Obama Has Shown He’s Just as Corrupt as Any Other Politician and Undeserving of the Presidency
It didn’t do a very good job of promoting itself, but there used to be a site out there called Centrist Movement, that essentially was an automatic aggregator of centrist and moderate (ish) blog content. The guy behind that, Stephen Erickson, started a political organization called Americans United to Rebuild Democracy, which focuses on pushing “Congressional Term Limits, Clean Elections, and an End to Gerrymandering”.
I’d recommend checking them out, and while they don’t put out too much blog content, what they do put out is pretty good stuff. One from earlier this month, that I saved a link to and forgot to post a few weeks back, talks about “the Good, the Bad and the Filthy” in regards to political reform efforts. None of the viable candidates are ranked well, and Erickson tears into Obama’s record since taking office.
President Barack Obama (D)
OK, progressives. It’s time to face the truth. Barack Obama, who campaigned to be one of the cleanest presidents in history, is presiding over the most corrupt administration in recent memory. Over 75 percent of all Energy Department loans funded through the Democrat stimulus bill – over $15 billion – went to Obama campaign contributors. The Government Accounting Office has no idea how loan recipients were selected because there were no objective criteria for selecting and no transparency in the process. This looks like the worstcase of crony capitalism in US history. But that’s not all. “Too big to fail” remains with us while former Wall Street bankers – among the President’s most generous campaign contributors – haunt the halls and revolving doors at the White House. But wait, folks -as the announcer would say in a sleazy infomercial, there’s still more! A corrupt deal was cut with Big Pharma in support of the president’s healthcare law. In terms of clean government, this administration is as bad as it gets. Only when progressive reformers acknowledge this fact will they gain credibility with conservatives and others.
Erickson hits the nail on the head here. I’d add that his move to ignore constitutional limits on the executive branch have also been outright dangerous, he’s been a dismal failure on foreclosures, has flip flopped on whistleblower protections, deference to letting science be science and the individual mandate, he picked a (insert explitive here) MONSANTO executive to be an FDA food czar and his sabotage of his own fiscal commission is just plain unforgivable.
I can see how you might look at his presidency and the potential for a Romney presidency and see Romney as the worse of the two, or the other way around. What I really can’t see is if you look at his presidency over the last few years and think him good, or even just okay. He’s not even close to what he made himself out to be during his campaign, and he’s very clearly not up to meeting the challenge of leadership we need in this period of our history.
Congressional Term Limits
I strongly disapprove of this, you lose a lot of insight and expertise if you put those in place. Let the voter determine the term limit for the Congressman that represents them not a mandate for the nation at large.
Clean Elections
What a generic term that doesn’t say anything, waste of the space the type characters occupy.
End to Gerrymandering”.
Well I support that but who ends up making the maps? Hard to have simple geometric shapes for districts when the law discriminates based on race who can and can’t be in a district.
I agree. If someone is serving the constituents well, why limit them? The President is far more powerful, and maybe term limits make sense there, but in Congress? Not such a good idea. I also know I’d lose a lot of good Blue Dogs if that happened.
On Clean Elections, sounds good. But yes, they need to be more specific.
In Florida, we are working on ending Gerrymandering as we speak. We amended our constitution to require them to draw lines around more traditional boundaries, such as county lines, rivers, etc. We’ll probably spend the next year or two arguing about it, but I’m confident we’ll end up with more balanced districts than we had before. I’m hoping this will serve as an example to other states. (And maybe FL will get a few Blue Dogs back.)
Oh, as for Obama, I don’t even know what to say anymore. I think I’m just numb to it now. I was all hopey and changey in 2008, and I’ll never forget the sheer malice of the GOP in Congress. But I can’t ignore what is going on. Sure, the Stimulus had a lot of good points, and the economy certainly needed a boost, but I can plainly see much of that money was wasted and went to cronies. I also remember the Big Pharm deal. We cannot buy the cheaper drugs from Canada. Bush started that whole thing, claiming they were not safe. But in reality, he was cozy with Big Pharm. I expected better from Obama.
Well said.
Term limits: The “insight and expertise” associated with lifetime career politicians has proven to be a myth. The incompetence of Congress in dealing with well thought out solutions, such as those proposed by the bipartisan Bowles/Simpson commission, demonstrates the preoocupation with doing whatever is required to be reellected – the professional polititcian cannot affort to offend his or her source of votes and dollars. Term limits would eliminate this preoccupation on Capital Hill and Pennsylvania Ave.
Actually not a myth. Take John McCain and defense spending as an example. Would a short term Congressman have been able to stop the tanker deal? What about people in Congress dealing with national security issues behind the scenes, isn’t years of expertise required to get a real understanding of everything involved? Who understands things better in general, a freshman in college or a PHD? Who do you want operating on you in a hospital a residency student or a guy with 20 years of experience?
False choice. You don’t need to be in Congress 30 years to have a good grasp of the topics the committee you’re on works on. Having some limit in the range of 12-16 years max in Congress, and two or three terms in the Senate makes perfect sense.
Not to me. You don’t throw away useful expertise and the voters of the areas represented deserve to choose for themselves if they want them to stay or go anyhow. This should not be a national discussion, this should be a local discussion carried out at the ballot box with each state and district deciding for itself and not for others.
This idea is almost as retarded as the National popular vote nonsense and for most of the same reasons.
Actually let me just be blunt about it, I know you don’t mind some bluntness from time to time Sol.
The term limit whine comes in 2 basic flavors:
Flavor 1) Someone in state X or district X didn’t vote how I wanted them to in State Y or District Y but instead re-elected the long term incumbent I wanted gone, so the decision should be out of their hands.
Flavor 2) Too many people in my district or my state don’t agree with me and did not vote to kick out the old incumbent, so there should be a law against it because most voters do no agree with me.
I’ve met some real idiots with PhDs and tenure. They have Written 103 essays on the same 5 topics with slightly different words, and are only interested in research that is part of that lifelong narrow and relatively un-influential work. New ideas are structurally suppressed because PhDs are only offered to students doing research that some professor can piggy-back on and add to their already inflated credentials.
I bring this up because there is something to be said for fresh ideas. (Of course, if these “fresh ideas” are nothing more than young politicians marching the party line with even greater prejudice than the older ones…I’m looking at you RUBIO…that defeats the whole purpose.)
Obama has not proven to be the “shining light” that most felt he was supposed to be; the Messiah or the Anti-Christ. that said, i voted for him because he wasn’t Bush, as i think most people did.
the question i always ask is ‘can you walk into the WH with a head of steam and really expect it not to be bumpy, ugly and full of giant compromises when the corruption in Washington is as extensive as it is?’ maybe that’s an excuse and maybe it’s not, and we should still hold his feet to the fire at all times, but i think he’s been probably as good as was possible.
what’s most important, i think, is that these last four years have set the foundation for an anti-establishment movement that has been desperately needed. and that’s a good start.
Guess you were disappointed in a good part of that as he has kept up many Bush practices.
I’ve stopped looking at presidential elections as simply a contest between two individuals. Between R or D presidential nominees, the level of corruption and hypocrisy is always just a question of degree and perhaps as an indicator of who will benefit more from the two flavors of corporate statism that will result.
I find it a lot more useful to look at the likely final configuration of House, Senate, and Presidency, look at the combined leadership that will result, then make my decision on how to vote. The two most likely government states that we will see in January 2013 is:
A) Obama (D), Boehner (R), McConnell (R)
or
B) Romney (R), Boehner (R), McConnell (R)
Of the two, I find choice (A) to be far preferable. Less opportunity for mischief, more oversight, and more checks on corruption. Unless the dynamic for control of the House and Senate changes, I’ll be supporting Obama’s re-election. For the exact same reason I supported McCain in 2008.
I am definitely incorporating the divided government hypothesis into my wishes for who I hope wins.
Part of me agrees that RRR could lead to some really undesirable and mischievous outcomes. But I wonder what one big achievement Mitt Romney would go for if he’s got RRR. If his top priority was to cut the deficit by say, level funding from a 2006 baseline, I’d be in favor of that.
Might we see substantial budget cuts in DRR mode? I think we might, if the GOP changes mode upon taking the senate. The main risk in DRR mode is that the GOP keeps to the hard line of demanding at least one very painful concession from Obama not matter what he asks for, even if he’s asking for something that the GOP knows they need to pass anyway.
I cheered for Divided government in 2006. I actually thought Pelosi would try to drain the swamp, can’t pull for divided government anymore like that due to putting too much faith in the 2006 democrats and seeing where that went. I do, however, hope I never live to see another filibuster proof majority or anything withing 5 votes of it in the Senate if the majority is the same party as the president. either way. The House not so important, but I want a near balanced Senate.
Cranky, you’re basically admitting that in divided government, the Republicans make governing (and reaching bipartisan consensus on major issues including the deficit) impossible for a Democratic president. And you’re exactly right. So why would you want divided government? You saw what they did last time with a modicum of power. They nearly drove the country’s credit worthiness off a cliff for no damn reason other than to spite the president.
And the RRD or RDD mode is likely impossible in this next cycle.
That is wildly over-stated but consistent with the views of Democratic partisans. Republican partisans have a different view of what transpired. Even if one accepts this characterization of what happened in 2010, it is not supportable that this specific example is the general condition that occurs under divided government. David Mayhew’s “Divided We Govern” is the definitive scholarship on the subject. He showed that in the modern era, there is no statistical correlation between congressional legislative productivity in divided vs. undivided government. You can have productive and non-productive Congress in both divided and undivided government. Mayhew also shows that Congress acts on big issues when they are forced to act by a public demand for change. I would have preferred and frankly expected a “grand bargain” to happen last year, but it is inevitable, and it likely will occur during this period of divided government (which will I expect and hope to last at least another three years).
Others would suggest that what is driving our “credit-worthiness over a cliff” is not the failure to get a grand compromise in 2011, but the insane increases in federal spending over the last 11 years. The combination of the fiscal policy and the 2011 compromise failure earned us a downgrade by S&P. The markets tell us that downgrade has had zero effect on our credit-worthiness and currency, as interest rates have dropped, US bonds and the US dollar have increased in value since the downgrade.
Regarding the likelihood of the configuration of our next government, this is how I would rank all possible scenarios for 2013 from most likely to least likel:y
President, House, Senate
There is an almost zero chance of a return to One Party Democratic Rule this cycle. There is a pretty good chance of a return to One Party Republican Rule. If you really hate divided government, your only realistic alternative this cycle is to be a partisan Republican.
So that we might see substantial budget cuts, as I stated right in my post. If your going to ask a me a question about my thoughts that is merely rhetorical, please at least don’t ask me one that I’ve already answered.
Also, please try not to restate what I’ve said in a way that deforms the breadth of my meaning, simply to suit your purposes. I wasn’t making any statement specific to Republicans here because that isn’t my focus. It’s yours. Republicans made it extremely difficult for the President to govern as he pleased. Cheerfully granted. I think they carried things too far, but here’s the thing: they’re RIGHT about government spending. Doesn’t mean I trust them to reform spending. But they are right about the problems that are created by gross overspending. Concurrently, they are wrong about other things.
NO ONE who simply looks at and analyzes the big bottom line budget numbers and trends over the last decade can miss the two big things. One is that the Bush tax cuts adversely effected revenue. The other is that government spending grew by an enormous amount beginning with the last Bush budget. Congress told us that the big spending numbers were due to one times costs for the bailouts and the stimulus. But the inflated spending rate has become the new baseline. That means that we DO have a spending problem.
And no one has done a f**king thing about it. Not unless you count promises to eventually curb spending, 3, 5, 7 years down the road. The last time the budget got trimmed seriously was 1994, when the GOP held both chambers and the DEMs held the Presidency. IF Obama is re-elected to face GOP majorities in both chambers, he’ll have to knuckle under to GOP spending demands unless he wants to be the lamest duck ever. And his SOTU speech suggests he may ready to deal, which means moving a few of his own hard lines. There are worse outcomes than that.
Assuming Obama wins and we wind up DRR, I’m guessing that his demeanor changes. He has to face reality with no leadership in Congress on his team, his perspective shifts more to his legacy, his place in history and a lot less on how he is perceived from the left flank. This is, of course, the polar opposite of what Gingrich says about a second Obama term – he is beating the drum on a more radical Obama. I don’t see it. Also – if the R’s lose the presidency, I expect it would moderate their anti-tax stand and open a *slightly* bigger window for compromise.
The thing that worries me now is the Senate. I have become a lot less confident about what I previously considered a slam-dunk: the GOP taking the Senate. The GOP has a big structural advantage, but they need net 4 seats. and that is a lot, even with their advantage. I assumed they would hold their existing seats, making a 4 seat pickup very doable. However, Warren could very well knock off Scott in MA, and picking up 5 seats to make up for that loss could be a bridge too far.If the Tea Party primaries a couple of clown candidates (Maine? ) , the Senate will be out of reach. If the Senate is out of reach, congress is divided and the government is divided no matter who wins as President. The divided government voting heuristic becomes irrelevant to the Presidential pick.
The Senate is critical.
Unless we get a 50-50 senate, and the VP matters for the first time ever.
I am waiting to see what comes of the Warren-Brown match. I like Brown chances because he comes across as a very regular person you’d like to have at your cookout or super bowl party. Warren comes across as a strident old-school liberal egghead, a cambridge know-it-all.
You need to crack open a history book., or at least Google.
John Adams broke 29 ties with his vote for starters, more recently George H. W. Bush cast 7, tie breakers, Al Gore cast 4 and DIck Cheney 8
here is a list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tie-breaking_votes_cast_by_Vice_Presidents_of_the_United_States
That’s definitely a good point.
Still, I was referring to the VP mattering not occasionally but almost daily, as would be the case if each party had 50 seats.