dozens of experiments in diseases ranging from diabetes to Parkinson’s.

I am truly shocked. My sense was that Obama would go the way he tried to on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, and punt to Congress.

Fire Him Now

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I understand that Marine Corps Commandant is retiring in just a few months, but he needs to be fired right now, and lose his pension:

A senior US general has warned President Barack Obama’s deadline to begin pulling troops out of Afghanistan is encouraging the Taliban.

US General James Conway, head of the US Marine Corps, said the deadline was “giving our enemy sustenance”.

Obviously, unlike McCrystal, this isn’t staffers, or the general, denigrating POTUS, this is something far worse. This is a Douglas McCarthur on Korea moment.

This was not an inadvertent slip, this was a deliberate statement made at a Pentagon press conference.

Actually, I would suggest that a criminal investigation of insubordination is called for.

I don’t expect Obama to man up on this one, but the Pentagon has become increasingly hostile to the concept of civilian authority, and this needs to be ended.

Your Gibbs Update

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So, little Bobbie Gibbs has doubled down on his tantrum, refusing to offer anything beyond that he was “frustrated”, and then he went on to basically say that the liberal party base are nothing but a bunch of helpless co%$ suckers who have no where else to go, so they will show up to vote like the pathetic losers that you think that they are:

A day after the controversy over Gibbs’ remarks was seemingly been put to rest by a quick walk-back from the press secretary, Wednesday’s briefing seems likely to reignite the debate over the White House’s relationship with liberals. But if there was nervousness over base voters not heading to the polls, Gibbs didn’t show it:

“I don’t think [liberal voters won’t show up],” he said, “because I think what’s at stake in November is too important to do that.”

The translation here is, “Neener-neener you dweebs! What are you going to do, vote for Ralph Nader.“

That‘s really going to invigorate the base.

First, what The Rude Pundit said:

Finally, f%$# you, Mr. Press Secretariat, because you should be wooing the f%$# out of us. You should be trying to get in our underwear and hand job us with a smile on your face instead of treating us like a convenient punching bag because you don’t want to offend the precious “real America” or whatever bullsh%$ phrase politicians want to use to isolate and alienate us. Why? Because we’re the ones that made sure you are the Press Secretary.

(%$# mine)

And then we have Alan Grayson saying that he should be fired, and notes that he is frequently referred to as “Bozo the spokesman.”

If there is a lesson of the past 40 years in Politics, it is that dissing your base is a way to lose elections.

If this is how the Obama administration thinks it should win elections, I have no clue how the beat McCain in 2008.

*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.

Billy and Barry, That Lincoln Endorsement Worked Out Really, Didn’t It?

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The DSCC is looking at cutting off Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, because with less than 3 months to go, she is down about 20 points in the polls.

These were her number before our current and former presidents went balls to the wall for her in the primary, and got a lot of money sent her way.

I don’t know why Barack Obama had decided on an unprecedented level of White House interference in primaries, I understand why Bill Clinton did, Lincoln is a protege of his, but the net results seem to be primary losses, weak candidates in the general, and a dispirited base.

I Don’t Know if Little Bobbie Gibbs Should Resign…

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But the White House press secretary certainly should go f%$# himself after this outburst:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

……

As a bit of fact checking, Canadian healthcare is actually a good thing, it has lower prices and better outcomes than we in the US achieve, and I can’t find anyone who supports abolishing the Pentagon, not even Dennis Kucinich, whose supporters Gibbs excoriates later in the interview.

For a senior adviser to the president, this is stupid and regrettable. For the press secretary, whose sole job is to cast administration policy in the most positive way, it is inexcusable.

This is not just beneath the behavior of a sentient being serving as press secretary, it’s beneath Dana Perino at her most addle-headed.

That being said, Paul Krugman makes a very good point, that, “What’s good for Obama is not necessarily good for his aides.” He calls it the “Principal Agent Problem,” which is economist wonk-speak for saying that people who work for someone may frequently advance their own agenda at the expense of those of their boss.

A classic case is overpaid executives who are nominally, “working for the shareholders,” when they are actually working to maximize personal gain, even at the expense of the viability of the corporation.

Obama is not really harmed by criticism from his base, but this criticism might change just who Obama listens to, so this reaction is almost certainly a reflection of his staff’s insecurities more than it is a realistic concern for Barack Obama or his agenda.

I think that Krugman sees the point clearly, but that he does miss another one: This sort of reaction is a fairly common in the Obama White House, Google, “f%$#ing retarded,” for example, and it indicates a staff that is obsessed with their own positioning at the expense of the administration and Obama’s policy agenda (whatever the f%$# that is).

So, your press secretary probably deserves to be fired, and the counter productive venom expressed by your staff indicates that the staff are not being properly managed, which says something distressing about his chief of staff.

Here’s hoping that Obama won’t hang onto Rahm the way that Bush hung onto Rumsfeld, and yeah, dumping Vilsac and Salazar might be a good idea too.

Another Place Where Obama is Doubling Down on Bush Policies…

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Education, where the Bush era assault on public schools and teachers unions continues apace, so despite the demonstrated fact that charter schools do not produce better results, and despite the fact that the focus on testing has produced widespread fraud, Obama is doubling down with privatizing education in the same way the Dick Cheney privatized core military functions.

What’s more, a former George H.W. Bush Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, is now denouncing these policies:

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, I think that what happened in New York City is—shows that the direction he’s taking is wrong, because everything he is proposing in Race to the Top and also in his blueprint will rely on exactly the kinds of methods that led to a massive fraud in New York state—that is, that Race to the Top is requiring states to judge teachers by the student test scores, and we now know, based on this immense fraud in the city and in the state of New York, that the test scores are not reliable. So teachers will be judged by unreliable data, and we’re going to dismantle the teaching profession in pursuit of this mechanical fix that won’t work.

If there is lower class of scum than the war profiteers like Halliburton, who profit off our wars, it’s the Education profiteers like the Edison schools, who profit off our children.

There might be an excuse if this crap worked, but it doesn’t, and since No Child Left Behind was implemented, the racial and economic gaps between children have widened, because the educational reform establishment believes that the only thing that needs to be done to fix schools is to f%$# teachers.

No, And What Is He Smoking?

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James Pethokoukis, whose work I have not followed, but appears to have a fair amount of respect from the blogs that I read, is reporting that a number of sources in the Obama administration saying that the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), will, at taxpayer expense, engage in a massive program of principal reduction to underwater homeowners:

Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. ……

The motivation, apparently, is electoral politics:

The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie. …

If you go to the article, and I suggest that you do, because I am just relying on my gut, you also see that investment bankers are talking to their clients to insurance themselves against such a possibility.

I take the statements of investment bankers with a grain of salt. Their job is to make people buy and sell securities, since they profit each time.

That being said, here is my take:

  • HAMP is an abject failure, because, once again, Barack Obama, as well as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber (Geithner and Summers) decided that banks were their “partners”, and they just needed some incentives and no oversight.
    • Additionally, the abject failure of HAMP is not beginning to hit the news, which might lead to damage control.
  • Obama is concerned about losses in November.
  • Notwithstanding what the teabaggers say, Obama is NOT a socialist, he is very much a corporatist, and the idea of this sort of massive government bailout to ordinary people is an anathema to him. He honestly does not want the government to be that activist.
  • Obama is, and remains, terrified of Republican accusations of socialism.

So, it ain’t gonna happen. We may see something to fix HAMP, my suggestion would be bankers arrested and made to do the perp walk, but it will be something relatively minor.

Devaluing the dollar, as Roosevelt did, or massive debt forgiveness is simply not in the cards.

Heck, he can’t even bring himself to bring back bankruptcy cramdown for home mortgages.

Google and Verizon Hammer Nails in Net Neutrality’s Coffin

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My guess is that Google has given up on the timid Obama administration, and Obama’s timid FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, who falls over when the incumbent players say “boo”, so Google is throwing in the towel, and is negotiating with Verizon to pay extortion money to insure that it doesn’t get shut out of the telcos last mile:

Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.

Why is Google throwing in the towel?

Well part of it may be because Verizon is a major player in mobile phones, and they don’t want to be locked out:

People close to the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly about them said an agreement could be reached as soon as next week. If completed, Google, whose Android operating system powers many Verizon wireless phones, would agree not to challenge Verizon’s ability to manage its broadband Internet network as it pleased.

Or maybe it’s because all this hopey changey crap is nopey change crap:

Since the court decision, involving Comcast, in April, the F.C.C. has been trying to find a way to regulate broadband delivery, and that effort has been the subject of a series of private meetings at the agency’s headquarters in recent weeks. At the meetings, officials from the nation’s biggest Internet service and content providers, including Google and Verizon, have tried to reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated in light of the decision. Those meetings continued this week, apart from the talks between Google and Verizon.

Yes, you have a group of people doing bad things, and destroying a public resource, and even though you have the authority to regulate, all you have to do is redefine broadband, and you are good to go, you are working to, “reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated.”

That’s like banks trying to reach a consensus with bank robbers.

The incumbents are not valued members of the community, they are parasites who use an accident of history to attempt to act as highwaymen.

It’s not tough to reregulate this sh%$. You can’t now because a few years back, your Bushco predecessor made it so:

The F.C.C., meanwhile, favors a level playing field, but it cannot impose one as long as its authority over broadband is in legal doubt. It has proposed a solution that would reclassify broadband Internet service under the Communications Act from its current designation as an “information service,” a lightly regulated designation, to a “telecommunications service,” a category that, like telephone service, is subject to stricter regulation.

It’s very simple. Make a new finding. The old one was a payoff to the telcos for campaign bucks, warrantless wiretapping, and a failed free market ideology.

Make that ruling, and then, when you have a big stick, you can get to the rule making.

First, get a firm grip on their balls, and then negotiate.

Remember, we are dealing with The Phone Company here, and to quote Lily Tomlin, “We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.”

They may be essential, but they aren’t allies.

Then again, I’m being an optimist. If you look at the Obama administration’s actions, whether they be healthcare, financial reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, etc., it’s clear that their MO is to talk about reform, and then to give the malefactors what they want, so this could be by design, rather than by incompetence or cowardice.

In either case, treating the Obama Administration, and their FCC Chairman as the enemy and a bad faith player still gives activists the best policy, so I would suggest that this is what net neutrality activists do.

Avoid the veal pen conference calls, and light fires under them.

Obama Administration Goes Full Eric Blair*

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Or maybe Franz Kafka.

You see, last month, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights were retained by Nasser al-Awlaki, “the father of Obama assassination target (and U.S. citizen) Anwar al-Awlaki,” to get a court injunction to keep him from being killed by the U.S. government..

The government’s response was declare Anwar al-Awlaki a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” which meant that lawyers could not represent him without a special license from the government.

George W. Bush never asserted a right to assassinate American citizens, and they never used Treasury Department anti money laundering legislation to prevent lawyers from representing someone pro bono in a case to prevent their assassination:

Left with no choice, the ACLU and CCR this morning filed a lawsuit on their own behalf against Timothy Geithner and the Treasury Department. The suit argues that Treasury has no statutory authority under the law it invokes — The International Emergency Economic Powers Act — to bar American lawyers from representing American citizens on an uncompensated basis. It further argues what ought to be a completely uncontroversial point: that even if Congress had vested Treasury with this authority, it is blatantly unconstitutional to deny American citizens the right to have a lawyer, and to deny American lawyers the right to represent clients, without first obtaining a permission slip from Executive Branch officials (the Complaint is here). As the ACLU/CCR Brief puts it: “The notion that the government can compel a citizen to seek its permission before challenging the constitutionality of its actions in court is wholly foreign to our constitutional system” and “[a]s non-profit organizations dedicated to protecting civil liberties and human rights, Plaintiffs have a First Amendment right to represent clients in litigation consistent with their organizational missions.” The Brief also argues that it is a violation of Separation of Powers to allow the Executive Branch to determine in its sole discretion who can and cannot appear in and have access to a federal court.

Obama’s positions on national defense and surveillance indisputably worse than those of George W. Bush’s.

Bootnote:
After stonewalling for weeks, the Treasury Department granted a license once the ACLU and CCR filed a separate lawsuit against the denial of such a license, probably because they want to assert the right again, even if it is just for a few weeks to f%$# with the ability of some guy to get proper legal counsel.

I am so writing in “Howard Dean,” in the 2012 general.

*George Orwell’s real name.