Tag: Obama

Priorities

On June 17, 2009

Actions tell you what politicians really care about. For example the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee hasn’t put out a public option on health care, because two Democratic members won’t vote for it.

“Not even at Rahm’s level has anyone specifically called members of the HELP committee and said ‘we want this public option,’ said the source. “No one from the White House has called and put pressure on any of them.”

Obama says that a robust public option is important to him. But it’s all about priorities. The war and IMF money to bail out Eastern European banks was a White House priority, you could tell because Obama himself whipped for it when it was in trouble, just as he did for the TARP bailout funds.. A real public option? It’d be nice to have, says Obama, just like he said he’d like to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

He’d like to. But he won’t expend any effort or capital for either.

I wonder how much capital he’ll expend for real health care reform. Is something that can be called “health care reform” enough, or does he really want the real thing?

We’ll see.

Obama Bypassed the A-List Rather Than Co-Opting It

By Ian Welsh

On May 11, 2009

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I love me some Anglachel, in many respects. In her review of Eric Boehlert’s book Bloggers on the Bus, she notes that it’s missing some important precursors of the blogosphere, such as the Daily Howler and Media Whores. But she also goes on and on about how the Netroots was run by the Obama campaign and became part of the media circle, whose job it was to elect Obama. Since Anglachel was and is a complete Clinton partisan, her objection isn’t to partisanship, it is to partisanship for Obama despite the fact that Clinton was better on a number of domestic issues (such as healthcare).

I was managing editor of the Agonist during the primaries, and managing editor of FDL after the primaries and during the campaign proper. Here’s the deal: with a couple of exceptions (such as Americablog), the A-list was not primarily for Obama in the primaries. As much as it was for anyone, its preference was John Edwards, though for various reasons it never fully got on board his campaign (something which displeased me at the time, and spare me the “he was cheating” amateur quarterbacking, since no one I knew believed it during the primary).

What Obama did wasn’t to manage the A-listers, he cut past the A-listers with direct outreach to their readers and captured their base from them. The Netroots didn’t turn pro-Obama from the top down, it turned pro-Obama from the bottom up. I saw this both at the Agonist and FDL. I saw it other places. Clinton was never that popular online, and when it became clear that Edwards wasn’t going to win, the majority of readers turned to Obama.

The A-listers did not lead on this. As with the old joke about political leadership, they saw where the crowd was running, and they ran to the front of the pack and pretended to lead. There were exceptions, such as MyDD, where Jerome Armstrong remained pro-Clinton. And there were honorable cases of this. Jane Hamsher at FDL was very clear, for example, that FDL would support whoever the Democratic nominee was. If it had been Clinton or Edwards or Kucinich, I can guarantee FDL would have supported that person. Hard. I think the same is true of most other A-listers though there’s no question that some made threats of not supporting Clinton. The majority of such articles however, however, were written not by A-listers themselves, but diarists.

In Democratic party politics you have power if you can either deliver an identifiable block of voters, or if you can deliver money. Barack Obama bypassed the blogs on both counts, getting the voters and the money without needing the Netroots. If the Lieberman primary was a bow shot across the establishment by the Netroots, the presidential election of 2008 was a demonstration of the limits of Netroots power and of the fact that with enough money and smart operatives the A-listers were gatekeepers who could be bypassed.

That doesn’t mean that Anglachel isn’t partially correct that the A-list has been partially co-opted. Parts of it have, without question. But to think that the A-list has become part of the Village is incorrect. The Village doesn’t need the A-list, and knows it. Barack Obama proved it.

What Obama’s Refusal to Investigate Torture Reveals About America

By Ian Welsh

On April 19, 2009

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Obama refuses to even investigate torture, let alone charge anyone.

Lucas O’Connor cuts to the core problem with Obama ignoring torture:

In the coverage of last week’s tea parties and in attending briefly my local event, I was struck especially by one intellectual inconsistency. The apparently happy coexistence of “Give me liberty or give me death” and “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” You can get into a strained semantic debate to justify those two notions living side by side, but at a core level their sentiments are opposed. Either there are things that this country fundamentally and necessarily stands for or there aren’t.

I don’t think America stands for anything particularly noble at this point. I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise, so if commenters have ideas, I’d like to hear them.

I should add that on the original question I’m willing to bet that within a couple years we’ll find out that whatever Obama may have said about stopping torture, torture has continued and will continue under the Obama administration. Less of it, doubtless, but still torture.

The other point that needs to be made is that a lot of Americans really don’t see anything wrong with torture, as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out:

All of that said, what really disturbs me about all of this, is that most Americans still don’t think torture is a big deal. I think in the case of Bush, particularly after 2004, we–the American people–got the government we deserved. I think Bush said a lot about who we were post-9/11. I’d like to see some exploration into how to make this torture argument directly to the people. Maybe we can’t. Maybe people really don’t care that much. But if we’re wondering why Obama isn’t willing to press forward, I think it’s fair to also wonder why the people aren’t pressing him to press forward.

Enough Americans voted for Bush, twice, for him to get into office. In 2004 they voted for him knowing that widespread torture was occurring. It wasn’t a problem for them.

America, fundamentally, is not a nation of laws. It is a nation of men. If you’re important enough, you will not be held responsible for whatever you do—whether that’s lose trillions and destroy the economy, start an illegal war based on lies, or torture. That’s just the way it is. Obama and Bush, between them, have made this point crystal clear.

I’m Sure There’s a Difference Between the Bush/Paulson, Obama/Geithner Approaches to Bailouts

By Ian Welsh

On April 4, 2009

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I’m just not sure what:

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

At this point in time, there seems to be no significant functional difference between Paulson/Bush and Geithner/Obama. Both intended to give a ton of money to financial firms, either directly or by buying up crap at prices higher than justified. Both opposed any meaningful restrictions on how they spent the money or who they gave it to.

Actually, I take it back, one difference is that when Paulson wanted 700 billion, he went to Congress. When Geithner made up his plan he just had the FDIC and the FED pony up most of the money, because he knew Congress wouldn’t give him the money.

Some wonder if this is legal:

Although some experts are questioning the legality of this strategy, the officials said it gives them latitude to determine whether firms should be subject to the congressional restrictions, which would require recipients to turn over ownership stakes to the government, as well as curb executive pay.

Me, I don’t know if it’s legal. What I do know is that they plan on giving money away in a manner which clearly intends to end-run Congress’s clearly legislated mandate for how it be given away. What I know is that they are bypassing Congress when they can, because they know that the elected body which is the only one supposed to be able to pass spending bills wouldn’t give them all the money they want to spend and won’t let them spend what money it does give as freely as they want to.

Of course, that money will still have to be paid back by taxpayers, even if Congress never approved the spending.

But back to the TARP restrictions:

Congress drafted the restrictions amid its highly contentious consideration of the $700 billion rescue legislation last fall. At the time, lawmakers were aiming to reform the lavish pay practices on Wall Street. Congress also wanted the government to gain the right to buy stock in companies so that taxpayers would benefit if the firms recovered.

The requirements were honored in an initial program injecting public money directly into banks. That effort was developed by the Bush administration and continued by Obama’s team. The initiative is on track to account for the bulk of the money spent from the rescue package. All the major banks already submit to executive-compensation provisions and have surrendered ownership stakes as part of this program.

Yet as the Treasury has readied other programs, it has increasingly turned to creating the special entities. Legal experts said the Treasury’s plan to bypass the restrictions may be unlawful.

The problem is that while Geithner’s plan takes money from the FDIC and the Fed, it still uses some TARP money as seed money, and that money carries the restrictions.

I thought it wasn’t the executive’s job to decide that Congress is wrong and then deliberately end-run it. I thought we had an election to stop this sort of thing.

This is one of the things we spent the last 8 years blasting Bush for doing. But in this particular case, the new administration is being less compliant with Congress’s will than the Bush administration was!

Less!

I don’t know whether to spit or cry. I’ve always had my doubts about Obama, but in my worst dreams I didn’t think he’d try and end run Congress even more blatantly than Bush, in order to give even more money away to the richest Americans with even fewer restrictions and less protection from the taxpayer in terms of ownership stakes.

It’s going to be a long 4 years.