Socialism On The March!

[prole]

 

Comrade Chairman Barack "Che" Ilyich Maobama strikes again!!!

 

Business Background Defines New Chief of Staff

NYT 1/6/10

 

WASHINGTON — He is a top executive at JPMorgan Chase, where he is paid as much as $5 million a year and supervises the Washington lobbying efforts for the nation’s second-largest bank. William M. Daley also serves on the board of directors at Boeing, the giant defense contractor, and Abbott Laboratories, the global drug company, which has billions of dollars at stake in the overhaul of the health care system.

 

And now, Mr. Daley, a longtime Illinois political operative, will hold one of the most powerful jobs in Washington: chief of staff in the White House, where he will help decide who gets access to the Oval Office and what President Obama’s Capitol Hill agenda should be.

 

The recruitment of Mr. Daley to Pennsylvania Avenue from the corporate board room is seen as a savvy step by some in Washington, who argue that Mr. Obama has long needed a White House confidant who has the ear of the business community and a record of bipartisanship that might help the president negotiate with Republicans on Capitol Hill.

 

“This is a strong appointment,” said Thomas J. Donohue, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has been a harsh critic of the Obama administration and provided financial support that helped Republicans take control of the House. “Bill Daley is a man of stature and extraordinary experience in government, business, trade negotiations and global affairs.”

 

But the choice is causing alarm among some in Mr. Obama’s liberal base, who argue that bringing Mr. Daley to the White House violates a commitment by the president to curtail the sway of special interests in Washington.

 

“As the chief of staff, he is the gatekeeper, and that means real power in Washington,” said Ellen S. Miller, co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation, which celebrated the move by Mr. Obama early in his presidency to release detailed logs of White House visitors and impose restrictions on hiring lobbyists as aides. “Just about any way you look at it, it creates a huge potential for a conflict of interest.”

 

The chief of staff job in Washington has sometimes been filled by corporate types, like Donald T. Regan, a top Wall Street executive and former Treasury secretary who took the job in the Reagan administration. But more often, the job is held by a political insider whose chief alliance is to the president he serves.

 

Mr. Daley, 62, who is not close friends with Mr. Obama, even though both share a Chicago base, has a well-rounded résumé. It includes work as a lawyer in private practice , a bank president, a telecommunications company executive, a political strategist, fund-raiser and campaign chief, a lobbyist for foreign corporations (he advocated on tax matters for Nestle and a Canadian petroleum company) and a three-year stint as commerce secretary in the Clinton administration. His brother, Richard M. Daley, is departing after six terms as mayor of Chicago, where his family has an almost royal status.

 

JPMorgan Chase has been Mr. Daley’s primary home since 2004. He was hired at Chase, company officials said, as sort of a consolation prize to Chicago, because Chase was taking over Bank One Corporation, a prominent Chicago-based company. Chase executives, including Jamie Dimon, its chairman, wanted to bring in someone with Chicago connections who could smooth over relations with wealthy clients and corporations there.

 

One company official, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, recalled, “A few bankers said we should hire a Bill Daley,” meaning someone with Chicago political connections and clout who could serve as a new public face for Chase.

 

Mr. Dimon’s response was simple: “How about Bill Daley?”

 

Mr. Daley started with Chase in 2004 as chairman of its Midwest operations, but by 2007 he had expanded his portfolio, joining the bank’s senior leadership team as head of its new Office of Corporate Social Responsibility, whose most important function was to oversee Chase’s global lobbying efforts.

 

At the time, Chase was trying to increase its voice in Washington. Senior company executives, including Mr. Dimon, began taking more trips to the capital to try to influence the terms of the TARP bailout (pushing for easier terms on repaying bank bailout funds) in 2008, then fighting against aspects of the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations last year.

 

Mr. Daley was never registered as a lobbyist for Chase, but he was the direct supervisor of Peter L. Scher, another former Clinton administration official, who runs the bank’s lobbying shop in Washington.

 

Mr. Daley’s salary is not public, but one person with knowledge of Chase’s executive compensation said that he has made $3 million to $5 million in annual compensation, meaning he will take a considerable pay cut at the White House, where the salary for his new post is about $170,000. Boeing, the Chicago-based aerospace giant, named Mr. Daley to its corporate board in 2006, boasting about the benefits he would bring the company in terms of lobbying efforts and in helping to promote international sales of its commercial planes and military equipment. In 2009, he earned $230,000 for his work with Boeing, in compensation and stock awards, and he took in another $220,867 from Abbott Laboratories.

 

Abbott Labs, like Boeing and Chase, has a long list of pressing regulatory and legislative matters in play in Washington, including a tax included in the health care overhaul bill that could cost medical device makers like Abbott $20 billion over the next decade. A White House chief of staff would likely be involved in discussions about repealing the legislation, as House Republicans have already proposed, or aspects of it as debate in Washington gets under way.

 

Critics of the Mr. Daley’s appointment said Mr. Daley’s recent corporate work would prove problematic as chief of staff, arguing that he will have to recuse himself from matters relating to Chase, Abbott and Boeing or bow out of discussions involving financial regulations, health care and major Defense Department acquisitions, like a giant Air Force refueling tanker contract for which Boeing is competing.

 

“These are all issues come across the chief of staff’s desk,” said James A. Thurber, an American University professor and specialist on ethics and lobbying in Washington. “Is he going to stand outside of the flow of as each of them heads to the president? I don’t see that, and if he doesn’t there will at perception and maybe the reality of a conflict of interest.”

 

Others dismiss such concerns as unfounded, saying that the chief of staff would not be the decision maker on policy and would hardly have sole power over who has access to the president.

 

Supporters of Mr. Daley’s appointment say that his diversity of experience is exactly what Mr. Obama needs — an experienced manager who can serve as an intermediary for the White House with various constituencies whose support the president needs. “The relevant thing is his ability to make the trains run on time and the dedication to public service,” said Nicholas W. Allard, the head of the lobbying practice at Patton Boggs, Washington’s biggest lobbying firm. “Everything one knows about Mr. Daley’s past shows he would come through with flying colors.”

[j_b]

One more step toward convincing youth to come out and vote again for change in 2012 [/clown]

 

"Better move a little more to the "center" now that we have a mandate to cut social security and send more troops to Afghanistan" wink, wink

[Lucky Larry]

The Philosophical Dictionary

Voltaire

Selected and Translated by H.I. Woolf

New York: Knopf, 1924

Scanned by the Hanover College Department of History in 1995.

Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001.

 

 

Tyranny

 

 

 

ONE gives the name of tyrant to the sovereign who knows no laws but those of his caprice, who takes his subjects' property, and who afterwards enrols them to go to take the property of his neighbours. There are none of these tyrants in Europe.

 

One distinguishes between the tyranny of one man and that of many. The tyranny of many would be that of a body which invaded the rights of other bodies, and which exercised despotism in favour of the laws corrupted by it. Nor are there any tyrants of this sort in Europe.

 

Under which tyranny would you like to live? Under neither; but if I had to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the least hard, and never does it bestow favours.

 

If I have only one despot, I am quit of him by drawing myself up against a wall when I see him pass, or by bowing low, or by striking the ground with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky the man who escapes these alternatives!

 

 

Hanover Historical Texts Project

Return to Hanover College Department of History

Please send comments to:

luttmer@hanover.edu

 

 

[prole]

With Obush in their back pocket, look for the GOP to sit out the '12 election (again).

[j_b]

again? as in 08?

[j_b]

Voltaire was also somewhat of a court jester who thought that a benevolent despot was the best form of government.

[prole]

Jeb Bush and what the GOP really thinks about 2012

 

They'll never say it publicly, but are Republicans privately putting their bets on Obama?

 

The unusually productive lame duck session of Congress that wrapped up just before Christmas, I wrote at the time, symbolized how much our political culture has learned from 1994, when Democrats were hit with a midterm drubbing almost identical to the one they suffered this past fall.

 

That '94 debacle, at least initially, terrified Bill Clinton and his fellow Democrats into a state of paralysis. Sixteen years later, though, Barack Obama simply acknowledged the "shellacking," went back to work, and soon found himself signing the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" and extracting an unexpected $300 billion in stimulus through a compromise with Republicans. No one was seriously questioning his relevance as president, and even conservatives were willing to concede that his odds of winning reelection in 2012 were still pretty good, despite the massive midterm losses.

 

The difference, of course, is that everyone in politics today is familiar with the story of Clinton's fairly rapid post-'94 recovery. They know better than to write off Obama, who actually scores slightly better in polling now than Clinton did at this same point in his presidency.

 

I bring this all up because it's the first thing I thought about earlier this week when news broke that Jeb Bush isn't ruling out running for president ... in 2016. Of course, there won't be a Republican nomination for Bush to pursue in '16 if a Republican unseats Obama in '12, but what was striking about his comments and the reaction they generated is that no one seemed too hung up on this point. The contrast to late '94 and early '95 is striking. Back then, if a major Republican ruled out running for the presidency in 1996, no one was interested in speculating on whether that Republican might simply be waiting to run in 2000. Clinton, everyone knew, was a dead man walking. If you were a major Republican and you aspired to the presidency, you would have to run in 1996; to sit the race out would be to give up on the White House for good.

 

One way of interpreting Bush's statement, then, is that he -- like many Republicans, especially if you talk to them privately -- understands that Obama (for now, at least) is more likely than not to win a second term in 2012. So if Bush, who is 57 now, really does want to be president, it's probably a smart gamble to wait. The urgency that he would have been feeling back in late 1994 and 1995 -- if you don't run now, you'll regret it forever! -- is missing.

 

To be fair, there are other reasons Bush might be ruling out a '12 run; maybe he just wants more distance from his brother's tenure, or maybe he really isn't that interested in being president. And even if Bush and other Republicans do privately believe that Obama is a good bet for '12, a lot can change between now and then. Bill Clinton, don't forget, probably wouldn't have become president if every Democratic heavyweight hadn't concluded in 1991 that George H.W. Bush would be unbeatable in 1992.

 

But Bush is also not the only Republican making noise about '16; Chris Christie and his camp are sending the same message. Like Bush, Christie may have other reasons to wait; he was just sworn in as governor a year ago (a job he spent nearly a decade positioning himself for), and he knows that he probably can't return from a losing national campaign in '12 and win a second term in Trenton in 2013. But if more ambitious Republicans start sending the same signals -- especially given how wide open the '12 GOP field seems -- it will be strong evidence that deep inside, Republicans are sensing that 2012 will be an Obama year.

--from here.

[j_b]

Clinton won a 2nd term because the tech/dotcom bubble was inflating in 96. Few people cared about the GOP media witch-hunt of the Clintons as long as there were jobs, easy to get credit cards and their house values were going up. Dems took a shellacking in 94 because their base told them to get lost as Clinton was clearly a corporate tool.

 

Obama is in a very different situation as the economy and the job situation will most likely still be in the shitters 2 years from now. He won't be able to incite a voter turnout like in 08 now that most people, especially youth, have wisened up to his con. If the GOP runs a serious candidate I don't see him as a sure win at all, quite the contrary in fact.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Dems took a shellacking in 94 because their base told them to get lost as Clinton was clearly a corporate tool.

 

But aren't all R's corporate tools? Why would the "base" vote out a corporate tool that agrees with them on so many issues in lieu of "corporate tools" with whom they disagree. Man, your logic is fucked.

 

Still waiting for you answer on NPR - why are right-wingers trying to shut down a right-wing mouth piece?

[j_b]

My logic is fine. It's just that you are such a nincompoop that you have no idea what you are discussing. They didn't vote for regressive: they just didn't vote, like in 2010. When pols repeatedly betray their constituencies like Democrats have done for decades now, fewer and fewer people vote. It's called being disenfranchised when people have nobody they want to vote for because all candidates represent the corporate party.

 

right of center NPR being called liberal by conservatives (like all media being called liberal) is the equivalent of corporatist Obama being called a socialist by the right wing. More Orwellian tactics from the right wing.

[prole]

Obama is in a very different situation as the economy and the job situation will most likely still be in the shitters 2 years from now. He won't be able to incite a voter turnout like in 08 now that most people, especially youth, have wisened up to his con. If the GOP runs a serious candidate I don't see him as a sure win at all, quite the contrary in fact.

 

As bad as it sounds, after seeing what Obama's done, I don't give a flying fuck if he gets elected. I sure as hell won't be voting for him.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

As bad as it sounds, after seeing what Obama's done, I don't give a flying fuck if he gets elected. I sure as hell won't be voting for him.

 

USA! USA! USA!

[j_b]

As bad as it sounds, after seeing what Obama's done, I don't give a flying fuck if he gets elected. I sure as hell won't be voting for him.

 

I hope there will be a prominent progressive candidacy. Might as well prepare for it starting now, as it may just be the only way to force Obama to the left a little.

[prole]

OMG, I'm going back to bed.

[Lucky Larry]

Voltaire was also somewhat of a court jester who thought that a benevolent despot was the best form of government.

 

On this point I would agree with Voltaire.

 

The Philosophical Dictionary

Voltaire

Selected and Translated by H.I. Woolf

New York: Knopf, 1924

Scanned by the Hanover College Department of History in 1995.

Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001.

 

 

Democracy

 

 

 

ORDINARILY there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and can want only liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality, do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but ambitious might and the mania for power plunge into all these crimes whatever be the time, whatever be the place.

 

Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less abominable than despotic power.

 

The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.

 

The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything.

 

Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it must be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will reign there as in a monastery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish massacres, no Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no condemnation to the galleys for having taken some water from the sea without paying for it, unless one supposes this republic composed of devils in a corner of hell.

 

One questions every day whether a republican government is preferable to a king's government? The dispute ends always by agreeing that to govern men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master; see what has happened to them on that account: nearly always have they been beaten and slaves, and to-day do you not find that they cut a pretty figure?

 

 

Hanover Historical Texts Project

Return to Hanover College Department of History

Please send comments to:

luttmer@hanover.edu

 

 

Edited January 8, 2011 by Lucky Larry