H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Category: White House
I’m Cynical as to the Motives Here
So, after expressing concerns about the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), the White House has now threatened a veto:
The White House has said that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), currently before the US House of Representatives, lacks enough privacy protections in its current form and will probably be vetoed if passed.
A statement from the White House Office of Management and Budget said that, while the importance of protecting the national infrastructure from online attacks is paramount, it “strongly opposes” the bill because it lacks proper oversight, could seriously damage individuals’ privacy and hands over responsibility for domestic cybersecurity to the NSA, rather than to a civilian body.
“Legislation should address core critical infrastructure vulnerabilities without sacrificing the fundamental values of privacy and civil liberties for our citizens, especially at a time our Nation is facing challenges to our economic well-being and national security,” the statement reads.
“The Administration looks forward to continuing to engage with the Congress in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to enact cybersecurity legislation to address these critical issues. However, for the reasons stated herein, if H.R. 3523 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
Yea! The White House is standing up for privacy.
Or maybe not:
“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, in its current form,” the White House said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. “H.R. 3523 fails to provide authorities to ensure that the nation’s core critical infrastructure is protected while repealing important provisions of electronic surveillance law without instituting corresponding privacy, confidentiality, and civil liberties safeguards.”
CISPA’s sponsors, House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., dismissed the White House statement.
“The basis for the administration’s view is mostly based on the lack of critical infrastructure regulation, something outside of our jurisdiction,” the pair said in a statement released during the House Rules hearing. In addition, the sponsors pointed out that the White House objects to the bill’s current form, which doesn’t contain the latest changes hammered out with civil liberties groups.
(emphasis mine)
Maybe I’m a bit of a cynic, but I’m thinking that their objection is that it does not grant enough power.
If we look at the Obama administration’s prior behavior, their concerns for civil liberties or transparency have always taken a back seat to expanding executive power. (Basically Dick Cheney with abortion support)
Also, as PC Magazine notes, the Obasa administration made exactly the same sort of statements about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows for indefinite detention of American citizens, but decided to sign it anyway.
In any case, the House just called what is likely his bluff, and they passed CISPA and sent it to the Senate.
I’m not optimistic.
White House Statement after break:
CISPAvetostatement
What a Surprise
Obama announces a DoJ investigative task force to investigate foreclosure fraud, in order to bring the state Attorney Generals, most notably NY’s Eric Schneidermann, and they are not staffing it:
Three months ago, in his State of the Union speech, President Obama announced a new task force to investigate mortgage fraud and bring some measure of relief to the 12 million American families who are either losing their homes or in danger of losing them.
The new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group would be co-chaired by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado and three Washington insiders from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Obama said, “This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”
Whether or not the President, attorney general and others intend to get around to this task someday, “speed” was a terrible word to choose. Because 85 days after that speech, there is no sign of any activity.
………
Yes, for a few days, there seemed to be a renewed sense of purpose and focus from the administration. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder held his own news conference and announced that at least 55 Justice Department lawyers, agents, analysts and investigators would be assigned to the effort. A news release promised 30 staffers would be joining efforts “in the coming weeks.”
………
On March 9 — 45 days after the speech and 30 days after the announcement — we met with Schneiderman in New York City and asked him for an update. He had just returned from Washington, where he had been personally looking for office space. As of that date, he had no office, no phones, no staff and no executive director. None of the 55 staff members promised by Holder had materialized. On April 2, we bumped into Schneiderman on a train leaving Washington for New York and learned that the situation was the same.
Tuesday, calls to the Justice Department’s switchboard requesting to be connected with the working group produced the answer, “I really don’t know where to send you.” After being transferred to the attorney general’s office and asking for a phone number for the working group, the answer was, “I’m not aware of one.”
The promises of the President have led to little or no concrete action.
In fact, the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group was the sixth such entity formed since the start of the financial crisis in 2009. The grand total of staff working for all of the previous five groups was one, according to a surprised Schneiderman. In Washington, where staffs grow like cherry blossoms, this is a remarkable occurrence.
Schneidermann got punked.
There were over 1000 FBI agents assigned to the Savings and Loan crisis, so 55 is a joke, but they aren’t even staffing that.
If there was any question as to whether the banksters owned Obama, it’s been answered.
And on the other side is Mitt, who is a bankster.
What a choice.
My Conclusion is that Obama is Homophobic
I don’t mean that he is personally homophobic, there is no evidence that I know of about that, but that he is is politically homophobic, and so is unwilling to do anything for gay rights unless absolutely forced to.
Writing an executive order mandating that federal contractors don’t discriminate is literally the least that he could do, but for Mr. Hopey Changey, it’s a bridge too far:
A surprising new rift opened between the White House and the gay rights movement after White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Community advocates learned of the news during a closed-door meeting with two top Obama aides, Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz, who told the group that the White House would instead lead a multi-pronged effort to urge companies, federal agencies and others to oppose discrimination.
The Center for American Progress, which is Obama’s bitch among the think tanks called this “Disappointing”, and the HRC, another member of the Obama knee pad set was similarly pissed off.
It appears that Obama does not remember the, “Don’t ask, Don’t Give,” efforts, but my guess is that he will:
And, just to confirm that it’s not going to go away, we got this via press release;
Within hours of the White House announcement, the “We Can’t Wait!” campaign received a $100,000 cash infusion from liberal donor Jonathan Lewis, the son of major Democratic philanthropist Peter Lewis.
Quotes from Jonathan Lewis:
“This isn’t a broken promise President Obama can blame on Congress. He has not been able to provide a single valid reason for why he is now refusing to sign the executive order protecting LGBT workers. It has become increasingly clear that this decision is based on cowardice rather than principled leadership.”
“Over the past several years the LGBT advocacy groups have jumped through hoops for this administration, conducting extensive research and polling — more than has been done for any similar executive order — and now the only impediment is President Obama.”
“This is nothing short of craven election-year politics, a game Obama told us he would not play.”
Jonathan Lewis and his father, Peter, are major contributors to progressive causes. And, by major, I mean they give millions.
Another reason to give to specific candidates, particularly in the primary, as opposed to OFA, the DNC, the DCCC, or the DSCC.
But hey, a wing of the Talibaptists at the Focus on the Family liked that he dissed the LBGT community.
Below, you can see Jay Carney saying that “more study is needed”. I guess that the unspoken assumption here is that gays are just too icky to have equal rights unless we can make bigots feel better about themselves.
Seriously, Andrew Breitbart was better on gay inclusion that Barack Obama is:
Seriously, how about not being a coward on this issue. Not being a coward gets you votes.
Once Again, Obama Punts on Gay Marriage
It looks like the DNC is scrambling to find a way not to deal with marriage equality:
In recent weeks, a debate has been raging between leading Dems and gay rights advocates over whether the Democratic Party will make full marriage equality a plank in the party platform at the upcoming convention. Antonio Villaraigosa, the chair of the convention, recently stoked the fires when he said having such a plank would be “basic to who we are.”
But now The Huffington Post reports that Democratic National Committee officials have been privately pleading with advocates for patience on the issue, because it’s still viewed by top party officials as “politically sensitive” and potentially alienating to culturally conservative swing state Dems. HuffPo reports the DNC worries that “sweeping platform language would put the president in an awkward bind,” since President Obama is still “evolving” on gay marriage.
If Obama wanted this, it would be in there without a fight. The DNC does wipe its ass without checking with the White House. (As should be the case with a sitting President)
The tragedy here is that public opinion on this is moving blisteringly fast, and there are very few people on the wrong side of this issue who would vote Democrat.
They are dissing the base in order to pander to an electoral lost cause.
Score One for the Good Guys
It looks like the Obama administration has shut down an NSA proposal to continuously monitor huge portions of the internet:
The National Security Agency has pushed repeatedly over the past year to expand its role in protecting private-sector computer networks from cyberattacks but has been rebuffed by the White House, largely because of privacy concerns, according to administration officials and internal documents.
The most contentious issue was a legislative proposal last year that would have required hundreds of companies that provide such critical services as electricity generation to allow their Internet traffic to be continuously scanned using computer threat data provided by the spy agency. The companies would have been expected to turn over evidence of potential cyberattacks to the government.
The National Security Agency has pushed repeatedly over the past year to expand its role in protecting private-sector computer networks from cyberattacks but has been rebuffed by the White House, largely because of privacy concerns, according to administration officials and internal documents.
The most contentious issue was a legislative proposal last year that would have required hundreds of companies that provide such critical services as electricity generation to allow their Internet traffic to be continuously scanned using computer threat data provided by the spy agency. The companies would have been expected to turn over evidence of potential cyberattacks to the government.
While the NSA does good work, their world view, and hence their policy prescriptions, are driven by the fact that they are eavesdroppers.
Basically, they want to make their jobs easier, without any sort of cumbersome review of civil rights protections. It’s the inevitable consequence of who they are and what they do.
Their organizational imperative leads them to support policies that can be described as either totalitarian or sociopathic, which is why care should be taken to ensure that they are the servant, and not the master, of security policy in the United States.
H/t Kevin Drum.
The Bank Deal is Likely Worse Than it Sounds
Because the details of the deal have not been released, and they may in fact not have actually been settled, which means that when they are finalized, they could be worse than what we have already heard.
In fact they almost certainly will be worse, because the state AGs and the Obama administration simply cannot afford pull defeat from the jaws of what they claim to be victory:
You know it’s bad when banks are the most truthful guys in the room.
Remember that historical mortgage settlement deal that was the lead news story on Thursday? It has been widely depicted as a done deal. The various AGs who had been holdouts said their concerns had been satisfied.
But in fact, Bank of America’s press release said that the deal was “agreements in principle” as opposed to a final agreement. The Charlotte bank had to be more precise than politicians because it is subject to SEC regulations about the accuracy of its disclosures. And if you read the template for the AG press release carefully, you can see how it finesses where the pact stands. And today, American Banker confirmed that the settlement pact is far from done, and the details will be kept from the public as long as possible, until it is filed in Federal court (because it includes injunctive relief, a judge must bless the agreement).
This may not sound all that important to laypeople, but most negotiators and attorneys will react viscerally to how negligent the behavior of the AGs has been. The most common reaction among lawyers I know who been with white shoe firms (including former partners) is “shocking”. Let me explain why.
Negotiating of large, complex deals (or even little deals) does not happen in one fell swoop. Even when the two sides have outlined the major terms, and in sone cases hammered out the really important ones in some detail, there is still a great deal of negotiating that takes place in finalizing the text of the contract. The negotiation over the definitive agreement makes a great deal of difference on how fair the pact turns out to be. For instance, one of the sayings of transaction lawyers is “He who controls the document controls the deal.” The party that writes up the initial version of the contract has undue influence because that becomes the default and the other side has to negotiate back from that language.
Politics is trumping both the law and mathematics, and this will not end well.
Obama and Contraception
When your opposition looks this pampered and out of touch, you have a winning issue
So, in the ginned up controversy over the requirement that religious non-profits cover contraception for their employees, Obama has split the baby:
Mr. Obama announced that rather than requiring religiously affiliated charities and universities to pay for contraceptives for their employees, the cost would be shifted to health insurance companies. The initial rule caused a political uproar among some Catholics and others who portrayed it as an attack on religious freedom.
Meeting with his top advisers in the Oval Office last week amid rising anger from Catholic Democrats, liberal columnists and left-leaning religious leaders — a fed-up Mr. Obama issued an order meant for Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. Ms. Sebelius and agency lawyers had initially told the president they needed a year to work out a compromise that had seemed obvious to some in the administration from the start: make the new rule more like that offered by the State of Hawaii, where employees of religiously affiliated institutions obtained contraceptives through a side benefit offered by insurance companies.
But in difficult internal negotiations, a group of advisers had bested Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and others and sold the president on a stricter rule. Now the political furor surrounding it was threatening to consume signs of economic improvement giving a boost to the White House and put the Obama re-election campaign on the defensive.
So the mandate for coverage is now on insurance companies, rather than the employers.
If this is the end of this matter, then this is a good thing.
My concern, based on past history, is that this is only the first step in a larger retreat.
Then again, there are a number of people I respect who see it as eleventy dimensional chess, with people like Amanda Marcotte suggesting that Obama punked both the Conference of Bishops and the woman hating wing of the Republican Party, by forcing them to publicly oppose contraception, which is used by something like 99% of all sexually active women in the US at one time or another.
Certainly the optics, for now at least, are good, and the effect on coverage of this change is zero, so it’s a win win.
But the most powerful knock against Obama is his unwillingness to fight, and in the 2-3 days before this decision, news outlets were starting to note that there are 28 states that have had an identical mandate, and have had such a mandate for years, with nary a peep from the pedophile protection bureau US Conference of Catholic Bishops, so it was clear that the worm was turning in the media as well, so keeping this up until they blinked would, to my mind, have been the optimal approach.
[on edit]
I think that the real policy and political implications are best synthesized by the following from Lindsay Beyerstein:
But if the bishops won’t accept this deal, Obama should stop trying to accomodate them. Respect for religious freedom does not include paying solemn lip service to the contraception cooties.
Sorry Felix, You are Wrong
Yesterday, I talked about Dave Dayen and Yves Smith’s take on the settlement, and their take was “bankster bailout”, and I noted that Felix Salmon’s take was that it was a good thing.
Well, now the journalist who is I think the best person (this side of Jon Stewart, anyway) at distilling the complexities of Wall Street to you average reader, Matt Taibbi has weighed in, and not only is he calling bailout for Wall Street crooks, but he apologizes for his earlier optimism. What’s more, he distills what it all means in one paragraph:
But this deal not only doesn’t end robosigning, it officially makes getting caught for it inexpensive. Shame on me for ever thinking that might be a good thing.
That is the final word. Fraud and forgery have been given a price tag, and it’s less than 2 grand.
Obama F%$#s Unions Again
First it was not following up on card check, and now, he’s selling unions down the river in the latest FAA authorization, which served to gut decades of labor law.
The labor movement seriously needs to start going totally “Club for Growth” on the Democrats in the primaries.
And While We Are Talking About White House Spelunking…
It looks like the White House is preparing to cave to the Conference of Catholic Bishops on reproductive rights:
A top adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign suggested on Tuesday that the administration was open to working with Catholic hospitals and universities over their objections to providing birth control services to women.
“I’m less concerned about the messaging of this than to find a resolution that makes sense,” David Axelrod said on MSNBC.
“I heard earlier Joe [Scarborough] say, ‘Well, there may be compromises that can be reached.’ We have great respect for the work that these religious institutions do. … We certainly don’t want to abridge anyone’s religious freedoms, so we’re going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions,” he explained.
Jeebus.
It’s like capitulation is so firmly engrained in their DNA that they can’t stand their ground even when it is to their advantage to do so.
These days, the Catholic Bishops is as likely to support Democrats as the Chamber of Commerce, so all you are doing is pissing off your base.
More Change We Cannot Believe In
It turns out that while under federal receivership, and under the direction of the FHFA, Freddie Mac has simultaneously made it more difficult to refinance your mortgage and invested in risking and hard to sell financial instruments that profit from you not being able to refinance:
Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, has placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.
Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.
No evidence has emerged that these decisions were coordinated. The company is a key gatekeeper for home loans but says its traders are “walled off” from the officials who have restricted homeowners from taking advantage of historically low interest rates by imposing higher fees and new rules.
Yeah, there was no coordination here.
Just aggressive tightening of refinancing standards (further down in the story) that have put people, “in financial jail,” and as it was ramping up on its risky bets, it also, “quietly announced that it was raising charges, called post-settlement delivery fees, for refinancing.”
But we aren’t going to see a recess appointment to replace the acting head of FHFA, Edward DeMarco, with someone who might reign in executive bonuses or work for home owners.
Well, I Was Wrong on My Assessment of His SOTU Statement
The one thing that I liked, a task force to investigate bank/mortgage fraud appears to be an attempt to undermine any meaningful review of bank and mortgage practices:
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been celebrated as the progressive Great White Hope. But the danger of assuming leadership is that that individual becomes a target both of attacks and of seduction. And while I’d like to think better of Schneiderman, an announcement earlier this evening has strong hallmarks of Schneiderman falling prey to the combined pressures and blandishments of the Administration and its allies.
………
So get this: this is a committee that will “investigate.” The co-chair, Lanny Breuer, along with DoJ chief Eric Holder, hail from white shoe Washington law firm Covington & Burling, which has deep ties to the financial services industry. Even if they did not work directly for clients in the mortgage business, they come from a firm known for its deep political and regulatory connections (for instance: Gene Ludwig, the Covington partner I engaged for some complicated regulatory work when I was at Sumitomo Bank, later became head of the OCC). We’ve written at length on how the OCC is such a shameless tout for the banking industry that it cannot properly be called a regulator. Similarly, the SEC has been virtually absent from the mortgage beat, no doubt because its enforcement chief, Robert Khuzami, was general counsel to the fixed income department at Deutsche Bank. That area included the trading operation under Greg Lippmann who we have described as Patient Zero of so called mezz CDOs, or to the layperson, toxic mortgage paper that kept the subprime bubble going well beyond its sell date. And we don’t need to say much about the DoJ. It has been missing in action during this entire Administration.
………
It’s clear what the Administration is getting from getting Schneiderman aligned with them. It is much less clear why Schneiderman is signing up. He can investigate and prosecute NOW. He has subpoena powers, staff, and the Martin Act. He doesn’t need to join a Federal committee to get permission to do his job. And this is true for ALL the others agencies represented on this committee. They have investigative and enforcement powers they have chosen not to use. So we are supposed to believe that a group, ex Schneiderman, that has been remarkably complacent, will suddenly get religion on the mortgage front because they are all in a room and Schneiderman is a co-chair?
See also here.
So, this isn’t an attempt to stop law breaking, it’s yet another attempt to cover up law breaking by co-opting people who do want to pursue corruption and law breaking.
It’s like his appointment of Elizabeth Warren to set up the CFPB all over again.
Only About 2½ Years Late
Tim Geithner has pretty much said that he won’t serve in Obama’s next term:
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, the last remaining member of the Obama administration’s original economic team, said he doesn’t expect the president to ask him to stay in office if re-elected.
“He’s not going to ask me to stay on, I’m pretty confident,” Geithner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. “I’m confident he’ll be president. But I’m also confident he’s going to have the privilege of having another secretary of the Treasury.”
Geithner, 50, has led President Barack Obama’s efforts to pull the U.S. economy out of the worst recession since World War II, including overseeing bailouts of automakers General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, which have since emerged from bankruptcy. Before joining the administration in 2009, Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, playing a key role in the government’s rescue packages for banks including Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC)
Well, after completely f%$#ing the economy, the financial system, and the Democratic Party, through your relentless ass kissing of Wall Street, I guess that your work is done.
It should be noted though, the Cossacks work for the Czar.
Well, Here’s One Announcement Obama Won’t Make at the SOTU
He might be making some comments about working toward a sellout to settlement with the big banks and the mortgage services.
The reason that he won’t be touting the settlement is because there is no settlement:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEJanuary 23, 2012STATEMENT FROM [Iowa] ATTORNEY GENERAL TOM MILLER [
Obama toadyLead AG in the negotiations](CHICAGO, Illinois) State Attorneys General from both parties, along with our federal partners, are today discussing the details of the progress we have made so far in settlement negotiations, including the terms we must still resolve. We have not yet reached an agreement with the nation’s five largest servicers, and we won’t reach a settlement any time this week.
As you can tell, I not a big fan of the settlement, and I think we can thank the people who have opposed the deal as currently structured, most notably Yves Smith, who has done yeoman work on teasing out the details and communicating what it all means for months, the recent condemnation of the deal by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is also significant. (And, as an FYI, everyone’s favorite right wing nuts, Judicial Watch, has filed suits to get related documents)
This resembles the groundswell that led to Obama vetoing HR 3808, which allowed some states shoddy documentation practices to go national.
With the increasing complaints from consumer activists about the settlement.
What are the problems?
Well on the micro level (courtesy of Yves Smith), it gives the banksters an incentive to pawn the losses off against the the mortgages that they recapitalized, avoiding the hit themselves, and giving it to pension funds, it incentivizes targeting the largest loans, and so benefits the richest, and there are no meaningful mechanisms to enforce good behavior from the mortgage servicers.
On the macro level, let’s roll Simon Johnson:
The financial sector has been the Obama administration’s Achilles’ heel. Despite coming to power in the middle of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression with a broad mandate for “change,” the administration has consistently deferred to big banks and done its best to keep them in business “as is.”
(Read the rest, really).
The real underlying message much of the disgust with how the government in general, and the Obama administration in particular function is that there has been a failure to stop the looting, and start prosecuting.
So, the Keystone XL Pipeline Is On Hold
The ‘Phants forced a decision in the payroll tax bill, and so he denied the application:
President Obama on Wednesday rejected, for now, the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, saying the $7 billion project could not be adequately reviewed within the 60-day deadline set by Congress. While the president’s action does not preclude later approval of the project, it sets up a baldly partisan fight over energy, jobs and regulation that will most likely persist through the November election.
The president said his hand had been forced by Republicans in Congress, who inserted a provision in the temporary payroll tax cut bill passed in December giving the administration only until Feb. 21 to decide the fate of the 1,700-mile pipeline, which would stretch from oil sands formations in Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
The State Department, which has authority over the project because it crosses an international border, said there was not enough time to draw a new route for the pipeline and assess the potential environmental harm to sensitive grasslands and aquifers along its path. The agency recommended that the permit be denied, and Mr. Obama concurred.
“As the State Department made clear last month,” the president said in a statement, “the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.”
The Republicans think that they have an issue, but it will be long forgotten by election time.
As to the final outcome, it will be approved after the election, and Obama will tweak the route a bit, and claim some sort of post partisan victory, all while basically selling out to big oil.
Oh My F%$#ing Ghod!
The Obama administration is floating Larry Summers as the next head of the World Bank:
President Barack Obama may put his mark on the World Bank by nominating Lawrence Summers, his former National Economic Council director, to lead the bank when Robert Zoellick’s term expires later this year, according to two people familiar with the matter.
While a Summers nomination may draw criticism from some Democrats who disagree with his past stances on deregulating the financial industry, he has support inside the administration from top officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and current NEC Director Gene Sperling, said one of the people.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also being considered, along with other candidates, said the other person. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.
Larry Summers’ record was too toxic for Obama to nominate him as secretary of the treasury, and the parts of his record that aren’t rife with incompetence or corruption show that he is completely incapable of operating in an environment like the World bank, which requires consensus.
There is no eleventy dimensional chess. This is just stupid and arrogant.
H/t Felix Salmon.
Next, Dump Geithner
In a move that should spurprise no one, William Daley is leaving his post as Obama’s Chief of Staff:
President Obama announced Monday that the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, was stepping down, jolting the top ranks of his administration less than a year before he faces a difficult re-election. Mr. Daley will be replaced by Jacob J. Lew, the budget director and a seasoned Washington insider with ties to Capitol Hill.
Mr. Daley, a fellow Chicagoan who was recruited by Mr. Obama a year ago to help strike bipartisan legislative deals, struggled to find his footing in a ferociously partisan Washington and failed to help his boss broker a huge budget agreement with Congressional Republicans last summer. His departure interrupts a run of good news for the White House, with tentative signs of life in the job market, victory over Republicans on the payroll tax and Republican presidential candidates assailing one another on the campaign trail.
This was inevitable once much of his duties were pulled a few months back.
Basically, he was incompetent, and he got Harry “Milquetoast” Reid to hate his guts, which appears to be a fairly tough thing to do.
Of course, the masters of the universe in finance must be reassured at all cost, as when Daley (JP Morgan Chase), replaced Emanuel (Fanny Mae), he will be replaced by Jacob Lew (Citigroup).
Lew made a lot of money betting against the housing market for Citi, so we can expect more ass-kissing directed Wall Street’s way.
If this is an attempt to reshuffle his organization and political posture for the upcoming election, he’s firing blanks.
If Obama really wants to win the election, he needs to start prosecuting the banksters, starting with Robert Rubin.
He’s carry more than 40 states if he did that.
OK, This is Good Policy from the White House
But I’d approve of anything that had the effect of f%$#ing the airlines:
Starting in late January, the Obama administration will force airlines to be more transparent about the full cost of tickets they often disguise in ads touting cheap fares. Low-price airlines Southwest, Spirit, and Allegiant are going to court to stop the rules, arguing that they violate corporate free speech rights.
But consumer advocates say the changes are a positive development for travelers who have been swindled by airlines for too long:
………
This is common sense regulation, and as to the argument business have a free speech right to defraud consumers, talk to the cat.
This is Not a Sudden Case of Balls
It’s just that, at least until November 2, Barack Obama is more scared of the Occupy movement than he is of the Republicans, hence his recess appointments today:
President Obama kicked off the election year aggressively, picking a fight with congressional Republicans by sidestepping the Senate to fill the top job at the government’s newly created consumer protection bureau.
He also filled three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board, which referees labor-management controversies — a priority of his allies in labor unions.
The appointments Wednesday, which had been stalled in the Senate, came as Obama moved to make confronting Congress a central part of his strategy for reelection. His job approval rating remains low, but Congress’ standing is even lower — “as unpopular as Ebola virus” — as one administration aide recently put it. In a confrontation between the two, the president will have the upper hand, White House aides say.
Actually, the NLRB appointments might be more significant, because the Republicans had shut down the board for lack of quorum.
I don’t expect the CFPB doing much, because Obama was dragged into the entire idea kicking and screaming, and his closest financial regulation adviser, Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, hates it, and with Elizabeth Warren effectively neutered by virtue of her running for Senate, which pretty much requires her to be in lock step with the Obama administration, I expect to see a remarkably passive posture from Richard Cordray.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Barack Obama will do the right thing, once he believes that he has no alternative.