ChangeWatch
With all the promises of change that Barack Obama got his supporters to believe, we’re now finding out that "promises" are more like "goals". Or perhaps "hopes".
Close Gitmo on the first day in office? First week? First 100 days? Well, technically, he may only issue an order to do it soon, but it’s "a challenge" to even close it within the first 100 days. The ACLU wants a timetable. Good luck with that.
"That’s a challenge," Obama said on ABC’s "This Week." "I think it’s going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do."
It’s not as easy as some on the Left expected it would be. The "Reality-based community" finds that facing reality isn’t what they thought it would be.
Iraq withdrawal within 16 months? Well, Biden has said that they’re going to follow the Bush plan instead. Additional take on this and all the Iraq issues at RedState.
Universal Health Care is being back-burnered. Indeed, the economic crisis should be one of the top priorities, but I thought this whole scheme was supposed to save us all money. If it’s such a win-win for the economy and health care, why delay? Hmmm. (Perhaps it has something to do with how poorly UHC is working in places like Massachusetts?)
No lobbyists serving in policy areas they have worked to influence in the past year. So then, September 2008 is technically last year.
Interrogation techniques that Obama campaigned against may actually get a new lease on life. Newsweek tells us:
Dick Cheney, who will step down as vice president on Jan. 20, has been widely portrayed as a creature of the dark side, a monstrous figure who trampled on the Constitution to wage war against all foes, real and imagined. Barack Obama was elected partly to cleanse the temple of the Bush-Cheney stain, and in his campaign speeches he promised to reverse Cheney’s efforts to seize power for the White House in the war on terror.
It may not be so simple
This could be another entry in my "New They Tell Us" category. This was so simple during the campaign, but now they tell us it’s complex. Nuance, anyone?
All this added to Obama’s waffling on tax cuts, windfall profits taxes on Big Oil, and FISA. Now, I have no illusion that Obama has become some sort of bedrock conservative (though he’s been seen in the company of some), and we’re still likely to see many a liberal policy enacted. However, underneath all this complaining by the Left that the new boss seems the same as the old boss is one thought; maybe the old boss got some things right.
Filed under: Democrats • Doug • Government • Medicine • Politics • War
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So, then, you favor keeping out of HHS anyone who opposes selling tobacco to children?
Did you really think that lobbying on the side of God should be treated the same as lobbying on behalf of Phillip Morris?
Is that what Obama means by the word “lobbyist”? ‘Cause I never heard or read that.
Hey, I’m fine with it. I’m just holding him to his own standards.
One of the best candidates for any slot at Interior is an old friend of mine. When I asked him about whether he would consider a job if they offered it to him, he said he registered as a lobbyist (as the law requires for the work he was doing), and not only had he not been contacted, but the Obama campaign had sent back to him the munificent donations he had made. He knew many others in the same category.
I checked around a few of the people I know in similar situations. Same story for anyone lobbying or who had been lobbying.
Did Obama really say “absolutely, positively no one who has ever carried a cause to a legislature?” I thought a ban on registered big money guys was pretty chancy, but carrying it further might be stupid.
Then this blog crops up with one example of a guy who lobbied in opposition to the tobacco companies. I spent several years in the middle of the tobacco company fights, when I staffed Senate Labor during the fight to get new cigarette warning labels. It’s not even David and Goliath. It’s more like Bambi vs. Godzilla.
I suppose, technically, you could call this guy a lobbyist. No one gets rich working against the tobacco companies. It’s a labor of love. It’s the right thing to do. It’s worth being rational on the issue of hiring lobbyists.
Calling this guy a lobbyist is a bit like saying Abraham Lincoln was a lobbyist against southern plantations when he ran against Stephen Douglas, though. Or maybe more aptly, it’s like saying Frederick Douglass shouldn’t have been allowed in the White House, since he was a lobbyist against southern cotton interests.
Complaining about Obama’s hiring this guy is the quintessential demonstration of reductio ad absurdum, but not in a good way.
Like I said, I’m fine with the appointment, but Obama’s own words had less to do with how much money they make, and more to do with their sphere of influence.
On the back end, you can’t lobby the administration for a year after you leave it. No mention of what kind of lobbyist, or for how big or small an organization you wind up working for. One imagines that on the front-end, the standard is the same. Or not.
My only concern is for the words vs actions side of Obama. Occasionally he has referred to “corporate” lobbyists, but generally he paints them all with a rather broad brush.
On the campaign trail, that is. Broad strokes then, nuance now. Just like many of the other examples. Again, I have no problem with the appointment, but it speaks to how much his other promises were specific enough, what he said, what he’s not doing now, and what his supporters projected onto him.
Maybe it’s just been so long since we had a president with good, common sense, someone who can do the right thing despite the stupid projections of enemies and supporters . . .
He’s done the right thing so often, and in this case, he did the right thing again. It’s astounding that you think there should be some ideological bent against doing the right thing.
Such thinking is what got us the trouble of the last eight years. How the mighty (voters) have fallen, indeed.
Heh, yeah, the right thing. Like putting a finance guy in charge of intelligence and a tax scofflaw in charge of the Treasury. But, hey, at least they’re not lobbyists.
The last guy to head CIA with qualifications like Panetta’s was George H. W. Bush — the nation was secure then. Only in the upside-down, bass-ackwards world of sore loser conservatives is a guy who can run the White House and our nation’s foreign policy an “unqualified finance guy” in charge of intelligence.
Your tax preparer goofs, you pay. He paid the taxes, with penalties. What does your accountant say about your pay from the World Bank, which comes as a regular paycheck? Do you know if you have to pay the self-employment tax on your earned-in-the-U.S. salary? Do you seriously think your tax preparations could withstand a Senate Finance Committee vetting?
It’s telling that the unpaid self-employment tax is the only issue they could find. Every past nominee to the post has had so much other baggage that their tax discrepancies got buried in paragraph 36 — even for the best of them.
You probably think Everett Koop should have been kept out of the Surgeon General’s spot because of his age, too. There are no medals for doing the right thing, only the satisfaction of doing a good job. It’s Washington, D.C. If you want to be loved, get a dog. Obama’s getting a dog, he knows what he’s about.
This NY Times article is asking some tough questions about this as well. Geithner signed a document saying he was aware of the self-employment tax obligation. Further, in 2001 and 2002, the 2 prior years, he filled out the tax paperwork himself, and didn’t pay the tax then, either. And it points out where he was told about tax issues by his accountant, but he ignored it.
The final paragraph say:
Boy, if the NY Times goes after a Democrat, that’s saying something.
Worse, Byron York is reporting that this paperwork was to acknowledge that he was being reimbursed for those self-employment taxes and that he did pay them.
A mistake on your taxes is one thing. Taking reimbursement for taxes you didn’t pay, over multiple years, is very, very troubling.
“The right thing” indeed.