Monday, September 20, 2010

No Senate Confirmation For Elizabeth Warren

Sounds like President Obama has gone to his default campaign speech again if the accounts of his appearance at the Congressional Black Caucus gala are any indication of his autumn speech template. Pushing identity politics again, the candidate who promised to be the post-racial, post-partisan President was heard begging black politicians to rev up their base and get the black vote out for Democrats.

When will black voters finally awake from their long coma and realize that they have been taken for granted for all these years as Democrats appeal to them for support? Election after election we witness a legislative bone tossed here and there so that the loyal among them show up at the polls and vote Democratic.

In a fiery speech to the Congressional Black Caucus, Obama warned that Republicans hoping to seize control of Congress want "to do what's right politically, instead of what's right — period."

"I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, to go back to your workplaces, to go to the churches, and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops. And tell them we've got more work to do," Obama said to cheers from a black-tie audience at the Washington Convention Center. "Tell them we can't wait to organize. Tell them that the time for action is now."


Once a community organizer in Chicago, Obama knows the most effective words to use to rile up a crowd. He is nervous about the coming GOP sweep in the mid-term elections and he is trying to paddle upstream at this late date.

About the same time as community organizer became a career description on President Obama's resume, he also taught constitutional law classes at the University of Illinois - the employer of his wife, Michelle. As he ran for President, this teaching experience, though brief ( as with all resume building jobs on the record for this ambitious, impatient man) was touted as proof of what a smart man he would be as leader of the free world. Turns out Obama has, as President, run around the Constitution at every opportunity.

It would seem that President Obama is no graduate of the Dale Carnegie School of Business - he shows no aptitude for making friends and influencing people. Certainly not of the GOP variety of humans. And, now with the mid-term elections approaching rapidly on the calendar, his own Democrats are bailing out on him. This article speaks to the utter arrogance of his governing style.

We would have thought a Harvard law professor would object to the extra-legality of this arrangement, but then this is also the crew that gave us ObamaCare via budget reconciliation and put Donald Berwick in charge of Medicare without a Senate debate. Remind us again why the tea party critique of Obama governance is crazy.

The new bureau was already destined to be a bureaucratic rogue. When Members of Congress objected to it being "independent" in the way Ms. Warren hoped, Mr. Dodd and the Administration cooked up a plan to make it part of the Federal Reserve without actually answering to anyone there. The bureau has independent rule-making authority and can grant itself an annual budget up to $646 million. It will draw this money from the operations of the Fed, so the bureau needn't deal with the messy intrusions of Congressional appropriators and will therefore receive limited Congressional oversight.


Rather than show complete confidence in his selection of Elizabeth Warren, an old friend from his days at Harvard Law School, he has again chosen to appoint her as one of his czars. He has chosen an appointment over the traditional route of Senate confirmation and a standard term of service for her. The agency she developed and lobbied for will now be led by a woman with no accountability to the American taxpayer.

We have here another end-run around Constitutional niceties so Team Obama can invest huge authority in an unelected official who is unable to withstand a public vetting. So a bureau inside an agency (the Fed) that it doesn't report to, with a budget not subject to Congressional control, now gets a leader not subject to Senate confirmation. If Dick Cheney had tried this, he'd have been accused of staging a coup.

His actions tell the tale of his presidency. President Obama is desperate to try and maintain his Democratic majority in Congress to continue his pursuit of moving American legislative policy further to the left. Another example of his pandering - he and his family were spotted attending St. John's Church Sunday morning. Though the President and First Lady made headlines as they tested out different churches immediately after the whole family re-located to Washington, D.C. in January, 2009,the First Family has not joined a church. They do worship in chapel services at Camp David, we are told, and the President is quite fond of his Sunday golf games. This photo op smacks of election year desperation no matter what is in Obama's heart.

The speech to the those attending the Congressional Black Caucus gala also included classic Obama and Democratic class warfare: So, we’ve got more work to do; we’ve got a plan to finish. Of course, the other side has a plan too. It’s a plan to turn back the clock on all the progress we’ve made. To paraphrase my friend Deval Patrick, the last election was a changing of the guard; now we need to guard the change. Because everything we’re for, our opponents have spent two years fighting against. They’ve said no to unemployment insurance. No to middle class tax cuts. No to small business loans. No we can’t. That’s their motto.

Obama enjoys accusing the GOP of being for "the fat cats" though he was elected with the most contributions from Wall Street ever. His success as a politician is completely beholden to union support as well as minority voters. He deliberately misrepresents the accomplishments of former President Bush for his own benefit. President Bush cut taxes on middle class families during the last decade that Obama is so fond of referencing as badly run. Middle class families saw their income rise by approximately $2,000 thanks to Bush tax cuts that now will be re-named Obama tax cuts as a last minute campaign ploy by Team Obama.

President Obama habitually accuses Republicans in Congress of only acting on political expediency. It is projection on his part, pure and simple.

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