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Obama Should Give Warren a Recess Appointment
Capitalism and markets depend on the morality, honesty, and good faith of those who participate in them. Markets function best and deliver prosperity when they are honest and the law enforces that honesty; dishonesty, fraud, and official corruption are the poisons that keep markets in many parts of the world from delivering the goods.
That's where Elizabeth Warren comes in. Those who are lobbying hard against her nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Agency are the same people who lobbied against financial reform legislation and lost. They paint her as the enemy of capitalism and free markets. Nothing could be further from the truth: She is the enemy of dishonesty, abuse, and just plain theft.
Many of those who originated the toxic loans now poisoning the financial world were outright fraudsters, and many of those who bundled and purveyed those toxic assets in what amounted to a giant Ponzi scheme were no better than fences of stolen goods. Credit card companies for years have buried surprising fees, penalties, and interest rate increases in print so fine and terms so obscure that the borrowers most likely to be caught by them could not possibly understand them. That's not capitalism; that's fraud. To be the scourge of theft and fraud is to be the best friend of well-functioning markets.
The new legislation promises steps toward restoring faith in the honesty of the system of markets and credit. Warren's critics call her an ideologue and a zealot, as if she were being considered for a position on a federal court. But this is an agency with a mission, and the legislation will be successful only if those writing the rules and enforcing them believe in its mission and are zealous in its pursuit.
We can expect a filibuster if the president nominates Warren. Having lost one battle, the lobbyists pouring vast sums into the campaigns of compliant senators hope they might still win the war. True, there are other potential nominees with fair qualifications, but no one should listen to what the bank lobbyists are saying. Anyone they support should be immediately suspect.
Warren is smart, determined, and committed to the cause of honest financial services. The president should give her a recess appointment, as Representative Barney Frank has suggested. That will give her a year or so to hire the staff and write the regulations and in that way set the new agency's course for many years to come. The opposition to her knows this perfectly well; its arguments are in utter bad faith and should fail. The president has the tool to defeat them.
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Show AllObama has intentionally passed up many opportunities (Dawn Johnsen being one recent example)to add truly progressive professionals via recess appointments, proving that anybody who demands any meaningful corporate accountability is unwelcome in the Obama Administration.
There it is again, the threat of a filibuster. We can't have a functioning democracy, we can't let the will of the people prevail because of the filibuster. Who am I angrier at, those who use the filibuster or those who let this arcane obstructionist rule prevail as a rule in the Senate? I am madder at the ones who have the power to abolish or at least reform this rule and refuse to do so because I know by now it is allowed to stand so that those who would otherwise be freely able to vote for progressive popular legislation would have to find another, less transparent reason to oppose it. The voters aren't fooled. They are going to punish you anyway, Barbra Boxer, and you in the Senate who let this rule stand and even defend it so richly deserve your defeat.
After the blitzkrieg of truly monstrous lies that was Obama's presidential campaign led to this present moment of the absolute triumph of evil and corruption in American politics, a time even lower, slimier and more hopeless than the era of George Wanker Bush, I don't expect Warren to get anything but the back of Obama's dirty, blood stained hand. The Shirley Sherrod episode proves once again that Obama is not a coward (a coward has to believe in something in order to betray it) but a cringing pussy who thinks only of himself first and foremost. Obama is having the time of his life and there is no depth to which he is willing to sink in order to keep his personal Circus Maximus rolling on.
Gee, a recess appointment? Well, I dunno ... lemme give my good friend Dr. Blankenfein a call; his advice is always so valuable.
(20 minutes later ...)
Sorry, folks. Lloyd sez a recess appointment would be a bad idea, and might give voters, er, citizens, the impression that I'm placing the Unitary Executive above the crucial checks and balances provided by The People's representatives.
Not to worry, though. I'm sure you can count on the Republicans and Bush-Dog Democrats in CONgress to do the right thing.
— Barry
Like his predecessors, Obama is an arrogant, mealy-mouthed, slithering snake who pretends to have the people's interest(s) at heart, but, in fact, is totally out for himself.
From article:
"The new legislation promises steps toward restoring faith in the honesty of the system of markets and credit."
Really? It promises steps? Perhaps, possibly, under the right conditions, maybe if Warren is appointed, if Timmy Geithner cooperates, a facade of legitimacy will lull some people into faith in the honesty of the systems of markets and credits.
When I was a little kid, local TV ran old movies late at night-- "The Late Show" and "The Late, Late Show".
Once-- I was maybe 8 or 9 years old-- I happened to notice that "The Mark of Zorro" with Tyrone Power was playing on one of these late-night shows. Whichever one it was, it was WAY past my bedtime.
I didn't know who Tyrone Power was, but Zorro was one of my heroes. I was a devoted fan of the TV series starring Guy Williams, and the idea that there was a MOVIE about Zorro blew my little mind. This was WAY before TV shows were routinely made into blockbuster movies, so it was especially thrilling to contemplate.
I dashed into the kitchen with the TV listings, and begged my mother to let me stay up and watch it. My Maternal Unit hemmed and hawed. After negotiation, she got me to agree to go to bed at my regular time, and promised steps toward waking me up in time for the movie-- and then going straight back to bed.
But she never DID wake me up, socialist! Worse yet, when I expressed my considerable disappointment and chagrin the next morning-- I was REALLY bummed out-- the MU gave me a curious sidelong glance and alleged that oh, she'd TRIED to wake me up, but I was too deeply asleep.
I was so upset that I actually believed her, and was mad at myself for the longest time. Somehow, being a retentive little chap, I actually confronted her much later-- did you REALLY try to wake me up, Ma? The MU just laughed and said she didn't remember.
The MU was a good-hearted woman, and made the "right" parental decision according to her lights. But it made me appropriately cynical towards Authority Figures who "promise steps" toward doing the right thing.
Well OS if your "MU" indirectly fostered a cynicism toward Authority Figures making promises or even promising steps, that turned out well in the end, even if you were understandably upset at missing the chance to see Zorro. :-)
...and give Bradley Manning the Medal of Freedom.
Obama should!
The assumption in this article is that President Obama WANTS to give Elizabeth Warren the position of heading the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Based upon his record, I would say that assumption is wrong. It also already makes excuses in case the President doesn't recess appoint her... the same old "he can't, the GOP will filibuster". Here is my response to that...IF YOU REALLY WANT A PERSON TO HAVE THE APPOINTMENT, AT LEAST NOMINATE THEM AND LET THEM GO THROUGH THE PROCESS. If the Republicans want to "filibuster", let them sit and talk night and day with excuses shown on C-span and to the American people.
Are you aware ,I wonder, how many Obama appointments are bottled up in committee by partisan Republican tactics and the inability of the Democrats to grow a pair? At last count 27 federal judge appointees alone were yet awaiting their due diligence.
It's not a lack of courage. The Democrats have plenty of courage and initiative when they want something for their corporate sponsors, their military masters. They just do not care very much about the interests of the rest of us.
Joe
I doubt that courage motivates them in those cases. It is greedy self interest alone.
I don't disagree, speakout2.
But basic human good faith and trustworthiness are attributes inversely proportional to the status of a politician or maladministration on the predator-politician food chain.
The conventional scenario holds that as an honest actor and principled reformer, Warren is bitterly opposed by Republicans traditionally affiliated with the bankster class. If Team Obama "fights" for her appointment, and actually Spends Political Capital to achieve it, this is supposedly both a "victory" for reform and a badly-needed sign that Team Obama may be finally helping ordinary unprivileged citizens at the expense of the GOP/Bankster combine.
But, as Brooksley Born's horror story reveals, even capable, conscientious, high-minded administrators can easily be moved to a corner treadmill in their assigned agency, and either opposed or rendered irrelevant by a bureaucratic, internecine death of a thousand cuts.
My edumacated guess is that Team Obama will let Warren twist slowly in the wind, as it did with Dawn Johnsen. But if it surprises me and risks controversy by insisting on the appointment, it WON'T be because Team Obama wants to de-banksterize their own operation and commit to "real reform". It'll be because of some foul and dubious political calculus, perhaps related to damage control in anticipation of the mid-term elections.
The Dawn Johnson comparison is very apt. I do not even know why she was proposed at all, considering how she was so quickly forgotten and left to twist in the wind. There was not even an attempt to blame it on the Republicans.
Joe
Shoulda woulda coulda ! Ya'll who voted for Obama deserve this shit !
"Capitalism and markets depend upon the morality, honesty, and good faith of those who participate in them."
I LOVE a good punch-line, but why put it at the beginning of the joke?
I went down to St. James Infirmary,
Saw my baby there,
Stretched out on a long white table,
So sweet, so cold, so fair.
Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be,
We pushed this suicidal post on her,
And she missed her last chance to be free.