CLOSED
5 months ago
11.15.2008
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson pulled another fast one on American taxpayers
by Gene Messick
Our troubles with Hank started back when he was CEO at Goldman-$achs. Hank helped launch the masked bogus financial instruments called "derivatives" which are at the Heart of the Global Meltdown of Banks around our Planet.
Next, at the invitation of GwB, Hank skipped over to the US Treasury, where his months of failures to act made things worse. When the World Economy had festered to the point of near collapse-- a week before Congress was to go home to hit the Campaign Trail -- Hank laid a 3-page Bailout Plan before them, and said, "take it or leave it." BTW, if you don't take it -- while you're out of Washington -- the World as you know it will collapse. There will be Rioting in the Streets of America, requiring us to declare Martial Law. Obediently, Congress swallowed Hank's Bailout Pig, whole.
Now, barely a month later, Hank is telling us what he already knew from the beginning: that the $700,000,000,000 he got from Congress to Bailout distressed homeowner mortgages couldn't be done soon enough to make any difference. That's why, thus far, his Bailout Czar Neel Kaskari (also imported from Goldman-$achs) has NOT bought ONE SINGLE distressed mortgage.
Instead, Hank announced: I changed my mind. This money is only going to Bailout my buddies who are Bankers. After all, they have lost the most from all this. Sorry: no money for homeowners! But not to worry. Someday it will trickle-down, just like Ronnie Reagan and Uncle Miltie Friedman told us it would. We're going to give the money to big banks to buy smaller banks, so they can become "too big to fail". What Hank really means is that he hopes they will become "to big to regulate".
When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosie -- who had filled Hank's playpen with bales of cash -- announced that Congress might take back some of Hank's money to Bailout the nearly bankrupt US Auto Industry, Hank replied sharply, "NO! This is my pile. I swiped it. You approved it. It's mine! Go get your own pile to play with from American taxpayers. They're too dumb to care!"
Hank Paulson is a Master Thief / Con Artist. Hank and GwB just pulled off the greatest Bait 'n Switch Scam history has ever seen. Like all sociopaths, Hank can stare you right in your eye and say, "and I have no intention of apologizing for it." The only part of our Federal Government Hank should ever be allow to touch again is the inside of a Federal Penitentiary, for the remainder of his natural life.
To understand the raw audacity of this man Paulson, here's a Portrait I painted of him back in mid-October.
_________________________________
Early Autumn 2008: The World as we know it is coming to an end. So fast that most Americans barely notice it's happening. Finance Ministers of the 7 most powerful nations in the Free World are doing their regular quarterly meeting in DC, but this time with an invitation to meet with GwB in the White House. They agree to sweeping changes never imagined before in the World Economy. About the same time, US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson issues 'invitations' to the CEOs of 9 of the largest banks in America, to show up at his office for a meeting. They're not told why, only that it will be explained when they got there.
They all fly in, and are ushered into The Big Conference Room at Treasury. Nine bankers sit on one side of a huge table. Paulson, FED Chair Ben Bernanke, and FDIC Chair Shelia Bair sit on the other side. Four hours were allowed for the meeting. They started at 3, ended at 4. Hank said he was doling out $250 Billion to them, proportionally to the size of their banks, for ownership shares in each of their banks. Basically, he tells them to take it, or leave with nothing. With hardly a whimper, the last bank CEO had his agreement signed and turned in to Hank by 5:30 pm. They left -- oh so sadly -- with $250,000,000,000 of your money in their pockets.
_________________________________
Growing up, I painted and drew a lot. My 10th grade Biology Project was a sketch book of the Animal Kingdom, from Protozoa to Mammals, painting them in full color.
For my Portrait of Hank, I'm drawing by typing words, rather than using a brush. Admittedly, I've never met Hank, nor until 3 weeks ago even knew that we shared the same Planet. And, in fairness, I'm looking at word pictures done by others (I read 40 stories), so his likeness may not be picture perfect. But it's close.
_________________________________
Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr is a man who convinced Congress to give him $700,000,000,000 of our money. Almost none of us -- including our children and grandchildren who will be paying off his gift -- know much about Hank, who is 5th in line of succession for the Presidency. You each own a collection of Hank's signatures, printed on every piece of paper money issued by Treasury.
In 2003, Fortune magazine published Hank Paulson's Secret Life. This article says Hank planned to stay at Goldman $achs for a long while, adding "But whenever I do finish here, I have no doubt that I'll do something with the environment." Hank didn't tell us whether it would be a good something, or horrific.
What caught my attention was not his fascination for snakes. I am, too. What's important here is his lifelong need to capture Nature and make it his personal possession, as in his home zoo. I don't know about Illinois, but in many States, it's illegal to keep wild animals, like raccoons, as household pets, even if you name them Twinkie, Sam, Hershey and Rambo. As a kid, I collected bugs and garter snakes in jars, also.
Later I learned, taught to me by the NC Zoo and other wise folks, that putting wild animals in restricted cages for display is unhealthy for both the animals and the viewers. It's a very Victorian concept, capturing and displaying in cages to prove Dominion over the bounties of our Earth. Possession becomes what's important. Caging critters from our natural environment strips them of their free will, a cruelty which "sets mankind apart from the higher animals," as Mark Twain once put it.
__________________________________
Currently Hank also sits on the Board of Governors for the International Monetary Fund. The IMF and its counterpart, the World Bank, are the primary NeoCON agencies for forcing developing countries to privatize their Natural Resources, including drinking water. A bevy of US no-bid contractors stand ready to assist, and to profit mightily from this CON. It's a strategy which assures that native populations will be in hock for the rest of their lives, since they cannot profit from exploiting their own Natural Resources, a form of enslavement, if you will. Not surprisingly, these Nations are overrun with poverty, with people not even being able to afford the price of clean water. Think about what your money is being used for the next time you crack open a bottle of water.
But, then, we all know the cruelty that coveting someone else's Natural Resources, like their OIL, can lead to. Their OIL becomes our "national interest." American Imperialism is alive and well.
Back to Hank. Father a wholesale jeweler, he was raised as a Christian Scientist. A compulsive over-achiever all through his school years, it continued while at Dartmouth, and on to Harvard Business.
(I was married to a Christian Scientist once. I knew her mother in Raleigh before I met her 3 daughters. They had a younger brother who died at 5 in Idaho because his mother wouldn't call a doctor. Worth reading about Mary Baker Eddy's 19th century transcendental New England philosophy that led her to create one of a handful of Religions invented in America. Cathy often quoted these words of the Founder: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter.")
Hank became an Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. Moved on to work in the Nixon White House as an Assistant to John Erhlichman. Remember how Erhlichman brought down Tricky Dick with Watergate? Hank Paulson was working there, one of the unindicted co-conspirators.
Hank joined Goldman $achs in 1974, becoming Partner in 1982, focusing on International Relations, and steadily climbing inside to become Chair and CEO in 1998. His compensation package for 2005 was estimated at $37 million, and he has a net worth of some $700,000,000. (That's million, not the $700 billion he's taking from us.)
He has intimate relations with Chinese elite, from his visits to China more than 70 times for Goldman $achs.
_________________________________
Given his background, it's hard to believe Hank could NOT understand how his 3-page BAILOUT Request demanded of Congress would affect the World Economy. But this was not his first manipulation of Wall $treet Banking as head of Treasury. There were others, all of which failed.
Spring 07, he said private financial institutions could allocate scarce Resources better than government intervention.
August 07: Hank explained that the US subprime mortgage Fallout was largely contained due to the strongest Global Economy in decades.
July 08: Hank said ours was a safe, sound banking system, that Regulators were on top of it, and it was a very manageable situation.
August 08: Hank said he had no plans to inject capital into mortgage lenders Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. A few weeks later, Fannie and Freedie collapsed.
His refusal to bail out iconic Lehman Brothers Investment Bank, started in 1850 in Alabama, is believed by many to have -- the very next day -- started the Wall $treet Meltdown and World financial crisis. The French Minister of Finance called his refusal "Horrendous!" Had Hank bailed out Lehman Brothers with authority he already had, we would not be in the historically gargantuan Global mess we find ourselves in today. Hank started this ball rolling. All by himself, which, of course, he denies. Narcissists do not appreciate being viewed by others as being anything less than perfect.
Is it any surprise that his 3-page BAILOUT Plan contained this in Section 8: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the aurthority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court or any administrative agency."
Imagine the absolute arrogance it takes to lay this 3-page Plan before the Congress of the United States, demanding $700,000,000,000 to give away with NO Congressional oversight, and telling them to "take it or leave it." And those fools took it, spinning our World even more out of control.
Paulson in all his actions, and especially in his hesitations, came from an innate fear of Wall $treet Banking becoming nationalized, even in part, by Government ownership of stock in them. He prefers that profits be forever privatized, and only debt be socialized. And yet, the quagmire Hank himself created has forced him to do exactly what he feared most: partially nationalize our largest commercial banks.
_________________________________
The question of relevance is this: Why was a Wall $treet Banker -- with no understanding whatsoever of how his actions might affect the lives of ordinary Americans -- tapped by GwB for Treasury Secretary? Paulson has never been an ordinary American from birth on. He has no comprehension of what it means to have to struggle to pay a bill, or to make ends meet. Hank is forever a Wall Street Banker. Is it any wonder that he will always think like a banker? His every attempt to shmooze our Economy has at it's core a desire to put bank interests ahead of the people's interests.
Here's my recommendation, and I mean it sincerely. Just inside the US House and Senate Chambers there needs to be a 3 foot stack of Bibles. Whenever entering either Chamber, each Senator and Representative must be required to place her/his hand on the stack, and swear an oath to the Almighty that they will never, ever again allow a Wall $treet Banker to become our Secretary of the Treasury.
www.earthhome.us
For 17 years Gene Messick studied and taught Design at NC State University and Cornell. Co-founding the Visual Design Program at NCSU, he established the Photography Program at Cornell. For 30 years, he's been doing glasswork, focusing now on kiln-fired fused glass at Regeneration Glass. Fusing glass is a technical endeavor. When our Economy went into Meltdown, Gene built his first Website to forewarn folks of dire consequences in their future. . Years ago, when FirstUnion took over a bank in Florida where his Mother's brother had left her a small trust account, WorstUnion lost it. Gene acquired 1 share of stock, which converted to Wachovia, soon to become Wells Fargo. His last dividend check from Wachovia, just before the takeover, was for $.10, now a collector's item. He's been advised that his 3 1/3 shares of Wachovia stock will convert to 0.19 shares of Wells Fargo. . Gene divides his time, living in semi-retirement on Social Security benefits, between fusing glass and word smithing: shining light into dark corners. Lightworks was the name of his former glass studio in North Carolina.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Treasury-Secretary-Hank-Pa-by-Gene-Messick-081114-487.html
Our troubles with Hank started back when he was CEO at Goldman-$achs. Hank helped launch the masked bogus financial instruments called "derivatives" which are at the Heart of the Global Meltdown of Banks around our Planet.
Next, at the invitation of GwB, Hank skipped over to the US Treasury, where his months of failures to act made things worse. When the World Economy had festered to the point of near collapse-- a week before Congress was to go home to hit the Campaign Trail -- Hank laid a 3-page Bailout Plan before them, and said, "take it or leave it." BTW, if you don't take it -- while you're out of Washington -- the World as you know it will collapse. There will be Rioting in the Streets of America, requiring us to declare Martial Law. Obediently, Congress swallowed Hank's Bailout Pig, whole.
Now, barely a month later, Hank is telling us what he already knew from the beginning: that the $700,000,000,000 he got from Congress to Bailout distressed homeowner mortgages couldn't be done soon enough to make any difference. That's why, thus far, his Bailout Czar Neel Kaskari (also imported from Goldman-$achs) has NOT bought ONE SINGLE distressed mortgage.
Instead, Hank announced: I changed my mind. This money is only going to Bailout my buddies who are Bankers. After all, they have lost the most from all this. Sorry: no money for homeowners! But not to worry. Someday it will trickle-down, just like Ronnie Reagan and Uncle Miltie Friedman told us it would. We're going to give the money to big banks to buy smaller banks, so they can become "too big to fail". What Hank really means is that he hopes they will become "to big to regulate".
When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosie -- who had filled Hank's playpen with bales of cash -- announced that Congress might take back some of Hank's money to Bailout the nearly bankrupt US Auto Industry, Hank replied sharply, "NO! This is my pile. I swiped it. You approved it. It's mine! Go get your own pile to play with from American taxpayers. They're too dumb to care!"
Hank Paulson is a Master Thief / Con Artist. Hank and GwB just pulled off the greatest Bait 'n Switch Scam history has ever seen. Like all sociopaths, Hank can stare you right in your eye and say, "and I have no intention of apologizing for it." The only part of our Federal Government Hank should ever be allow to touch again is the inside of a Federal Penitentiary, for the remainder of his natural life.
To understand the raw audacity of this man Paulson, here's a Portrait I painted of him back in mid-October.
_________________________________
Early Autumn 2008: The World as we know it is coming to an end. So fast that most Americans barely notice it's happening. Finance Ministers of the 7 most powerful nations in the Free World are doing their regular quarterly meeting in DC, but this time with an invitation to meet with GwB in the White House. They agree to sweeping changes never imagined before in the World Economy. About the same time, US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson issues 'invitations' to the CEOs of 9 of the largest banks in America, to show up at his office for a meeting. They're not told why, only that it will be explained when they got there.
They all fly in, and are ushered into The Big Conference Room at Treasury. Nine bankers sit on one side of a huge table. Paulson, FED Chair Ben Bernanke, and FDIC Chair Shelia Bair sit on the other side. Four hours were allowed for the meeting. They started at 3, ended at 4. Hank said he was doling out $250 Billion to them, proportionally to the size of their banks, for ownership shares in each of their banks. Basically, he tells them to take it, or leave with nothing. With hardly a whimper, the last bank CEO had his agreement signed and turned in to Hank by 5:30 pm. They left -- oh so sadly -- with $250,000,000,000 of your money in their pockets.
_________________________________
Growing up, I painted and drew a lot. My 10th grade Biology Project was a sketch book of the Animal Kingdom, from Protozoa to Mammals, painting them in full color.
For my Portrait of Hank, I'm drawing by typing words, rather than using a brush. Admittedly, I've never met Hank, nor until 3 weeks ago even knew that we shared the same Planet. And, in fairness, I'm looking at word pictures done by others (I read 40 stories), so his likeness may not be picture perfect. But it's close.
_________________________________
Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr is a man who convinced Congress to give him $700,000,000,000 of our money. Almost none of us -- including our children and grandchildren who will be paying off his gift -- know much about Hank, who is 5th in line of succession for the Presidency. You each own a collection of Hank's signatures, printed on every piece of paper money issued by Treasury.
In 2003, Fortune magazine published Hank Paulson's Secret Life. This article says Hank planned to stay at Goldman $achs for a long while, adding "But whenever I do finish here, I have no doubt that I'll do something with the environment." Hank didn't tell us whether it would be a good something, or horrific.
What caught my attention was not his fascination for snakes. I am, too. What's important here is his lifelong need to capture Nature and make it his personal possession, as in his home zoo. I don't know about Illinois, but in many States, it's illegal to keep wild animals, like raccoons, as household pets, even if you name them Twinkie, Sam, Hershey and Rambo. As a kid, I collected bugs and garter snakes in jars, also.
Later I learned, taught to me by the NC Zoo and other wise folks, that putting wild animals in restricted cages for display is unhealthy for both the animals and the viewers. It's a very Victorian concept, capturing and displaying in cages to prove Dominion over the bounties of our Earth. Possession becomes what's important. Caging critters from our natural environment strips them of their free will, a cruelty which "sets mankind apart from the higher animals," as Mark Twain once put it.
__________________________________
Currently Hank also sits on the Board of Governors for the International Monetary Fund. The IMF and its counterpart, the World Bank, are the primary NeoCON agencies for forcing developing countries to privatize their Natural Resources, including drinking water. A bevy of US no-bid contractors stand ready to assist, and to profit mightily from this CON. It's a strategy which assures that native populations will be in hock for the rest of their lives, since they cannot profit from exploiting their own Natural Resources, a form of enslavement, if you will. Not surprisingly, these Nations are overrun with poverty, with people not even being able to afford the price of clean water. Think about what your money is being used for the next time you crack open a bottle of water.
But, then, we all know the cruelty that coveting someone else's Natural Resources, like their OIL, can lead to. Their OIL becomes our "national interest." American Imperialism is alive and well.
Back to Hank. Father a wholesale jeweler, he was raised as a Christian Scientist. A compulsive over-achiever all through his school years, it continued while at Dartmouth, and on to Harvard Business.
(I was married to a Christian Scientist once. I knew her mother in Raleigh before I met her 3 daughters. They had a younger brother who died at 5 in Idaho because his mother wouldn't call a doctor. Worth reading about Mary Baker Eddy's 19th century transcendental New England philosophy that led her to create one of a handful of Religions invented in America. Cathy often quoted these words of the Founder: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter.")
Hank became an Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. Moved on to work in the Nixon White House as an Assistant to John Erhlichman. Remember how Erhlichman brought down Tricky Dick with Watergate? Hank Paulson was working there, one of the unindicted co-conspirators.
Hank joined Goldman $achs in 1974, becoming Partner in 1982, focusing on International Relations, and steadily climbing inside to become Chair and CEO in 1998. His compensation package for 2005 was estimated at $37 million, and he has a net worth of some $700,000,000. (That's million, not the $700 billion he's taking from us.)
He has intimate relations with Chinese elite, from his visits to China more than 70 times for Goldman $achs.
_________________________________
Given his background, it's hard to believe Hank could NOT understand how his 3-page BAILOUT Request demanded of Congress would affect the World Economy. But this was not his first manipulation of Wall $treet Banking as head of Treasury. There were others, all of which failed.
Spring 07, he said private financial institutions could allocate scarce Resources better than government intervention.
August 07: Hank explained that the US subprime mortgage Fallout was largely contained due to the strongest Global Economy in decades.
July 08: Hank said ours was a safe, sound banking system, that Regulators were on top of it, and it was a very manageable situation.
August 08: Hank said he had no plans to inject capital into mortgage lenders Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. A few weeks later, Fannie and Freedie collapsed.
His refusal to bail out iconic Lehman Brothers Investment Bank, started in 1850 in Alabama, is believed by many to have -- the very next day -- started the Wall $treet Meltdown and World financial crisis. The French Minister of Finance called his refusal "Horrendous!" Had Hank bailed out Lehman Brothers with authority he already had, we would not be in the historically gargantuan Global mess we find ourselves in today. Hank started this ball rolling. All by himself, which, of course, he denies. Narcissists do not appreciate being viewed by others as being anything less than perfect.
Is it any surprise that his 3-page BAILOUT Plan contained this in Section 8: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the aurthority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court or any administrative agency."
Imagine the absolute arrogance it takes to lay this 3-page Plan before the Congress of the United States, demanding $700,000,000,000 to give away with NO Congressional oversight, and telling them to "take it or leave it." And those fools took it, spinning our World even more out of control.
Paulson in all his actions, and especially in his hesitations, came from an innate fear of Wall $treet Banking becoming nationalized, even in part, by Government ownership of stock in them. He prefers that profits be forever privatized, and only debt be socialized. And yet, the quagmire Hank himself created has forced him to do exactly what he feared most: partially nationalize our largest commercial banks.
_________________________________
The question of relevance is this: Why was a Wall $treet Banker -- with no understanding whatsoever of how his actions might affect the lives of ordinary Americans -- tapped by GwB for Treasury Secretary? Paulson has never been an ordinary American from birth on. He has no comprehension of what it means to have to struggle to pay a bill, or to make ends meet. Hank is forever a Wall Street Banker. Is it any wonder that he will always think like a banker? His every attempt to shmooze our Economy has at it's core a desire to put bank interests ahead of the people's interests.
Here's my recommendation, and I mean it sincerely. Just inside the US House and Senate Chambers there needs to be a 3 foot stack of Bibles. Whenever entering either Chamber, each Senator and Representative must be required to place her/his hand on the stack, and swear an oath to the Almighty that they will never, ever again allow a Wall $treet Banker to become our Secretary of the Treasury.
www.earthhome.us
For 17 years Gene Messick studied and taught Design at NC State University and Cornell. Co-founding the Visual Design Program at NCSU, he established the Photography Program at Cornell. For 30 years, he's been doing glasswork, focusing now on kiln-fired fused glass at Regeneration Glass. Fusing glass is a technical endeavor. When our Economy went into Meltdown, Gene built his first Website to forewarn folks of dire consequences in their future. . Years ago, when FirstUnion took over a bank in Florida where his Mother's brother had left her a small trust account, WorstUnion lost it. Gene acquired 1 share of stock, which converted to Wachovia, soon to become Wells Fargo. His last dividend check from Wachovia, just before the takeover, was for $.10, now a collector's item. He's been advised that his 3 1/3 shares of Wachovia stock will convert to 0.19 shares of Wells Fargo. . Gene divides his time, living in semi-retirement on Social Security benefits, between fusing glass and word smithing: shining light into dark corners. Lightworks was the name of his former glass studio in North Carolina.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Treasury-Secretary-Hank-Pa-by-Gene-Messick-081114-487.html
11.12.2008
Commentary: GOP should ask why U.S. is on the wrong track
By Ron Paul
Special to CNN
Editor's note: Ron Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas who ran for his party's nomination for president this year. He served in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was elected again to Congress in 1996, serving continuously since then. Rep. Paul is a member of the House Financial Services Committee.
(CNN) -- The questions now being asked are: Where to go from here and who's to blame for the downfall of the Republican Party?
Too bad the concern for the future of the Republican Party had not been seriously addressed in the year 2000 when the Republicans gained control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency.
Now, in light of the election, many are asking: What is the future of the Republican Party?
But that is the wrong question. The proper question should be: Where is our country heading? There's no doubt that a large majority of Americans believe we're on the wrong track. That's why the candidate demanding "change" won the election. It mattered not that the change offered was no change at all, only a change in the engineer of a runaway train.
Once it's figured out what is fundamentally wrong with our political and economic system, solutions can be offered. If the Republican Party can grasp hold of the policy changes needed, then the party can be rebuilt.
In the rise and fall of the recent Republican reign of power these past decades, the goal of the party had grown to be only that of gaining and maintaining power -- with total sacrifice of the original Republican belief in shrinking the size of government.
Most Republicans endorsed this view in order to achieve victories at the polls. Limiting government power and size with less spending and a balanced budget as the goal used to be a "traditional" Republican value. This is what Goldwater and Reagan talked about. That is what the Contract with America stood for.
The opportunity finally came in 2000 to do something about the cancerous growth of government. This clear message led to the Republican success at the polls.
Once the Republicans were in power, though, the promises faded, and all policies were directed at maintaining or increasing power by trying to whittle away at Democratic strength by acting like big-spending Democrats.
The Republican Congress never once stood up against the Bush/Rove machine that demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacks on civil liberties here at home, and an economic policy based on more spending, more debt, and more inflation -- while constantly preaching the flawed doctrine that deficits don't matter as long as taxes aren't raised.
But what the Republican leadership didn't realize was that ALL spending is a tax on middle-class Americans through price inflation and that eventually the inevitable consequence is paying for the extravagance with a financial crisis.
Party leaders concentrated only on political tricks in order to maintain power and neglected the limited-government principles on which they were elected. The only solution for this is for Republicans to once again reassess their core beliefs and show how the country (not the party) can be put back on the right track. The problem, though, is regaining credibility.
After eight years of perpetual (and unnecessary and unconstitutional) war, persistent and expanded attacks on our privacy, runaway deficits, and now nationalization of the financial system, Republicans are going to have a tough time regaining the confidence of the American people. But that's what must be done.
Otherwise, Republicans can only mimic Democrats and hope for an isolated victory here and there. And that's just more of the same that brought on the disintegration of the party.
Since the new alignment of political power offers no real change, we will remain on the same track without even a pretense of slowing the growth of government. With the new administration we can expect things to go from bad to worse.
Opportunity abounds for anyone who can present the case for common sense in fiscal affairs, for protection of civil liberties here at home, and avoiding the senseless foreign entanglements which have bogged us down for decades and contributed so significantly to our fiscal and budgetary crisis.
During the debates in the Republican Presidential primary, even though I am a 10-term sitting Representative Member of Congress, I was challenged more than once on my Republican credentials. The fact that I was repeatedly asked how I could be a Republican when I was talking a different language than the other candidates answers the question of how the Republican Party can slip so far so fast.
My rhetorical answer at the time was simple: Why should one be excluded from the Republican Party for believing and always voting for:
• Limited government power
• A balanced budget
• Personal liberty
• Strict adherence to the Constitution
• Sound money
• A strong defense while avoiding all undeclared wars
• No nation-building and no policing the world
How can a party that still pretends to be the party of limited government distance itself outright from these views and expect to maintain credibility? Since the credibility of the Republican Party has now been lost, how can it regain credibility without embracing these views, or at least showing respect for them?
I concluded my answer by simply stating the Republican Party had lost its way and must reassess its values. And that is what needs to be done in a hurry.
But it might just take a new crop of leaders to regain the credibility needed to redirect the Party. It certainly won't be done overnight. It took a long time to come out of the wilderness after 40 years of Democratic rule for the Republican Party to take charge. Today though, time moves more quickly. Opportunities will arise. The one thing for certain is that in the next four years we will not see the Republic restored. Instead the need for it will be greater than ever.
The problems are easily understood and the answers are not that difficult. Abusing the rule of law and ignoring the Constitution can be reversed. If the Republican Party can grasp hold of the needed reforms, it can lead the way and regain its credibility. If power is sought for power's sake alone, the Party will never be able to wrench away the power of the opposition.
In the past two years, I found that when the young people heard the message of liberty, they overwhelmingly responded favorably, fully realizing the failure of the status quo and the need to once again endorse a system of self reliance, personal responsibility, sound money, and a non-interventionist foreign policy while rejecting the cradle-to-grave nanny state all based on the rule of law and the Constitution.
To ignore the political struggle and only "hope for the best" is pure folly. The march toward a dictatorial powerful state is now in double time.
All those who care -- and especially those who understand the stakes involved -- have an ominous responsibility to energetically get involved in the battle of survival for a free and prosperous America.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ron Paul.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/11/paul.republican/index.html
Special to CNN
Editor's note: Ron Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas who ran for his party's nomination for president this year. He served in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was elected again to Congress in 1996, serving continuously since then. Rep. Paul is a member of the House Financial Services Committee.
(CNN) -- The questions now being asked are: Where to go from here and who's to blame for the downfall of the Republican Party?
Too bad the concern for the future of the Republican Party had not been seriously addressed in the year 2000 when the Republicans gained control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency.
Now, in light of the election, many are asking: What is the future of the Republican Party?
But that is the wrong question. The proper question should be: Where is our country heading? There's no doubt that a large majority of Americans believe we're on the wrong track. That's why the candidate demanding "change" won the election. It mattered not that the change offered was no change at all, only a change in the engineer of a runaway train.
Once it's figured out what is fundamentally wrong with our political and economic system, solutions can be offered. If the Republican Party can grasp hold of the policy changes needed, then the party can be rebuilt.
In the rise and fall of the recent Republican reign of power these past decades, the goal of the party had grown to be only that of gaining and maintaining power -- with total sacrifice of the original Republican belief in shrinking the size of government.
Most Republicans endorsed this view in order to achieve victories at the polls. Limiting government power and size with less spending and a balanced budget as the goal used to be a "traditional" Republican value. This is what Goldwater and Reagan talked about. That is what the Contract with America stood for.
The opportunity finally came in 2000 to do something about the cancerous growth of government. This clear message led to the Republican success at the polls.
Once the Republicans were in power, though, the promises faded, and all policies were directed at maintaining or increasing power by trying to whittle away at Democratic strength by acting like big-spending Democrats.
The Republican Congress never once stood up against the Bush/Rove machine that demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacks on civil liberties here at home, and an economic policy based on more spending, more debt, and more inflation -- while constantly preaching the flawed doctrine that deficits don't matter as long as taxes aren't raised.
But what the Republican leadership didn't realize was that ALL spending is a tax on middle-class Americans through price inflation and that eventually the inevitable consequence is paying for the extravagance with a financial crisis.
Party leaders concentrated only on political tricks in order to maintain power and neglected the limited-government principles on which they were elected. The only solution for this is for Republicans to once again reassess their core beliefs and show how the country (not the party) can be put back on the right track. The problem, though, is regaining credibility.
After eight years of perpetual (and unnecessary and unconstitutional) war, persistent and expanded attacks on our privacy, runaway deficits, and now nationalization of the financial system, Republicans are going to have a tough time regaining the confidence of the American people. But that's what must be done.
Otherwise, Republicans can only mimic Democrats and hope for an isolated victory here and there. And that's just more of the same that brought on the disintegration of the party.
Since the new alignment of political power offers no real change, we will remain on the same track without even a pretense of slowing the growth of government. With the new administration we can expect things to go from bad to worse.
Opportunity abounds for anyone who can present the case for common sense in fiscal affairs, for protection of civil liberties here at home, and avoiding the senseless foreign entanglements which have bogged us down for decades and contributed so significantly to our fiscal and budgetary crisis.
During the debates in the Republican Presidential primary, even though I am a 10-term sitting Representative Member of Congress, I was challenged more than once on my Republican credentials. The fact that I was repeatedly asked how I could be a Republican when I was talking a different language than the other candidates answers the question of how the Republican Party can slip so far so fast.
My rhetorical answer at the time was simple: Why should one be excluded from the Republican Party for believing and always voting for:
• Limited government power
• A balanced budget
• Personal liberty
• Strict adherence to the Constitution
• Sound money
• A strong defense while avoiding all undeclared wars
• No nation-building and no policing the world
How can a party that still pretends to be the party of limited government distance itself outright from these views and expect to maintain credibility? Since the credibility of the Republican Party has now been lost, how can it regain credibility without embracing these views, or at least showing respect for them?
I concluded my answer by simply stating the Republican Party had lost its way and must reassess its values. And that is what needs to be done in a hurry.
But it might just take a new crop of leaders to regain the credibility needed to redirect the Party. It certainly won't be done overnight. It took a long time to come out of the wilderness after 40 years of Democratic rule for the Republican Party to take charge. Today though, time moves more quickly. Opportunities will arise. The one thing for certain is that in the next four years we will not see the Republic restored. Instead the need for it will be greater than ever.
The problems are easily understood and the answers are not that difficult. Abusing the rule of law and ignoring the Constitution can be reversed. If the Republican Party can grasp hold of the needed reforms, it can lead the way and regain its credibility. If power is sought for power's sake alone, the Party will never be able to wrench away the power of the opposition.
In the past two years, I found that when the young people heard the message of liberty, they overwhelmingly responded favorably, fully realizing the failure of the status quo and the need to once again endorse a system of self reliance, personal responsibility, sound money, and a non-interventionist foreign policy while rejecting the cradle-to-grave nanny state all based on the rule of law and the Constitution.
To ignore the political struggle and only "hope for the best" is pure folly. The march toward a dictatorial powerful state is now in double time.
All those who care -- and especially those who understand the stakes involved -- have an ominous responsibility to energetically get involved in the battle of survival for a free and prosperous America.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ron Paul.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/11/paul.republican/index.html
11.11.2008
America Serves 2.0
Most likely thanks to digital uproar, (e.g. here, here, here and, yes, even here) the individuals behind change.org have modified Obama's "America Serves" plan in order to clarify his position. The plan does not endorse involuntary servitude, even though Rahm Emanuel may - more on this later, but instead requires community service in exchange for $4,000 towards college. Although this plan still lacks constitutional authority, it is extremely less offensive than the previous interpretation.
CHANGE.GOV on 11.05.08
CHANGE.GOV Today
Incidentally, about twenty pages of Barack Obama's agenda have also been removed.
CHANGE.GOV on 11.05.08
CHANGE.GOV Today
Incidentally, about twenty pages of Barack Obama's agenda have also been removed.
Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose
By Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry and Alison Fitzgerald
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
``The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that's a big problem,'' said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. ``In a liquid market, this wouldn't matter, but we're not. The market is very nervous and very thin.''
Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.
The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
``It's your money; it's not the Fed's money,'' said billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York. ``Of course there should be transparency.''
Treasury, Fed, Obama
Federal Reserve spokeswoman Michelle Smith declined to comment on the loans or the Bloomberg lawsuit. Treasury spokeswoman Michele Davis didn't respond to a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment.
President-elect Barack Obama's economic adviser, Jason Furman, also didn't respond to an e-mail and a phone call seeking comment from Obama. In a Sept. 22 campaign speech, Obama promised to ``make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people's business.''
The Fed's lending is significant because the central bank has stepped into a rescue role that was also the purpose of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, bailout plan -- without safeguards put into the TARP legislation by Congress.
Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The difference includes a $788 billion increase in loans to banks through the Fed and $474 billion in other lending, mostly through the central bank's purchase of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.
Sept. 14 Decision
Before Sept. 14, the Fed accepted mostly top-rated government and asset-backed securities as collateral. After that date, the central bank widened standards to accept other kinds of securities, some with lower ratings. The Fed collects interest on all its loans.
The plan to purchase distressed securities through TARP called for buying at the ``lowest price that the secretary (of the Treasury) determines to be consistent with the purposes of this Act,'' according to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the law that covers TARP.
The legislation didn't require any specific method for the purchases beyond saying mechanisms such as auctions or reverse auctions should be used ``when appropriate.'' In a reverse auction, bidders offer to sell securities at successively lower prices, helping to ensure that the Fed would pay less. The measure also included a five-member oversight board that includes Paulson and Bernanke.
At a Sept. 23 Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, Paulson called for transparency in the purchase of distressed assets under the TARP program.
`We Need Transparency'
``We need oversight,'' Paulson told lawmakers. ``We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.''
At a joint House-Senate hearing the next day, Bernanke also stressed the importance of openness in the program. ``Transparency is a big issue,'' he said.
The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks, which gave the Fed collateral in the form of equities and debt, including subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site. The borrowers have included the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Banks oppose any release of information because it might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group.
Frank Backs Fed
``You have to balance the need for transparency with protecting the public interest,'' Talbott said. ``Taxpayers have a right to know where their tax dollars are going, but one piece of information standing alone could undermine public confidence in the system.''
The nation's biggest banks, Citigroup, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, declined to comment on whether they have borrowed money from the Fed. They received $120 billion in capital from the TARP, which was signed into law Oct. 3.
In an interview Nov. 6, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said the Fed's disclosure is sufficient and that the risk the central bank is taking on is appropriate in the current economic climate. Frank said he has discussed the program with Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a possible candidate to succeed Paulson as Treasury secretary.
``I talk to Geithner and he was pretty sure that they're OK,'' said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. ``If the risk is that the Fed takes a little bit of a haircut, well that's regrettable.'' Such losses would be acceptable, he said, if the program helps revive the economy.
`Unclog the Market'
Frank said the Fed shouldn't reveal the assets it holds or how it values them because of ``delicacy with respect to pricing.'' He said such disclosure would ``give people clues to what your pricing is and what they might be able to sell us and what your estimates are.'' He wouldn't say why he thought that information would be problematic.
Revealing how the Fed values collateral could help thaw frozen credit markets, said Ron D'Vari, chief executive officer of NewOak Capital LLC in New York and the former head of structured finance at BlackRock Inc.
``I'd love to hear the methodology, how the Fed priced the assets,'' D'Vari said. ``That would unclog the market very quickly.''
TARP's $700 billion so far is being used to buy preferred shares in banks to shore up their capital. The program was originally intended to hold banks' troubled assets while markets were frozen.
AIG Lending
The Bloomberg lawsuit argues that the collateral lists ``are central to understanding and assessing the government's response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.''
The Fed has lent at least $81 billion to American International Group Inc., the world's largest insurer, so that it can pay obligations to banks. AIG today said it received an expanded government rescue package valued at more than $150 billion.
The central bank is also responsible for losses on a $26.8 billion portfolio guaranteed after Bear Stearns Cos. was bought by JPMorgan.
``As a taxpayer, it is absolutely important that we know how they're lending money and who they're lending it to,'' said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia- based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Ratings Cuts
Ultimately, the Fed will have to remove some securities held as collateral from some programs because the central bank's rules call for instruments rated below investment grade to be taken back by the borrower and marked down in value. Losses on those assets could then be written off, partly through the capital recently injected into those banks by the Treasury.
Moody's Investors Service alone has cut its ratings on 926 mortgage-backed securities worth $42 billion to junk from investment grade since Sept. 14, making them ineligible for collateral on some Fed loans.
The Fed's collateral ``absolutely should be made public,'' said Mark Cuban, an activist investor, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team and the creator of the Web site BailoutSleuth.com, which focuses on the secrecy shrouding the Fed's moves.
The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net; Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net; Alison Fitzgerald in Washington at afitzgerald2@bloomberg.net.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aatlky_cH.tY&refer=worldwide
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
``The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that's a big problem,'' said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. ``In a liquid market, this wouldn't matter, but we're not. The market is very nervous and very thin.''
Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.
The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
``It's your money; it's not the Fed's money,'' said billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York. ``Of course there should be transparency.''
Treasury, Fed, Obama
Federal Reserve spokeswoman Michelle Smith declined to comment on the loans or the Bloomberg lawsuit. Treasury spokeswoman Michele Davis didn't respond to a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment.
President-elect Barack Obama's economic adviser, Jason Furman, also didn't respond to an e-mail and a phone call seeking comment from Obama. In a Sept. 22 campaign speech, Obama promised to ``make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people's business.''
The Fed's lending is significant because the central bank has stepped into a rescue role that was also the purpose of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, bailout plan -- without safeguards put into the TARP legislation by Congress.
Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The difference includes a $788 billion increase in loans to banks through the Fed and $474 billion in other lending, mostly through the central bank's purchase of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.
Sept. 14 Decision
Before Sept. 14, the Fed accepted mostly top-rated government and asset-backed securities as collateral. After that date, the central bank widened standards to accept other kinds of securities, some with lower ratings. The Fed collects interest on all its loans.
The plan to purchase distressed securities through TARP called for buying at the ``lowest price that the secretary (of the Treasury) determines to be consistent with the purposes of this Act,'' according to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the law that covers TARP.
The legislation didn't require any specific method for the purchases beyond saying mechanisms such as auctions or reverse auctions should be used ``when appropriate.'' In a reverse auction, bidders offer to sell securities at successively lower prices, helping to ensure that the Fed would pay less. The measure also included a five-member oversight board that includes Paulson and Bernanke.
At a Sept. 23 Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, Paulson called for transparency in the purchase of distressed assets under the TARP program.
`We Need Transparency'
``We need oversight,'' Paulson told lawmakers. ``We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.''
At a joint House-Senate hearing the next day, Bernanke also stressed the importance of openness in the program. ``Transparency is a big issue,'' he said.
The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks, which gave the Fed collateral in the form of equities and debt, including subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site. The borrowers have included the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Banks oppose any release of information because it might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group.
Frank Backs Fed
``You have to balance the need for transparency with protecting the public interest,'' Talbott said. ``Taxpayers have a right to know where their tax dollars are going, but one piece of information standing alone could undermine public confidence in the system.''
The nation's biggest banks, Citigroup, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, declined to comment on whether they have borrowed money from the Fed. They received $120 billion in capital from the TARP, which was signed into law Oct. 3.
In an interview Nov. 6, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said the Fed's disclosure is sufficient and that the risk the central bank is taking on is appropriate in the current economic climate. Frank said he has discussed the program with Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a possible candidate to succeed Paulson as Treasury secretary.
``I talk to Geithner and he was pretty sure that they're OK,'' said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. ``If the risk is that the Fed takes a little bit of a haircut, well that's regrettable.'' Such losses would be acceptable, he said, if the program helps revive the economy.
`Unclog the Market'
Frank said the Fed shouldn't reveal the assets it holds or how it values them because of ``delicacy with respect to pricing.'' He said such disclosure would ``give people clues to what your pricing is and what they might be able to sell us and what your estimates are.'' He wouldn't say why he thought that information would be problematic.
Revealing how the Fed values collateral could help thaw frozen credit markets, said Ron D'Vari, chief executive officer of NewOak Capital LLC in New York and the former head of structured finance at BlackRock Inc.
``I'd love to hear the methodology, how the Fed priced the assets,'' D'Vari said. ``That would unclog the market very quickly.''
TARP's $700 billion so far is being used to buy preferred shares in banks to shore up their capital. The program was originally intended to hold banks' troubled assets while markets were frozen.
AIG Lending
The Bloomberg lawsuit argues that the collateral lists ``are central to understanding and assessing the government's response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.''
The Fed has lent at least $81 billion to American International Group Inc., the world's largest insurer, so that it can pay obligations to banks. AIG today said it received an expanded government rescue package valued at more than $150 billion.
The central bank is also responsible for losses on a $26.8 billion portfolio guaranteed after Bear Stearns Cos. was bought by JPMorgan.
``As a taxpayer, it is absolutely important that we know how they're lending money and who they're lending it to,'' said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia- based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Ratings Cuts
Ultimately, the Fed will have to remove some securities held as collateral from some programs because the central bank's rules call for instruments rated below investment grade to be taken back by the borrower and marked down in value. Losses on those assets could then be written off, partly through the capital recently injected into those banks by the Treasury.
Moody's Investors Service alone has cut its ratings on 926 mortgage-backed securities worth $42 billion to junk from investment grade since Sept. 14, making them ineligible for collateral on some Fed loans.
The Fed's collateral ``absolutely should be made public,'' said Mark Cuban, an activist investor, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team and the creator of the Web site BailoutSleuth.com, which focuses on the secrecy shrouding the Fed's moves.
The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net; Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net; Alison Fitzgerald in Washington at afitzgerald2@bloomberg.net.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aatlky_cH.tY&refer=worldwide
Bush anger: Obama aides leak chat details
Obama and Bush at odds over aid for automakers
By Jackie Calmes
WASHINGTON: The struggling auto industry was thrust into the middle of a political standoff between the White House and Democrats on Monday as President-elect Barack Obama urged President George W. Bush in a meeting at the White House to support immediate emergency aid.
Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader economic stimulus package if Obama and congressional Democrats dropped their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a measure for which Bush has long fought, people familiar with the discussion said.
The Bush administration, which has presided over a major intervention in the financial industry, has balked at allowing the automakers tap into the $700 billion bailout fund, despite warnings last week that General Motors might not survive the year.
Obama and congressional Democratic leaders say the bailout law authorizes the administration to extend assistance.
Obama went into his post-election meeting with Bush on Monday primed to urge him to support emergency aid to the auto industry, advisers to Obama said. But Democrats also indicate that neither Obama nor congressional leaders are inclined to concede the Colombia pact to Bush, and may decide to wait until Obama assumes power on Jan. 20.
Separate from his differences with Bush, Obama has signaled to the automakers and the unions that his support for short-term aid now, and long-term assistance once he takes office, is contingent on their willingness to agree to transform their industry to make cleaner, more energy-efficient vehicles.
A week after Obama's election victory, and more than two months before he takes office, the steadily weakening U.S. economy and the prospect of many more job losses are testing his effort to remain aloof from the nation's business on the argument that "we only have one president at a time."
As the auto industry reels, rarely has an issue so quickly illustrated the differences from one White House occupant to the next. How Obama responds to the industry's dire straits will indicate how much government intervention in the private sector he is willing to tolerate. It will also offer hints of how he will approach his job under pressure, testing the limits of his conciliation toward the opposition party and his willingness to stand up to the interest groups in his own.
GM's shares tumbled on Monday to 1946 prices, closing down 23 percent to $3.36, as analysts downgraded the stock on worries it would soon run out of cash and shareholders would be wiped out by any U.S. government bailout.
Obama has been far more receptive than Bush to having the government intervene to rescue another major sector of the economy. He called automakers "the backbone of American manufacturing" in his first post-election press conference last Friday, and many thousands of their employees belong to unions that are part of the Democratic Party's base.
But Obama's stance raises the question, with the country in a worsening economic situation, where would the Democrat draw the line as president?
Bush has drawn his line at the automakers' doors, having already been forced to shelve the free-market principles of his Republican Party to bail out the financial industry over the past two months. But Republicans say he would acquiesce in aid to automakers in return for Congress's ratification of the Colombia pact and pending trade agreements with Panama and South Korea.
The outgoing and incoming presidents met at the White House in private, without staff.
The Democratic leaders in Congress, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, have declined to call a lame-duck session for next week, as they had hoped, without assurance that Bush would support a stimulus package.
Obama has called on the Bush administration to accelerate $25 billion in U.S. government loans provided by a recent law specifically to help automakers retool. Late in his campaign, Obama proposed doubling that to $50 billion. But industry supporters say the automakers, squeezed both by the unavailability of credit and depressed sales, need unrestricted cash now, simply to meet payroll and other expenses.
On Friday, Obama said he would instruct his economic team, once he chooses it, to devise a long-range plan for helping the auto industry recover in a way that is part of an energy and environmental policy to reduce reliance on foreign oil and address climate change.
While Obama campaigned on a promise of bipartisan conciliation, his choice for his White House chief of staff, Representative Rahm Emanuel, indicated on Sunday that no such deal linking auto-industry aid and a stimulus package with trade pacts was in the cards. "You don't link those essential needs to some other trade deal," Emanuel said on ABC's "This Week."
Democrats close to both Obama's transition team and to congressional leaders seemed willing to call Bush's bluff, calculating that he would not want to gamble that GM — an iconic, century-old American corporation with business tentacles in every state — would fail on his watch and add to the negative notes of his legacy. Also, economists as conservative as Martin Feldstein, an adviser to a long line of Republican presidents and candidates, have called more broadly for stimulus spending of up to $300 billion.
The major automakers — GM, Ford and Chrysler — are each using up their cash at unsustainable rates. The Center for Automotive Research, which is based in Michigan and supported by the industry, released on Election Day an economic analysis of the impact of one or all of them failing. If the Big Three were to collapse, it said, that would cost at least three million jobs, counting autoworkers, suppliers and other businesses dependent on the companies, down to the hot-dog vendors and bartenders next door to their plants.
The center also concluded that the cost to local, state and federal governments would reach to as much as $156.4 billion over three years in lost taxes and higher outlays for things like unemployment and health care assistance. Separately, some economists say the demise of even one of the automakers could tip the current recession toward a depression.
For Bush, however, the hard-line approach is his only leverage to make the trade agreements part of his legacy. The Colombia deal, especially, is strongly opposed by organized labor groups, which are a major force in the Democratic Party, and by human-rights activists.
In the Senate and during his nomination race against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, Obama opposed the pacts and especially the Colombia agreement, given that country's reported human rights abuses against unionists. He insists he favors free trade, but only if trading partners agree to protections for their workers and the environment — reflecting the standard Democratic Party line since President Bill Clinton's administration.
On his campaign Web site, Obama said he would oppose the Colombia pact "if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements."
Organized labor is not the only interest group with influence in the Democratic Party that is weighing in as Obama plans his transition. Environmentalists are adamant that any aid be conditioned on the auto industry's dropping of its opposition to higher fuel-efficiency standards and investing more in new technology. That puts them at odds with unions, who oppose any strings, leaving it to Obama to mediate.
Both as a candidate and now as president-elect, Obama has been in contact with former Vice President Al Gore, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. In a column published in Sunday's New York Times, Gore wrote that "we should help America's automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new start-up companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids that can run on the renewable electricity that will be available."
Obama has said that he wants to meet with the Big Three auto executives, but advisers say no meeting is scheduled. Among his advisers who have communicated with the industry chiefs and their representatives are Jason Furman, the Obama campaign's economic policy director; John Podesta, the head of Obama's transition; and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, an Obama adviser who is under consideration to be Treasury secretary again.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/11/america/11auto.php
By Jackie Calmes
WASHINGTON: The struggling auto industry was thrust into the middle of a political standoff between the White House and Democrats on Monday as President-elect Barack Obama urged President George W. Bush in a meeting at the White House to support immediate emergency aid.
Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader economic stimulus package if Obama and congressional Democrats dropped their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a measure for which Bush has long fought, people familiar with the discussion said.
The Bush administration, which has presided over a major intervention in the financial industry, has balked at allowing the automakers tap into the $700 billion bailout fund, despite warnings last week that General Motors might not survive the year.
Obama and congressional Democratic leaders say the bailout law authorizes the administration to extend assistance.
Obama went into his post-election meeting with Bush on Monday primed to urge him to support emergency aid to the auto industry, advisers to Obama said. But Democrats also indicate that neither Obama nor congressional leaders are inclined to concede the Colombia pact to Bush, and may decide to wait until Obama assumes power on Jan. 20.
Separate from his differences with Bush, Obama has signaled to the automakers and the unions that his support for short-term aid now, and long-term assistance once he takes office, is contingent on their willingness to agree to transform their industry to make cleaner, more energy-efficient vehicles.
A week after Obama's election victory, and more than two months before he takes office, the steadily weakening U.S. economy and the prospect of many more job losses are testing his effort to remain aloof from the nation's business on the argument that "we only have one president at a time."
As the auto industry reels, rarely has an issue so quickly illustrated the differences from one White House occupant to the next. How Obama responds to the industry's dire straits will indicate how much government intervention in the private sector he is willing to tolerate. It will also offer hints of how he will approach his job under pressure, testing the limits of his conciliation toward the opposition party and his willingness to stand up to the interest groups in his own.
GM's shares tumbled on Monday to 1946 prices, closing down 23 percent to $3.36, as analysts downgraded the stock on worries it would soon run out of cash and shareholders would be wiped out by any U.S. government bailout.
Obama has been far more receptive than Bush to having the government intervene to rescue another major sector of the economy. He called automakers "the backbone of American manufacturing" in his first post-election press conference last Friday, and many thousands of their employees belong to unions that are part of the Democratic Party's base.
But Obama's stance raises the question, with the country in a worsening economic situation, where would the Democrat draw the line as president?
Bush has drawn his line at the automakers' doors, having already been forced to shelve the free-market principles of his Republican Party to bail out the financial industry over the past two months. But Republicans say he would acquiesce in aid to automakers in return for Congress's ratification of the Colombia pact and pending trade agreements with Panama and South Korea.
The outgoing and incoming presidents met at the White House in private, without staff.
The Democratic leaders in Congress, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, have declined to call a lame-duck session for next week, as they had hoped, without assurance that Bush would support a stimulus package.
Obama has called on the Bush administration to accelerate $25 billion in U.S. government loans provided by a recent law specifically to help automakers retool. Late in his campaign, Obama proposed doubling that to $50 billion. But industry supporters say the automakers, squeezed both by the unavailability of credit and depressed sales, need unrestricted cash now, simply to meet payroll and other expenses.
On Friday, Obama said he would instruct his economic team, once he chooses it, to devise a long-range plan for helping the auto industry recover in a way that is part of an energy and environmental policy to reduce reliance on foreign oil and address climate change.
While Obama campaigned on a promise of bipartisan conciliation, his choice for his White House chief of staff, Representative Rahm Emanuel, indicated on Sunday that no such deal linking auto-industry aid and a stimulus package with trade pacts was in the cards. "You don't link those essential needs to some other trade deal," Emanuel said on ABC's "This Week."
Democrats close to both Obama's transition team and to congressional leaders seemed willing to call Bush's bluff, calculating that he would not want to gamble that GM — an iconic, century-old American corporation with business tentacles in every state — would fail on his watch and add to the negative notes of his legacy. Also, economists as conservative as Martin Feldstein, an adviser to a long line of Republican presidents and candidates, have called more broadly for stimulus spending of up to $300 billion.
The major automakers — GM, Ford and Chrysler — are each using up their cash at unsustainable rates. The Center for Automotive Research, which is based in Michigan and supported by the industry, released on Election Day an economic analysis of the impact of one or all of them failing. If the Big Three were to collapse, it said, that would cost at least three million jobs, counting autoworkers, suppliers and other businesses dependent on the companies, down to the hot-dog vendors and bartenders next door to their plants.
The center also concluded that the cost to local, state and federal governments would reach to as much as $156.4 billion over three years in lost taxes and higher outlays for things like unemployment and health care assistance. Separately, some economists say the demise of even one of the automakers could tip the current recession toward a depression.
For Bush, however, the hard-line approach is his only leverage to make the trade agreements part of his legacy. The Colombia deal, especially, is strongly opposed by organized labor groups, which are a major force in the Democratic Party, and by human-rights activists.
In the Senate and during his nomination race against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, Obama opposed the pacts and especially the Colombia agreement, given that country's reported human rights abuses against unionists. He insists he favors free trade, but only if trading partners agree to protections for their workers and the environment — reflecting the standard Democratic Party line since President Bill Clinton's administration.
On his campaign Web site, Obama said he would oppose the Colombia pact "if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements."
Organized labor is not the only interest group with influence in the Democratic Party that is weighing in as Obama plans his transition. Environmentalists are adamant that any aid be conditioned on the auto industry's dropping of its opposition to higher fuel-efficiency standards and investing more in new technology. That puts them at odds with unions, who oppose any strings, leaving it to Obama to mediate.
Both as a candidate and now as president-elect, Obama has been in contact with former Vice President Al Gore, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. In a column published in Sunday's New York Times, Gore wrote that "we should help America's automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new start-up companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids that can run on the renewable electricity that will be available."
Obama has said that he wants to meet with the Big Three auto executives, but advisers say no meeting is scheduled. Among his advisers who have communicated with the industry chiefs and their representatives are Jason Furman, the Obama campaign's economic policy director; John Podesta, the head of Obama's transition; and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, an Obama adviser who is under consideration to be Treasury secretary again.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/11/america/11auto.php
11.10.2008
Gorbachev calls on Obama to carry out 'perestroika' in the U.S.
MOSCOW, November 7 (RIA Novosti) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said that the Obama administration in the United States needs far-reaching 'perestroika' reforms to overcome the financial crisis and restore balance in the world.
The term perestroika, meaning restructuring, was used by Gorbachev in the late 1980s to describe a series of reforms that abolished state planning in the Soviet Union.
In an interview with Italy's La Stampa published on Friday, Gorbachev said President-elect Barack Obama needs to fundamentally change the misguided course followed by President George W. Bush over the past eight years.
Gorbachev said that after transforming his country in the late 1980s, he had told the Americans that it was their turn to act, but that Washington, celebrating its Cold War victory, was not interested in "a new model of a society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand."
He said the Republicans have failed to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Europe has changed, and that new powers like China, Brazil and Mexico have emerged as important players on the world stage.
He told the paper that the world is waiting for Obama to act, and that the White House needs to restore trust in cooperation with the United States among the Russians.
"This is a man of our times, he is capable of restarting dialogue, all the more since the circumstances will allow him to get out of a dead-end situation. Barack Obama has not had a very long career, but it is hard to find faults, and he has led an election campaign winning over the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton herself. We can judge from this that this person is capable of engaging in dialogue and understanding current realities."
Former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of now defunct Yukos oil giant, who is in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges, also used the word perestroika in discussing the future course of the Obama administration.
In an article published in the business daily Vedomosti on Friday, Khodorkovsky said Obama's election win was not merely another change of power in a separate country, but was important for all states.
He said that, "being a liberal himself, he thinks that the world will take a left turn," and that "a global perestroika would be a logical response to the global crisis."
"The paradigm of global development is about to change. The era inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago is over."
He said decisions in neoliberal economies had been made mainly by supranational institutions and transnational corporations.
Khodorkovsky predicted: "Globalization will slow to a crawl, but will not stop. The 'golden billion' of the world's richest people will have to abandon hopes of increasing their wealth, but high consumer standards which developed at the end of the 20th century will be unaffected by the change. The striving for political freedom and open competition of personalities and ideas will not disappear."
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20081107/118196981.html
The term perestroika, meaning restructuring, was used by Gorbachev in the late 1980s to describe a series of reforms that abolished state planning in the Soviet Union.
In an interview with Italy's La Stampa published on Friday, Gorbachev said President-elect Barack Obama needs to fundamentally change the misguided course followed by President George W. Bush over the past eight years.
Gorbachev said that after transforming his country in the late 1980s, he had told the Americans that it was their turn to act, but that Washington, celebrating its Cold War victory, was not interested in "a new model of a society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand."
He said the Republicans have failed to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Europe has changed, and that new powers like China, Brazil and Mexico have emerged as important players on the world stage.
He told the paper that the world is waiting for Obama to act, and that the White House needs to restore trust in cooperation with the United States among the Russians.
"This is a man of our times, he is capable of restarting dialogue, all the more since the circumstances will allow him to get out of a dead-end situation. Barack Obama has not had a very long career, but it is hard to find faults, and he has led an election campaign winning over the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton herself. We can judge from this that this person is capable of engaging in dialogue and understanding current realities."
Former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of now defunct Yukos oil giant, who is in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges, also used the word perestroika in discussing the future course of the Obama administration.
In an article published in the business daily Vedomosti on Friday, Khodorkovsky said Obama's election win was not merely another change of power in a separate country, but was important for all states.
He said that, "being a liberal himself, he thinks that the world will take a left turn," and that "a global perestroika would be a logical response to the global crisis."
"The paradigm of global development is about to change. The era inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago is over."
He said decisions in neoliberal economies had been made mainly by supranational institutions and transnational corporations.
Khodorkovsky predicted: "Globalization will slow to a crawl, but will not stop. The 'golden billion' of the world's richest people will have to abandon hopes of increasing their wealth, but high consumer standards which developed at the end of the 20th century will be unaffected by the change. The striving for political freedom and open competition of personalities and ideas will not disappear."
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20081107/118196981.html
11.09.2008
Obama positioned to reverse Bush actions
Stem cell and climate rules among targets of president-elect's team
By Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith
Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.
In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.
"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.
Stem cell research
A spokeswoman said yesterday that no plans for regulatory changes had been finalized. "Before he makes any decisions on potential executive or legislative actions, he will be conferring with congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, as well as interested groups," Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said. "Any decisions would need to be discussed with his Cabinet nominees, none of whom have been selected yet."
Still, the preelection transition team, comprising mainly lawyers, has positioned the incoming president to move fast on high-priority items without waiting for Congress.
Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's.
Bush's August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process.
But Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said that during Obama's final swing through her state in October, she reminded him that because the restrictions were never included in legislation, Obama "can simply reverse them by executive order." Obama, she said, "was very receptive to that." Opponents of the restrictions have already drafted an executive order he could sign.
The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it.
"We have been communicating with his transition staff" almost daily, Richards said. "We expect to see a real change."
While Obama said at a news conference last week that his top priority would be to stimulate the economy and create jobs, his advisers say that focus will not delay key shifts in social and regulatory policies, including some -- such as the embrace of new environmental safeguards -- that Obama has said will have long-term, beneficial impacts on the economy.
The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said in January.
California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California's rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation's automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.
"An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Carbon dioxide emissions
Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.
Robert Sussman, who was the EPA's deputy administrator during the Clinton administration and is now overseeing EPA transition planning for Obama, wrote a paper last spring strongly recommending such a finding. Others in the campaign have depicted it as an issue on which Obama is keen to show that politics must not interfere with scientific advice.
Some related reforms embraced by Obama's transition advisers would alter procedures for decision-making on climate issues. A book titled "Change for America," being published next week by the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, will recommend, for example, that Obama rapidly create a National Energy Council to coordinate all policymaking related to global climate change.
The center's influence with Obama is substantial: It was created by former Clinton White House official John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of the transition effort, and much of its staff has been swept into planning for Obama's first 100 days in office.
The National Energy Council would be a counterpart to the White House National Economic Council that Clinton created in a 1993 executive order.
"It would make sure all the oars are rowing in the right direction" and ensure that climate change policy "gets lots of attention inside the White House," said Daniel J. Weiss, a former Sierra Club official and senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The center's new book will also urge Obama to sign an executive order requiring that greenhouse gas emissions be considered whenever the federal government examines the environmental impact of its actions under the existing National Environmental Policy Act. Several key members of Obama's transition team have already embraced the idea.
Other early Obama initiatives may address the need for improved food and drug regulation and chart a new course for immigration enforcement, some Obama advisers say. But they add that only a portion of his early efforts will be aimed at undoing Bush initiatives.
Striking a balance
Despite enormous pent-up Democratic frustration, Obama and his team realize they must strike a balance between undoing Bush actions and setting their own course, said Winnie Stachelberg, the center's senior vice president for external affairs.
"It took eight years to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out of it," she said. "The next administration needs to look ahead. This transition team and the incoming administration gets that in a big way."
Staff writers Juliet Eilperin, Spencer S. Hsu and Carol D. Leonnig and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27628719/
By Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith
Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.
In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.
"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.
Stem cell research
A spokeswoman said yesterday that no plans for regulatory changes had been finalized. "Before he makes any decisions on potential executive or legislative actions, he will be conferring with congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, as well as interested groups," Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said. "Any decisions would need to be discussed with his Cabinet nominees, none of whom have been selected yet."
Still, the preelection transition team, comprising mainly lawyers, has positioned the incoming president to move fast on high-priority items without waiting for Congress.
Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's.
Bush's August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process.
But Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said that during Obama's final swing through her state in October, she reminded him that because the restrictions were never included in legislation, Obama "can simply reverse them by executive order." Obama, she said, "was very receptive to that." Opponents of the restrictions have already drafted an executive order he could sign.
The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it.
"We have been communicating with his transition staff" almost daily, Richards said. "We expect to see a real change."
While Obama said at a news conference last week that his top priority would be to stimulate the economy and create jobs, his advisers say that focus will not delay key shifts in social and regulatory policies, including some -- such as the embrace of new environmental safeguards -- that Obama has said will have long-term, beneficial impacts on the economy.
The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said in January.
California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California's rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation's automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.
"An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Carbon dioxide emissions
Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.
Robert Sussman, who was the EPA's deputy administrator during the Clinton administration and is now overseeing EPA transition planning for Obama, wrote a paper last spring strongly recommending such a finding. Others in the campaign have depicted it as an issue on which Obama is keen to show that politics must not interfere with scientific advice.
Some related reforms embraced by Obama's transition advisers would alter procedures for decision-making on climate issues. A book titled "Change for America," being published next week by the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, will recommend, for example, that Obama rapidly create a National Energy Council to coordinate all policymaking related to global climate change.
The center's influence with Obama is substantial: It was created by former Clinton White House official John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of the transition effort, and much of its staff has been swept into planning for Obama's first 100 days in office.
The National Energy Council would be a counterpart to the White House National Economic Council that Clinton created in a 1993 executive order.
"It would make sure all the oars are rowing in the right direction" and ensure that climate change policy "gets lots of attention inside the White House," said Daniel J. Weiss, a former Sierra Club official and senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The center's new book will also urge Obama to sign an executive order requiring that greenhouse gas emissions be considered whenever the federal government examines the environmental impact of its actions under the existing National Environmental Policy Act. Several key members of Obama's transition team have already embraced the idea.
Other early Obama initiatives may address the need for improved food and drug regulation and chart a new course for immigration enforcement, some Obama advisers say. But they add that only a portion of his early efforts will be aimed at undoing Bush initiatives.
Striking a balance
Despite enormous pent-up Democratic frustration, Obama and his team realize they must strike a balance between undoing Bush actions and setting their own course, said Winnie Stachelberg, the center's senior vice president for external affairs.
"It took eight years to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out of it," she said. "The next administration needs to look ahead. This transition team and the incoming administration gets that in a big way."
Staff writers Juliet Eilperin, Spencer S. Hsu and Carol D. Leonnig and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27628719/
11.07.2008
President-Elect Barack Obama Holds First Press Conference
PRESS CONFERENCE WITH PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA AND VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN FOLLOWING THEIR MEETING WITH THE TRANSITION ECONOMIC ADVISORY BOARD
HILTON CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
2:53 P.M. EST, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2008
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/11/presidentelect_obama_first_pre.html
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much.
This morning we woke up to more sobering news about the state of our economy. The 240,000 jobs lost in October marks the 10th consecutive month that our economy has shed jobs. In total, we've lost nearly 1.2 million jobs this year, and more than 10 million Americans are now unemployed. Tens of millions of families are struggling to figure out how to pay the bills and stay in their homes. Their stories are an urgent reminder that we are facing the greatest economic challenge of our lifetime, and we're going to have to act swiftly to resolve it.
Now, the United States has only one government and one president at a time, and until January 20th of next year, that government is the current administration. I have spoken to President Bush. I appreciate his commitment to ensuring that his economic policy team keeps us fully informed as developments unfold. And I'm also thankful for his invitation to the White House.
Immediately after I become president, I'm going to confront this economic crisis head-on by taking all necessary steps to ease the credit crisis, help hardworking families, and restore growth and prosperity.
This morning I met with members of my Transition Economic Advisory Board, who are standing behind me, alongside my vice president-elect, Joe Biden. They will help to guide the work of my transition team, working with Rahm Emanuel, my chief of staff, in developing a strong set of policies to respond to this crisis. We discussed in the earlier meeting several of the most immediate challenges facing our economy and key priorities on which to focus on in the days and weeks ahead.
First of all, we need a rescue plan for the middle class that invests in immediate efforts to create jobs and provide relief to families that are watching their paychecks shrink and their life savings disappear. A particularly urgent priority is a further extension of unemployment insurance benefits for workers who cannot find work in the increasingly weak economy. A fiscal stimulus plan that will jump-start economic growth is long overdue. I've talked about it throughout this -- the last few months of the campaign. We should get it done.
Second, we have to address the spreading impact of the financial crisis on the other sectors of our economy -- small businesses that are struggling to meet their payrolls and finance their holiday inventories, and state and municipal governments facing devastating budget cuts and tax increases. We must also remember that the financial crisis is increasingly global and requires a global response.
The news coming out of the auto industry this week reminds us of the hardship it faces -- hardship that goes far beyond individual auto companies to the countless suppliers, small businesses and communities throughout our nation who depend on a vibrant American auto industry. The auto industry is the backbone of American manufacturing and a critical part of our attempt to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
I would like to see the administration do everything it can to accelerate the retooling assistance that Congress has already enacted. In addition, I have made it a high priority for my transition team to work on additional policy options to help the auto industry adjust, weather the financial crisis, and succeed in producing fuel-efficient cars here in the United States of America. And I was glad to be joined today by Governor Jennifer Granholm, who obviously has great knowledge and great interest on this issue. I've asked my team to explore what we can do under current law and whether additional legislation will be needed for this purpose.
Third, we will review the implementation of this administration's financial program to ensure that the government's efforts are achieving their central goal of stabilizing financial markets while protecting taxpayers, helping homeowners and not unduly rewarding the management of financial firms that are receiving government assistance.
It is absolutely critical that the Treasury work closely with the FDIC, HUD and other government agencies to use the substantial authority that they already have to help families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.
Finally, as we monitor and address these immediate economic challenges, we will be moving forward in laying out a set of policies that will grow our middle class and strengthen our economy in the long term. We cannot afford to wait on moving forward on the key priorities that I identified during the campaign, including clean energy, health care, education and tax relief for middle-class families.
My transition team will be working on each of these priorities in the weeks ahead, and I intend to reconvene this advisory board to discuss the best ideas for responding to these immediate problems.
Let me close by saying this: I do not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead. We have taken some major action to date, and we will need further action during this transition and subsequent months. Some of the choices that we make are going to be difficult. And I have said before and I will repeat again: It is not going to be quick and it is not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole that we are in, but America is a strong and resilient country. And I know we will succeed if we put aside partisanship and politics and work together as one nation. That's what I intend to do.
With that, let me open it up for some questions. And I'm going to start right here with you, Nedra.
Q Thanks, Mr. President-elect. I wonder what you think any president can accomplish during their first hundred days in office to turn the economy around. How far can you go? And what will be your priorities on day one?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Well, I think that a new president can do an enormous amount to restore confidence, to move an agenda forward that speaks to the needs of the economy and the needs of middle-class families all across the country. I've outlined during the course of the campaign some critical issues that I intend to work on.
We have a current financial crisis that is spilling out into the rest of the economy. And we have taken some action so far. More action is undoubtedly going to be needed. My transition team is going to be monitoring very closely what happens over the course of the next several months.
The one thing I can say with certainty is that we are going to need to see a stimulus package passed either before or after inauguration. We are going to have to focus on jobs, because the hemorrhaging of jobs has an impact obviously on consumer confidence and the ability of people to -- to buy goods and services and can have enormous spill-over effects.
And I think it's going to be very important for us to provide the kinds of assistance, to state and local governments, to make sure that they don't compound some of the problems that are already out there, by having to initiate major layoffs or initiate tax increases.
So there are some things that we know we're going to have to do. But I'm confident that a new president can have an enormous impact. That's why I ran for president.
All right.
Lee.
Q Sir, there's been some suggestion from House Democrats that the stimulus package may be in trouble, that it's going to be a hard time getting it out of a lame-duck session.
Are you still confident that you would be able to get something done before you actually take office?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: I want to see a stimulus package sooner rather than later. If it does not get done in the lame-duck session, it will be the first thing I get done as president of the United States.
Jake.
Q Senator, for the first time since the Iranian Revolution, a president of Iran sent a congratulations note to a new U.S. president.
I'm wondering, first of all, if you responded to President Ahmadinejad's note of congratulations. And second of all and more importantly, how soon do you plan on sending low-level envoys to countries such as Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, to see if a presidential-level talk would be productive?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: I am aware that the letter was sent. Let me state -- repeat what I stated during the course of the campaign.
Iran's development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. And we have to mount a international effort to prevent that from happening. Iran's support of terrorist organizations, I think, is something that has to cease.
I will be reviewing the letter from President Ahmadinejad. And we will respond appropriately. It's only been three days since the election. Obviously how we approach and deal with a country like Iran is not something that we should, you know, simply do in a kneejerk fashion.
I think we've got to think it through. But I have to reiterate once again that we only have one president at a time. And I want to be very careful that we are sending the right signals, to the world as a whole, that I am not the president and I won't be until January 20th.
Let's see.
Chip.
Q Picking up what you were just talking about, your meeting with President Bush on Monday, when he is still the decider obviously, stating the obvious, when you disagree with decisions he makes, will you defer? Will you challenge? Will you confront? And if it becomes confrontational, could that rattle the markets even more?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Well, President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I to meet with him and First Lady Laura Bush. We are gratified by the invitation.
I'm sure that in addition to taking a tour of the White House, there is going to be a substantive conversation between myself and the president.
I'm not going to anticipate problems. I'm going to go in there with a spirit of bipartisanship and a sense that both the president and various leaders of Congress all recognize the severity of the situation right now and want to get stuff done. And you know, undoubtedly there may end up being differences between not just members of different parties, but between people within the same party.
The -- the critical point and the -- I think the critical tone that has to be struck by all of us involved right now is the American people need help. This economy is in bad shape, and we have just completed one of the longest election cycles in recorded history. Now is a good time for us to set politics aside for a while and think practically about what will actually work to move the economy forward. And it's in that spirit that I'll have the conversation with the president.
Let's see. How about Karen.
Q Mr. President-elect, with the country facing two wars and a financial crisis, do you think it's important for you to move especially quickly to fill key Cabinet posts, such as Treasury secretary and secretary of State?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: When we have an announcement about Cabinet appointments, we will make it. There is no doubt that I think people want to know who's going to make up our team, and I want to move with all deliberate haste, but I want to emphasize deliberate as well as haste. I'm proud of the choice I made of vice president, partly because we did it right. I'm proud of the choice of chief of staff because we thought it through. And I think it's very important in all these key positions, both in the economic team and the national security team, to -- to get it right and -- and not to be so rushed that you end up making mistakes. I'm confident that we're going to have an outstanding team, and we will be rolling that out in subsequent weeks.
Let's see. Where's John McCormick? Give -- give a local, hometown guy a little bit of -- a little bit of time.
Q Thank you, sir.
To what extent -- (comes on mike) -- to what extent are you planning to use your probably pretty great influence in determining the successor for your Senate seat? And what sort of criteria should the governor be looking at in filling that position?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: This is the governor's decision. It is not my decision. And I think that the criteria that I would have for my successor would be the same criteria that I'd have if I were a voter: somebody who is capable, somebody who is passionate about helping working families in Illinois meet their -- meet their dreams. And I think there are going to be a lot of good choices out there. But it is the governor's decision to make, not mine.
Lynn Sweet. What happened to your arm, Lynn?
Q I cracked my shoulder running to your speech on Election Night. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Oh, no.
Q (Off mike.)
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: I think that was the only major incident during the entire Grant Park celebration.
Q Thank you for asking.
Here's my question. I'm wondering what you're doing to get ready. Have you spoke to any living ex-presidents? What books you might be reading? Everyone wants to know what kind of dog are you going to buy for your girls. Have you decided on a private or public school for your daughters?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Let me list those off. In terms of speaking to former presidents, I have spoken to all of them that are living. Obviously, President Clinton. I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances. (Laughter.)
I have reread some of Lincoln's writings, who's always an extraordinary inspiration.
And by the way, President Carter, President Bush Senior, as well as the current president have all been very gracious and offered to provide any help that they can in this transition process.
With respect to the dog, this is a major issue. I think it's generated more interest on our website than just about anything. We have -- we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypo-allergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypo-allergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me. So the -- so, whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.
And with respect to schools, Michelle will be scouting out some schools. We'll be making a decision about that in the future.
Okay. Candy? Down here.
Q You are now privy to a lot of intelligence that you haven't had access to before; in fact, much of what the president sees, I'm sure, all of it. First of all, do you -- what do you think about the state of U.S. intelligence, whether you think it needs beefing up, whether you think there's enough interaction between the various agencies?
And second of all, has anything that you've heard given you pause about anything you've talked about on the campaign trail?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Well, Candy, as you know, if there was something I'd heard, I couldn't tell you. But --
Q (?) (Off mike.)
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: (Chuckles.) The -- I have received intelligence briefings. And I will make just a general statement. Our intelligence process can always improve. I think it has gotten better. And, you know, beyond that I don't think I should comment on the nature of the intelligence briefings.
That was a two-parter? Was there another aspect to that?
Q Well, just whether, you know, absent what you've heard --
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Okay, I get it.
I --
Q -- whether anything's given you pause.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: I -- I'm going to -- I'm going to skip that.
Jeff.
Q Mr. President-elect, do you still intend to seek income tax increases for upper-income Americans? And if so, should these Americans expect to pay higher taxes in 2009?
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: The -- my tax plan represented a net tax cut. It provided for substantial middle-class tax cuts. Ninety-five percent of working Americans would receive them. It also provided for cuts in capital gains for small businesses, additional tax credits. All of it is designed for job growth.
My priority is going to be, how do we grow the economy? How do we create more jobs?
I think that the plan that we've put forward is the right one. But obviously over the next several weeks and months, we are going to be continuing to take a look at the data and see what's taking place in the economy as a whole. But understand the goal of my plan is to provide tax relief to families that are struggling, but also to boost the capacity of the economy to grow from the bottom up.
All right? Thank you very much, guys.
Q ("Bonjour," ?) Mr. President.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: "Bonjour." (Laughter.)
END.
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