Category: White House

A Clarification on Yesterday’s Post

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On the whole, I think that Barack Obama’s administration is immeasurably better than George W. Bush’s. It is on the specific areas of immigration, the jihad against whistleblowers, the national security state, and Afghanistan where he is by all objective measures much worse.

Yesterday’s post, was about those specific areas, and in other areas he compares favorably:

  • On healthcare, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)
  • On Labor, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)
  • On financial regulation, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)
  • On the budget and taxation, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)

Huh, there appears to be a pattern.

Is the Obama Administration Sabotaging the CFPB Already?

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There are increasing reports that Elizabeth Warren, largely as a result of a growing chorus among liberals to appoint her as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will be the nominee as the first chair.

Well, I figured that if they were forced, as it appears that they are, then they would play to lose the nomination: After all, how tough is it to get Republicans to filibuster someone who wants to work for the average American?

Well, if the following report is true, then they are also sabotaging the CFPB as an organization as we speak, having tasked a Federal Reserve Governor and former banking industry lobbyist to start staffing the organization:

However, a source tells FDL News that Geithner is working on this process with Elizabeth Duke, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Duke is a former community banker and the past head of the American Bankers Association, a trade lobby group. She served on the ABA’s board of directors from 1999 to 2006. The ABA opposed the Dodd-Frank bill almost entirely because of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

What’s more, Duke herself specifically opposed an independent agency in July 2009 testimony, and endorsed keeping the responsibility for consumer protection in the Federal Reserve. In fact, she went further, promoting the Fed’s consumer protection prowess despite the agency having missed the housing bubble and the predatory lending that enabled it.

………

If the reports I’m getting are true, this is the woman dealing with staffing up and organizing the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, before the director gets a chance.

The Federal Reserve has not yet returned comment regarding Elizabeth Duke’s role.

This is crucially important. There’s a lot someone in power can do to mess with a federal agency at the outset. You can hire some staffers not committed to the agency’s goals, or give them poor working conditions, or any number of things. Then the new director comes in and is immediately faced with a turf war. If a community banker dismissive of consumer protections ends up setting the vision for the consumer protection bureau, it could slow its progress out of the gate. If the Department where the agency originates is more concerned with “extend and pretend” – letting the banks get out of trouble by earning their way past the bad loans on their books, in part through inundating consumers with higher fees on their products – then that worldview of the banks being more important than the people can get embedded into the agency.

Obviously, there are conflicting reports here, but I’m inclined to believe these reports.

Obviously, David Dayen’s suggestion that Obama do the right thing and, “without delay name her to the position of interim director by hiring her at Treasury,” is a good suggestion, but this assumes a level of support of the CFPB and its core mission, and I do not believe that.

First, I believe that Obama and his economic team really do buy into neoliberal idea that markets are always smarter and better than regulators, and second, I think that they honestly believe that the banking system will collapse if they generate profits by cheating ordinary Americans.

Of course I’ve been pessimistic about Obama for about three years, so feel free to argue that I’m not hopey changey enough.

About a Lot More Than the iPhone

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The Library of Congress, which has the power to create exemptions to the DMCA, has has made just released very significant carve outs, though to read the New York Times, it’s all about the iPhone.

You see, two of the things that are now allowed under the ruling are software to “jailbreak” the iPhone, both to allow non-Apple™ App Store applications, and to use the iPhone on a non AT&T networks.

Actually, this applies to all cell phones, but this is not a big deal.

What you also have is:

  • The right to rip short videos from DVDs for the educational and criticism purposes.
  • Defeating video game encryption for, “The purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities”.
  • Circumventing dongles when they become obsolete or exit manufacture.
  • Allowing circumvention of technical measures on E-Books to allow them to be read aloud.

This is stunning. It is consumer friendly, good policy, and common sense.

I would never have expected any of the three things to happen with the US copyright establishment.

I must therefore assume that this was as a result of input from political appointees in the USPTO and Library of Congress, this is fairly radical for career bureaucrats, and as such we need to give the White House credit.

I will note that there is still a work around that Apple™ could use which would make non App Store applications illegal, by using the Sega strategy, which involved using a verification key (the letters S-E-G-A) which would load the banner message, “PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD,” before the program loaded (thanks for the legal research from DC at SP), which made jail-breaking the console a trademark violation.

I don’t see Apple™ doing this, I think that it would unleash regulatory and customer blow-back, but the legal precedent remains there.

Link to the official anti-circumvention rule-making.

Now Afghanistan Has Its Own Pentagon Papers

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Courtesy of Wikileaks, which received something on the order of 90,000 US documents about Afghanistan, pretty much the whole of military logs from January 2004 until December 2009, which it then released to the New York Times, der Speigel, and The Guardian, some weeks ago, and has now made publicly available on their site.

Much like the Pentagon Papers, the revelations this far are also generally known:

These are all well known facts, though these have not been presented in US government documents before, which is also much like the Pentagon Papers.

Needless to say, the Obama White House, notwithstanding its promises for more openness has gone full throated in its denunciation of the release of data, saying that the release of the documents could, “could endanger lives and U.S. security,” even though the facts are so well known that even I have blogged about most of them.

There is no danger to any lives or US security, but it does make it more difficult for Barack Obama to prosecute this deepening fiasco, he will see increasing push-back from his own party on this, and this likely seen as a serious political, threat: It is clear that Obama is terrified of being cast as a peacenik in the 2012 elections.

Cry Me a F%$#ing River

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The presidents of 2 of the big banks, Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein, and Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan Chase were not invited to the signing of the financial reform bill, even though other bankers,chiefs of, “Citigroup, Bank of America, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley.”

They are reportedly fuming over this.

Considering what you folks have gotten from the taxpayers, and your vociferous opposition to any substantive reform, Mssrs. Blankfein and Diamon should count themselves lucky.

If I were President, I would have taken my inspiration from Vlad Tepes in dealing with these ingrates.

And Now the Truth Comes Out

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And the Obama administration is now falling all over itself to apologize to Shirley Sherrod.

Not panicking in the first place, and getting the facts right would have been better, but I think that what happened is that they realize that they are now looking like a bunch of bed-wetting cowards.

The problem is not that they are looking like a bunch of bed-wetting cowards, it is that they are a bunch of bed-wetting cowards.

Not only is it bad policy, but it is bad politics, because, as Josh Marshall notes in his “Bitch slap theory of electoral politics, because it makes the voters think that, “Someone who can’t or won’t defend themselves certainly isn’t someone you can depend upon to defend you.”

I’m waiting for the the response from Stewart, Letterman, and Leno.

Cowards.

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When people talk about DFH* bloggers hating on the Obama they seem to think that its all about Obama being a pragmatist. It isn’t about his being a pragmatist.

It’s about his, and his people being abject cowards, who soil themselves when someone on the right wing shouts out a lie.

Case in point, Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, who was just fired for a yet another deceptively edited video from professional bigot Andrew Breitbart.

You see, she gave a talk about how when she was working helping farmers, when the first white farmer came to her for help, the thought crossed her mind was not to help, because they were white, but she realized almost as soon as the thought hit her that it was wrong.

Well after excerpting 30 seconds out of a 45+ minute speech (see below), so that Fox News could go “Oh noes! N*****s are trying to take over America.”

The response of the Secretary of Agriculture was to fire her before any real facts came out.

I am with what Digby said:

“Her decision ‘rightly or wrongly” will be called into question” because some right wing hitman put out an edited tape that makes her sound as if her point is the opposite of what it is, so she had to be fired.

They are telling wingnuts everywhere that all they have to do is gin up a phony controversy (especially about a black person, apparently) and the administration will fire them so as not to shake confidence that they are “fair service providers.”

This is sheer cowardice.

This is what pisses people off.

Video after break

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.

Not Gonna Happen……

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Now that financial reform is due to become law, the word is that gadfly for the common folk Elizabeth Warren is the most likely candidate to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB, it was originally going to be a full agency called the CPFB).

This is not going to happen.

The Obama administration, particularly Timothy “The Bankers’ Bitch” Geithner, hate her.

She has embarrassed then by publicly reporting on how the TARP has been too easy on big banks, she has embarrassed them by advocating for real reform, and she has embarrassed them by lobbying aggressively for the CPFAB, which the Obama administration does not really want as a meaningful entity, because they actually believe the talking points from the finance industry about the need for “innovation”.

I should note that Something Awful is reporting that Ben Nelson asked for, and got, a veto on the head of the CPFB in exchange for his vote on financial reform, and that Nelson has flatly stated that Warren is not acceptable.

Honestly, I can see members of the protesting Nelson’s as vehemently as Br’er Rabbit asked not to be thrown into the briar patch.

Barack Obama Hires Enemy of Healthcare Reform to Manage Implementation

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Liz Fowler, who was a former staffer of Max Baucus, who went to work as a lobbyist for Wellpoint (vice president of public policy), and then came back to Baucus to kill the public option, has has been hired by the White House to implement the regulations for healthcare reform.

Yet more of the criminally naive concept of bringing enemies in to run programs that they did their best to destroy.

Additionally, it makes a joke of yet another of Obama’s promises, to shut down the revolving door between government and industry, because if Ms. Fowler were going through the revolving door any faster, it would look like a Cuisinart set to liquefy.

Barack Obama In Trying for Credibility in Defense, Destroys Our Military

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Because Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ are terrified about being accused of being soft on defense,* that his future budgets will by expensive high tech weapons systems at the expense of operations, maintenance, and readiness:

U.S. spending on weapons through 2016 likely will grow faster than the overall defense budget, which will have annual increases of only about 1 percent above inflation, according to Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale.

“Our goal would be to get forces and modernization to grow by 2 or 3 percent,” Hale said in an interview, while saying that “it’s not a given.”

So Obama intends to spend money on crap we don’t need, thereby diverting money from the crap we do need

Of course, the fact that we are already spending more money on defense than at any time since the end of the 2nd World War, and he’s still trying to increase the defense budget in real terms just buggers the mind.

Republicans support wasteful defense spending because:

  • It’s easy to demagogue.
  • They find defense contractors an easy touch for donations.
  • They want to ruin our finances so that we have to make cuts in social programs.

The Democrats support wasteful defense spending because:

  • They are afraid that Republicans will call them names.

Truth be told, I am not sure which one is more pathetic.

*It won’t work, the Republicans will run against you as soft on defense anyway. As the saying goes, “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one.”

Obama Tries to Prove Rush Limbaugh Right

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Unfortunately, no one notices.

The Obama administration is looking to implement draconian new IP laws that will literally criminalize certain types of thought:

While they may never be able to truly defeat piracy and drive it from the lurking depths of the internet, copyright protection attack-dog organizations like the RIAA and MPAA have long dreamed of the day when they would no longer have to pay for their own copyright enforcement. Now that dream is on the verge of coming true, thanks to the Obama administration.

……

The White House’s vision is perhaps a prelude to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which will go before Congress later this year. The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client development a criminal offense if the distributed software was used for infringement. It also implements an interesting provision called “imminent infringement”, which allows the government to charge people who they think might be about to infringe with a civil offense (for example if you searched “torrent daft punk”). This is among the first official “thought crime” provisions to be proposed by the U.S. government. The bill also makes it a criminal offense to bypass DRM.

As I have said before, IP law is, at its core, public interest law, as is clearly stated in the Constitution, and this stuff is just nuts.

It does not serve anyone to spend taxpayer money to enforce private licenses, particularly not when doing so implies a regime that would have Eric Arthur Blair* spinning in his grave.

*Better known by his nom de plume, George Orwell.

Quote of the Day

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It is remarkable. I had expected that we economists would have to fight Democratic political advisors who would be pushing for policies that were bad in the long run but that gained votes in the short run. I had never expected to be fighting Democratic political advisors who are pushing policies that are:

  • bad in the long run.
  • bad in the short run.
  • lose votes too.

—-J. Bradford Delong, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration

<Tinfoil Hat>I’m beginning to wonder if Obama isn’t some sort of Republican Manchurian Candidate</Tinfoil Hat>

I don’t really believe this, but his policy of cozying up to bankers, BP, and other corrupt centers of power in our society while cock punching the DFH’s* that are his base seems to be a pretty good job of sabotaging his party.

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.

Normally, I Don’t Buy the Obama and the Eleventy Dimensional Chess, But………

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It is clear to me that Obama’s decision to fire Stanley McCrystal is the right thing on many levels, both on a political and a policy leve, and not just because this action is essential to the maintenance of good order and discipline in the military.

It is clear that anything else would have undercut both Obama’s credibility and the idea of civilian control of the military.

That being said, it was a lot more, it:

  • Got rid of a corrupt and political officer with a long history of being a Bush admin butt boy (Tillman, torture at the Camp Nama prison camp, his earlier insubordination, etc.)
  • He put someone in charge whom the Republicans are TREMENDOUSLY invested in (Petraeus), and so inoculated himself somewhat from any potential downsides.
  • He has given some ownership of the Afghanistan war to another corrupt and political officer with a long history of being a Bush admin butt boy, and if Davey (Petraeus) is kept busy, he won’t be leaking stories to undermine the timeline.
  • It is clear that this is a temporary appointment, so Obama can replace Petraeus at any time because it’s clear that being head of CENTCOM and Afghanistan is too much
    • At that time, he can appoint someone who won’t lobby to undermine the time-line.
  • Petraeus will be too busy to engage in political machinations over the next few months.

All in all, I give this an 8 out of 10. It works on just about every level, except, of course, for the fact that we remain in the “Graveyard of Empires.”

What Simon Says

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Specifically, Simon Johnson, former IMF chief economist, who notes that with Peter Orszag resigning as as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Paul Krugman would be the best replacement:

The president should nominate Paul Krugman to replace Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). (Orszag resignation details are here.)

………

But for the OMB position, the dynamic of a hearing would be terrific for the president’s specific agenda and broader messages. Krugman, of course, is the leading advocate for continued (or increased) fiscal stimulus. This is exactly President Obama’s message to the G20 this weekend.

Plus, when Republicans push back against Krugman on this issue, he will let them have it full blast on fiscal policy during the Bush administration. Krugman has, again and again, been an outspoken critic of the Bush era fiscal policy. He has precise chapter and verse on where the Bush team went off the deep fiscal edge.

………

It will not happen, of course, because Obama only tries to do the right thing when he has no other alternative, and there is simply not the pressure to have Krugman take the post.

Go read the whole thing.

General McChrystal Should Not Be Fired

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He should be the subject of a formal criminal inquiry.

Simply put, the statements, both by him and by his subordinates with his tacit approval are completely antithetical to the idea of civilian control of the military.

To the degree that his profile in Rolling Stone, when he was informed of both content and quotes therein ahead of publication, and he voiced no objections, is simply completely beyond the pale for the lowliest private at a wedding toast, much less a general being interviewed by a major national magazine:

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”

…………

…But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama’s top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a “clown” who remains “stuck in 1985.” Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, “turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful.” Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal’s inner circle. “Hillary had Stan’s back during the strategic review,” says an adviser. “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’ ”

McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” says a member of the general’s team. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He’s a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can’t just have someone yanking on shit.”

At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry. “Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke,” he groans. “I don’t even want to open it.” He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.

“Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.

This is on top of his lying and cover-up in the Pat Tillman affair, the torture under his command in Iraq at the Camp Nama prison camp, and his earlier insubordination at his speech in London about a year ago.

The only way that firing McCrystal would be an appropriate response is if he were fired out of a cannon.

His senior staff should be fired, McCrystal should be brought up on charges.

Of course, Barack Obama, because he wants everyone to like him, will instead engage in some theater like rejecting McCrystal’s resignation, but this is wrong for the military, wrong for the Afghan campaign, and wrong for the country.

Well, I’ll be hearing Olbermann’s Special Comment in a few minutes.

Once Again, the White House Does the Right Thing, When Forced To……

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And then they weaken it significantly.

In this case, the White House is now behind repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell this year, because it’s clear that it’s going to hit the floor of the House, and probably the Senate, and while they have been fighting against this behind the scenes, Obama and His Minions™ don’t want to fight against this in public.

The thing is, in order to get Obama’s tepid support, they have created a repeal of DADT that does not repeal DADT:

Discussions around what that repeal measure would include were ongoing as Levin continued to lobby his colleagues. But a couple concessions designed to pacify Gates were being considered: allowing the Pentagon to complete its study before implementation proceeded and potentially requiring a stamp of approval (e.g. a certification letter) from military leadership and/or the president.

But by the time repeal advocates were invited to the White House on Monday morning to be briefed on a new compromise, a third concession had been added. There would be no nondiscrimination mandate. In other words, even after the law is repealed, it will not be replaced at any point with a policy that explicitly states gays and lesbians are allowed to serve openly in the military.

So, the repeal of DADT is just putting the policy back in the hands of Barack Obama, who will doubtless delegate to Robert Gates, who appears to be the most hostile person to gays serving currently working in the Pentagon.

Not feeling hopey changey.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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The White House has come out against letting auto dealers cheat their customers.

To quote the first few ‘graphs of the official statement:

Later this afternoon, the Senate will vote on a motion to instruct conferees on the Brownback Amendment. That basically means members of the Senate will cast a nonbinding vote on whether or not they think the House and Senate conferees should consider carving out a loophole for auto dealers that make auto loans from the financial reform bill.

The President has been clear on this issue, repeatedly urging members of the Senate to fight efforts of the special interests and their lobbyists to weaken consumer protections. The fact is, auto dealer-lending is an $850 billion industry, which is larger than the entire credit card industry and they make nearly 80 percent of the automobile loans in our country.

Is there any question that these lenders should be subject to the same standards as any local or community bank that provides loans?

This is the right thing to do.

Journalists Protecting Their Own

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In an otherwise ordinary article about how former Googlers in the Obama White House continue to talk with current Googlers, we have the following exchange:

In January, for instance, Google’s vice president and “chief Internet evangelist” Vint Cerf anxiously wrote to McLaughlin about the worsening chances for net neutrality — the notion that Internet Service Providers should be barred from favoring their own content or from offering “fast-lane” services to premium-paying customers. “Has there been so much flack from the Hill that you guys feel a need to back away” from a commitment?, asked Cerf, attaching a CNET article by a well-credentialed business consultant who was advancing that thesis.

“Don’t be silly,” McLaughlin responds. “No one’s backed away from anything. . . . Isn’t . . . the author of the article, an anti [net neutrality] zealot?”

“Yes, he is,” Cerf wrote. “Just wanted to confirm he’s full of biased baloney.”

“Absolutely,” McLaughlin replied.

If you go through the article, you will never see that name of the journalist in question, Declan McCullagh, who was best described as a “Draw by crayon libertarian,” by the inestimable Andrew Orlowski of The Register.

I deduce it from the Clues, “CNET,” “anti [net neutrality] zealot,” and “Biased Baloney,” if you are familiar with McCullagh’s oeuvre.

What is almost certain is that if the principals in this story were talking about a statement by a lawyer given to over-the-top statements, (Geoff Feiger, for example) you would have seen the name in the story.

It’s not in this story, because it is seen as inappropriate for a journalist to call out another journalist by name, even in the context of a quote someone else.

This attitude is corrosive to journalism.