Why Is Obama Dragging His Heels on Appointing Elizabeth Warren to Protect Middle Class Americans?
From this Link:
Elizabeth Warren’s problem is not with the Republicans—though they have worked hard to demonize her. Her real problem is with the “boys” at the Treasury Department and Timothy Geithner, the head “boy” in charge of the president’s banking policies. Maybe she also has a problem with the “boys” at the White House. We are soon to find out. In the next month or so, Barack Obama
must decide whether or not he will appoint Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This ought to be a slam-dunk for him. After all, Elizabeth Warren invented the idea of a new regulatory agency to protect hapless consumers from predatory bankers. Obama embraced the concept as his own and it is one of his few distinctively original accomplishments. Warren knows consumer fraud. For many years, as a savvy reform critic, she courageously called out the banking industry on its most notorious practices. Her dynamic and plainspoken advocacy was essential in getting Congress to include the proposal in the financial reform legislation enacted last summer.
Yet Obama hesitated. For nearly a year, he has played coy and held off naming her to the job. We presumed that was because Republicans vowed to block her nomination unless the law is altered to weaken the CFPB and appease angry bankers. But that explanation doesn’t add up. Obama could always put her in the office through a recess appointment that gets around Senate confirmation. Yet he didn’t do so. What’s up with that?
Put aside the usual partisan bombast. I asked a Very Reliable Source to provide the inside skinny and this is what he told me: “All this is really about is the boys don’t want to have an independent woman in their clubhouse.” When I recounted this remark to my wife, she said, “What else is new?”
Tim Geithner, said my Very Reliable Source, really, really doesn’t want Elizabeth Warren in the position where she is sure to be a tough-minded and independent voice on major financial-policy issues. As CFPB director, Warren would also sit on the new “systemic risk” council of regulators who decide very large questions like “too big to fail.” The other regulators can outvote her easily enough, but Warren has an alarming history of personal candor. She says what she thinks, out loud and in public. That naturally disturbs the club members, all of whom has a rank history of making life easier for the big boys of banking.
Warren made her integrity clear when she served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel digging into the financial crisis and bailouts. Her investigations turned up alarming facts the bankers and bank regulators wished to avoid. Furthermore, Warren was often dissenting on legislative issues Geithner and team were pushing in the congressional debates on financial reform. Geithner doesn’t tolerate contrary thinkers in his midst; witness the galaxy of Wall Streeters he recruited to run the Treasury department. Geithner is a favorite of the president’s, perhaps because he is absolutely faithful to the financial establishment’s best interests.
So what does Obama really think about all this? Despite his eloquence, the president is adept at not revealing that. The VRS doesn’t know either, but thinks the rise of Elizabeth Warren created a dilemma for Obama. He genuinely admires her work and character. But he really, really doesn’t want go against his Treasury secretary and other close advisors he relies upon. Obama’s new chief of staff is the man from JP Morgan Chase. William Daly says he has recused himself on these matters. Does he leave the room when Warren’s name comes up in the Oval Office?
Obama repeatedly pushed the question off, hoping things might change and resolve it for him. He added Warren to Treasury as the principal organizer staffing would the new consumer bureau. She has evidently done a good job — another reason Republicans keep attacking her. Being against Warren helps GOP fund-raising, but then Obama is also heavy into fund-raising himself. Maybe he postponed a decision on Warren so he could harvest more Wall Street money. The administration approached other notables about taking the job, but everyone turned it down. In Democratic circles, this job belongs to Elizabeth Warren and nobody dares to jump ahead of her. Lately, political operatives are suggesting she should run for senator in Massachusetts – another ploy by the big boys to show this girl the door.
Ultimately, Obama has to decide. The question is no longer about financial reform or even politics. The question is whether this president has the nerve to include a smart, tough woman who thinks for herself on his governing team. If the answer is no, he will pay dearly for the cowardice.
A reflection on Trade and Commerce
Palestinian Factions Celebrate Unity Deal
From this link:
Representatives of Palestinian factions have met in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to mark a landmark reconciliation agreement signed a day earlier.Khaled Meshaal, the leader of the Hamas movement, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and leader of Fatah, were attending Wednesday’s ceremony, meeting face-to-face for the first time since 2006.Speaking at the ceremony, Abbas said Palestinians had turned the “black page” of division between the two rivals.
Social media users react to the reconciliation deal”We announce to Palestinians that we turn forever the black page of division,” he said.Taking the podium after Abbas, Meshaal said that his group’s “only fight is with Israel” and that the four-year-old rift with Fatah was “behind us”.”Our aim is to establish a free and completely sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whose capital is Jerusalem, without any settlers and without giving up a single inch of land and without giving up on the right of return [of Palestinian refugees].
“Representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and the Arab League were also present at the gathering at the headquarters of the Egyptian intelligence agency.The unity deal, which was signed on Tuesday, aims to end the feud between the ideologically divided factions in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. It involves members of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Islamic Jihad, Popular Resistance Committee and Hamas.
It will pave the way for presidential and legislative elections within a year.’Start of a process ‘Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said people there saw the agreement as the start of a process.”They don’t expect any changes to happen tomorrow or the next day or really any changes to happen in the short term,” she said. But they are happy that for the first time in years, there’s and acknowledgement by Hamas and Fatah that one people cannot be ruled by two governments.”The deal has been denounced by Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, as “a hard blow to peace process”.”How can we make peace with a government when half of it calls for the destruction of Israel and glorifies the murderous Osama bin Laden?” he said.”I call on Abu Mazen [Abbas] to completely cancel the agreement with Hamas and to choose the path to peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, in Jerusalem.Israel, the United States and the European Union consider Hamas, which controls Gaza, a “terrorist organisation”.The Quartet of Mideast mediators – the US, the EU, United Nations and Russia – has long demanded that Hamas renounce violence and recognise the principle of Israel’s right to exist.’Will to agree’Netanyahu’s call on Abbas to cancel the agreement was denounced as “unacceptable interference” by Azzam al-Ahmed, the head of Fatah’s delegation.Abbas said Israel does not wish to see the Palestinians united because it thrives on their divisions.”There are no guarantees for the success of the agreement, which has many enemies and there are attempts to undermine the agreement from several parties,” Abbas told the Al-Ahram newspaper.”Despite the fact that there are no guarantees to make this agreement successful there is a will and a way to agree,” he said.”It is not required of Hamas to recognise Israel. We will form a government of technocrats and we will not ask Hamas to recognise Israel.”
Former US president Jimmy Carter urged the international community to support the deal, saying it would improve the chances for Middle East peace.In an op-ed for the Washington Post, he called on the US and the international community to look past Hamas’s pledge to destroy Israel and argued for the potential benefits of a unified Palestinian democracy.”If the United States and the international community support this effort, they can help Palestinian democracy and establish the basis for a unified Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that can make a secure peace with Israel,” Carter wrote.Bitter divisionsUnder the deal, three separate committees will be formed, to plan for the upcoming elections, reform the PLO, and to incorporate a security system between Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Al Jazeera’s Tadros said one of the biggest challenges would be to merge all the existing security forces into a national Palestinian force.”In the West Bank alone there are three separate forces,” she said. “In Gaza, you have Hamas police forces and armed military wing. So how do you combine all these forces into one Palestinian national force? That is a huge question.”Palestinian officials say the new government’s role will be to manage affairs in the Palestinian territories, while the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) will remain in charge of peace talks with Israel.Fatah and Hamas have been bitterly divided since June 2007 when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, routing Fatah loyalists in bloody confrontations that effectively split the Palestinian territories into two separate entities with separate governments.Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston, reporting from Gaza City, said about 1,000 people there were celebrating the deal, waving flags of Fatah, Hamas and other groups.”About a month ago, that would have been an impossible scene in Gaza,” she said.She said many people in Gaza, remembering what happened in 2007, when about 100 people were killed in fighting, welcomed the unity deal.”When you speak to people who were victims during the 2007 fighting, they say they desperately want reconciliation”, she said.”They want their children to no longer live under Israeli-Egyptian siege and they feel that reconciliation is the best way forward.”
Obama Approves Murderous Drones in Libya
From this link:
President Obama has approved the use of armed drones over Libya, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Thursday.The first flights began Thursday, but the drones were recalled because of the weather, said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The drones can detect hidden enemies by flying closer to the ground than other weapons, he said at a press conference with Gates.Gates called the drones a “modest contribution” to NATO’s efforts in Libya and a “limited additional role” on the part of the U.S. military.
The defense chief repeated that giving “non-lethal assistance” to Libyans is an “important contribution,” and he noted that American troops aren’t in the country. “I think the president has been firm, for example, on the boots on the ground — there’s no wiggle room on that,” Gates said.He also was asked if he’s worried that Libya would be thrown into a stalemate. But Gates, who is expected to leave his job this year, joked, “Well, the worry will be my successor’s.”
The Top 1% of The World Bleeds the Rest of Humanity Dry
From this link
We are awash in tsunamis these days. There are the literal ones, like the ocean walls propelled by Japan’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake, which have devastated so much of the country’s northern half. There are political tsunamis, like the unfolding upheavals in the Arab world. And there are figurative ones, like the flood of public outbursts, from the anti-Semitic rantings of Charlie Sheen and John Galliano to the unfortunate commentaries of people such as Bravo channel head Andy Cohen and CNBC host Larry Kudlow. Far too much has been written about Sheen—although his arsenal of crazy-speak terms is about as original a concoction of words as you are going to hear anywhere these days. In Galliano’s case, there have been rumors—or perhaps wishful thinking on the part of his many admirers—that his comments, however offensive, were an ill-advised response to some real or perceived provocation.
Cohen and Kudlow are prime examples of the danger of trying to live in your own socio-economic comfort bubble and wanting to have a public voice at the same time. Cohen, who was instrumental in delivering the endless armada of “Real Housewives” into the culture, became an Internet piñata when he said how offended he was by the pre-teen choir from a New York City public school that closed this year’s Academy Awards ceremony with a rather sweet rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” Bright and early the next day, Cohen appeared on MSNBC’s popular Morning Joe gabfest and gave the kids’ performance two manicured-thumbs down: “It was just awful. It was horrible…. I literally—if I wasn’t going to go out to some parties—I would have slit [my wrists] right then. It was the worst. I was looking for a knife to stick in my eyes, it was so terrible.”
Larry Kudlow, host of a nightly financial shouting contest on CNBC, gave a similarly callow assessment of the devastation in Japan. “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll,” he said, “and we can be grateful for that.” The remark didn’t cause a ripple of public comment among his viewers—most of them Wall Street investment types, many of whom no doubt nodded in sage agreement—until it was posted on VF.com, at which point the blogosphere lit up over the poor fellow’s words.
Aquarter of a century ago, Kudlow was chief economist at Bear Stearns, and people like him had it made. It was then estimated that 1 percent of Americans controlled about 12 percent of the nation’s income and fully a third of its wealth. That was a troubling set of facts even back in the go-go 80s, the so-called Decade of Greed—which now seems like a golden age of equality. Today, the top 1 percent of Americans takes intwice as much of the country’s income as it did then—nearly 25 percent. And, incredibly, the richest 1 percent now controls 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. As Vanity Fair’s Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner for economics, writes in his column, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” on page 126, “In terms of income equality, among our closest counterparts are Russia of the oligarchs and Iran.” He predicts that the trend will only continue, and as it does, the lower 99 percent of Americans, the underdogs, will continue losing ground to the overdogs.
Stiglitz looks beyond the simple injustice of this economic imbalance to the frightening long-term consequences. History, he says, has not been kind to societies so heavily skewed toward the rich. When wealth is concentrated in a small group, so is power—and power is almost invariably used to keep that wealth concentrated in those few soft hands. The result? Investment in education and infrastructure dries up. Laws meant to level the playing field are changed to make it tilt. A sense of national common purpose slowly, and then quickly, erodes. Says Stiglitz: “Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives of the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by the money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office.” What the rich never seem to understand, he says, is that it is in their own interest to look out for the interest of other people.
The danger of leaving overwhelming wealth and power in the grasp of a small minority is a lesson that leaders such as ousted Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have learned a little too late, as the demonstrations across the Arab world indicate. For the most part, the protesters were young men and women in their 20s and 30s playing in a game controlled by their elders. Indeed, armies and militias were met with smartphones and laptops. Official decrees and pronouncements were undone by Facebook, Twitter
While the Arab world’s remaining longtime leaders make sure their passports are up-to-date and their Swiss bank accounts in order, one Middle Eastern leader is effectively consolidating his power. With control of not just the country’s army but also an increasingly violent police force, he has recently taken charge of the once independent agencies that oversee elections, control the central bank, and combat corruption. He has likewise been ruthless in stifling opposition parties—he had police close down the offices of two of them in March—and in putting down protests: on a single February weekend, security forces killed more than 20 of their countrymen in anti-government skirmishes. The budding despot in question is our own Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. What separates the Iraqi prime minister from some other Middle Eastern tyrants is the fact that he has the confidence and support of the most powerful nation on earth. Indeed, it was the U.S. that put him in office, at a cost of almost 4,500 American lives. In the Arab world, the top 1 percent wants the status quo, while the vast majority wants to change it. In America, the top 1 percent led the country into war and economic devastation, leaving the less fortunate to fight for one and pay for both. Where is the tsunami of outrage over this?
Graydon Carter is the editor of Vanity Fair. His books include What We’ve Lost (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Oscar Night: 75 Years of Hollywood Parties (Knopf).
