Thursday, November 12, 2009
Monday, November 09, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
When Revolution is the Only Answer
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."
by:
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
Source:
November 13, 1787, letter to William S. Smith, quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy, ed., 1939
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Obama's path still unclear, agenda unfocused
By E. THOMAS MCCLANAHAN
The Kansas City Star
President-elect Barack Obama said recently that overhauling Social Security and Medicare would be central to his effort to curb federal spending.
That struck me as odd, for two reasons. I don’t recall any extended discussion of entitlement reform during the campaign, and the idea that federal spending will be curbed strains credulity in the face of the massive stimulus package taking shape.
It’s a strange moment. Here we are two days from Inauguration Day, yet I can’t recall any previous incoming president whose agenda and persona seemed more fuzzy.
Despite the long campaign, Barack Obama remains something of an enigma: community organizer, state senator, U.S. senator, presidential candidate and ultimate victor, a man with a scant resume on whom the nation’s hopes now ride.
Inaugurations of new presidents are always hopeful interludes. The beginning of a new administration also implies a new era, the crossing of a certain threshold. That’s especially true this time, thanks to the reeling economy and the profound sense of continuing crisis.
But the new era that’s about to dawn is — like Obama himself — extraordinarily ill-defined.
“They ran on change and were reticent about specifying what that change is going to be,” said Missouri State University political scientist George Connor. “I think that was a conscious decision on the part of the Obama campaign. Even their specifics weren’t that specific.”
Even at this late date, what Obama will do as president remains murky. In recent weeks, he has backed away from many of his most liberal campaign promises. Among them: pledges to impose a windfall profits tax on oil, withdraw rapidly from Iraq, allow openly gay men and lesbians to serve in the military, raise taxes on the wealthy and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Treaty.
He has appointed a Cabinet comprising largely well-known, competent centrists, to the acute discomfort of his allies on the left.
“Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?” complained OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers.
Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America’s Future told Politico, “There’s a concern that he keep his basic promises, and people are going to watch him.”
Backing away from liberal campaign promises, in my opinion, is a good beginning. But it’s too early to say that the man judged the most liberal senator in 2007 by the National Journal has become a closet centrist.
Once the economy is on a more even keel, he’s not likely to back away from other key pledges. Government intervention into health care will increase massively. Those tax increases on families making more than $250,000 have only been delayed, not abandoned.
The massive stimulus package poses a grave danger if a huge spending increase becomes permanently embedded in the federal budget. That will lead to a permanently higher level of taxation and a lot less prosperity in the future.
A decade ago, the free market was in ascendancy. As Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw wrote in The Commanding Heights, “All around the globe, socialists are embracing capitalism, governments are selling off companies they had previously nationalized and countries are seeking to entice back multinational corporations that they had expelled just two decades earlier. … Today, politicians on the left admit that their governments can no longer afford the expansive welfare state, and American liberals recognize that more government may not hold the solution to every problem.”
Today that time — the late 1990s — seems quaint. The pendulum has swung back to another worldview, and Washington is now dominated by many who believe that, indeed, the solution to almost every problem is more government. Time will tell how it works out.
Obama certainly deserves every chance of success, but he’s more likely to find it if he sticks to his recently discovered centrist leanings.
To reach E. Thomas McClanahan, call 816-234-4480 or send e-mail to mcclanahan@kcstar.com.
The Kansas City Star
President-elect Barack Obama said recently that overhauling Social Security and Medicare would be central to his effort to curb federal spending.
That struck me as odd, for two reasons. I don’t recall any extended discussion of entitlement reform during the campaign, and the idea that federal spending will be curbed strains credulity in the face of the massive stimulus package taking shape.
It’s a strange moment. Here we are two days from Inauguration Day, yet I can’t recall any previous incoming president whose agenda and persona seemed more fuzzy.
Despite the long campaign, Barack Obama remains something of an enigma: community organizer, state senator, U.S. senator, presidential candidate and ultimate victor, a man with a scant resume on whom the nation’s hopes now ride.
Inaugurations of new presidents are always hopeful interludes. The beginning of a new administration also implies a new era, the crossing of a certain threshold. That’s especially true this time, thanks to the reeling economy and the profound sense of continuing crisis.
But the new era that’s about to dawn is — like Obama himself — extraordinarily ill-defined.
“They ran on change and were reticent about specifying what that change is going to be,” said Missouri State University political scientist George Connor. “I think that was a conscious decision on the part of the Obama campaign. Even their specifics weren’t that specific.”
Even at this late date, what Obama will do as president remains murky. In recent weeks, he has backed away from many of his most liberal campaign promises. Among them: pledges to impose a windfall profits tax on oil, withdraw rapidly from Iraq, allow openly gay men and lesbians to serve in the military, raise taxes on the wealthy and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Treaty.
He has appointed a Cabinet comprising largely well-known, competent centrists, to the acute discomfort of his allies on the left.
“Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?” complained OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers.
Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America’s Future told Politico, “There’s a concern that he keep his basic promises, and people are going to watch him.”
Backing away from liberal campaign promises, in my opinion, is a good beginning. But it’s too early to say that the man judged the most liberal senator in 2007 by the National Journal has become a closet centrist.
Once the economy is on a more even keel, he’s not likely to back away from other key pledges. Government intervention into health care will increase massively. Those tax increases on families making more than $250,000 have only been delayed, not abandoned.
The massive stimulus package poses a grave danger if a huge spending increase becomes permanently embedded in the federal budget. That will lead to a permanently higher level of taxation and a lot less prosperity in the future.
A decade ago, the free market was in ascendancy. As Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw wrote in The Commanding Heights, “All around the globe, socialists are embracing capitalism, governments are selling off companies they had previously nationalized and countries are seeking to entice back multinational corporations that they had expelled just two decades earlier. … Today, politicians on the left admit that their governments can no longer afford the expansive welfare state, and American liberals recognize that more government may not hold the solution to every problem.”
Today that time — the late 1990s — seems quaint. The pendulum has swung back to another worldview, and Washington is now dominated by many who believe that, indeed, the solution to almost every problem is more government. Time will tell how it works out.
Obama certainly deserves every chance of success, but he’s more likely to find it if he sticks to his recently discovered centrist leanings.
To reach E. Thomas McClanahan, call 816-234-4480 or send e-mail to mcclanahan@kcstar.com.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Obama's Clinton-era picks tend to fit the Bill
Hillary Clinton, former staffers up for top jobs
By Christi Parsons and Peter Nicholas | Washington Bureau
November 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — The roster shaping up for the Barack Obama administration is starting to look a little familiar, with an ironic pattern emerging as one name after another is added to the list.
A striking number of new and potential team members can trace their professional history to the same political birthplace—the administration of President Bill Clinton.
There's Sen. Hillary Clinton, of course, the former first lady now under consideration for secretary of state. And Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the former Bill Clinton aide who will be Obama's chief of staff. And Eric Holder, once top deputy to former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and now Obama's likely pick for attorney general. There's the new White House lawyer, the budget director and so on.
For all his talk of transformation, Obama's earliest decisions suggest something odd: The more things change, the more they look like the 1990s. Some predict a Clinton Restoration in the making.
"Voters hoping to see Obama bring a lot of fresh faces to D.C. must be disappointed," said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "So far, it's been more like Clinton.gov than Change.gov."
It makes sense that the incoming Democratic president might fish for talent in the same pond as the last Democratic president. If Obama is looking for depth of expertise, there's a good chance that many job prospects were in or around the White House a decade ago.
But there's a certain irony to the developing pattern, given Obama's campaign pledge not to spend the next four years "refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s."
"There's no question about the talent level," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and policy adviser to Republican John McCain's presidential campaign. "They have a public relations problem in the appearance of not really fulfilling the, quote, change mandate."
The Clinton alums began to populate the new team right away, when Obama picked Emanuel from Illinois' congressional delegation for the first big assignment. After serving as political director in the Clinton White House, Emanuel agreed to help assemble and captain Obama's team as chief of staff.
Since then, the names of former Clinton administration officials have flowed plentifully, with more than two dozen set either to serve on an Obama transition team or to staff positions in the new administration.
At the same time, Hillary Clinton appears to be a serious candidate to head the State Department. By some lights, Obama never really considered Clinton as his vice presidential running mate, instead floating her name for the job while never formally vetting her.
But Clinton friends believe Obama seems more serious now, and developments suggest she is getting a more thorough review.
Hoping to ease qualms about how the former president's tangled business dealings might affect his wife's shot at the job, Bill Clinton gave the Obama transition team a complete list of more than 200,000 donors to his presidential library and charitable foundation, according to a Democrat familiar with discussions between the two camps.
Clinton had not previously released that material, arguing many donors had given money believing the gifts would not be disclosed.
With that donor list in hand, Obama has important new information needed to investigate whether making her secretary of state might pose any conflicts of interest.
Clinton loyalists think her prospects of becoming secretary of state are improving as rivals for the position fall away. Allies of Clinton consider her possible nomination smart.
"You have to give the president-elect an incredible amount of credit for building a Cabinet with stars in it," said Gov. Ed Rendell, credited with helping Clinton win the Pennsylvania primary. "It goes against the grain. You're told, 'Don't have anyone in there with their own base of support, or too famous.' "
Still, Clinton could complicate things. Obama has a vast network of volunteers whom he is counting on to help him get what he wants out of Congress—supporters who worked for "change."
Tom Bethany, 22, briefly ran the Obama campus campaign organization at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He says he's worried about the abundance of people with ties to the Clinton White House landing jobs.
"I think Obama's message of change could very easily be lost," Bethany said.On the economic team, several Clinton veterans are in the mix. CBO Director Peter Orszag is the possible budget director.
And in an anxiously awaited pick, Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has been mentioned frequently as Obama's treasury secretary.
The fact that such positions are still up in the air makes it too early to guess the actual impact of a Clinton reunion, says Republican Holtz-Eakin.
"Key appointments haven't happened yet," he said. "The question is, 'What will he choose to do?' "
cparsons@tribune.com
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
By Christi Parsons and Peter Nicholas | Washington Bureau
November 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — The roster shaping up for the Barack Obama administration is starting to look a little familiar, with an ironic pattern emerging as one name after another is added to the list.
A striking number of new and potential team members can trace their professional history to the same political birthplace—the administration of President Bill Clinton.
There's Sen. Hillary Clinton, of course, the former first lady now under consideration for secretary of state. And Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the former Bill Clinton aide who will be Obama's chief of staff. And Eric Holder, once top deputy to former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and now Obama's likely pick for attorney general. There's the new White House lawyer, the budget director and so on.
For all his talk of transformation, Obama's earliest decisions suggest something odd: The more things change, the more they look like the 1990s. Some predict a Clinton Restoration in the making.
"Voters hoping to see Obama bring a lot of fresh faces to D.C. must be disappointed," said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "So far, it's been more like Clinton.gov than Change.gov."
It makes sense that the incoming Democratic president might fish for talent in the same pond as the last Democratic president. If Obama is looking for depth of expertise, there's a good chance that many job prospects were in or around the White House a decade ago.
But there's a certain irony to the developing pattern, given Obama's campaign pledge not to spend the next four years "refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s."
"There's no question about the talent level," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and policy adviser to Republican John McCain's presidential campaign. "They have a public relations problem in the appearance of not really fulfilling the, quote, change mandate."
The Clinton alums began to populate the new team right away, when Obama picked Emanuel from Illinois' congressional delegation for the first big assignment. After serving as political director in the Clinton White House, Emanuel agreed to help assemble and captain Obama's team as chief of staff.
Since then, the names of former Clinton administration officials have flowed plentifully, with more than two dozen set either to serve on an Obama transition team or to staff positions in the new administration.
At the same time, Hillary Clinton appears to be a serious candidate to head the State Department. By some lights, Obama never really considered Clinton as his vice presidential running mate, instead floating her name for the job while never formally vetting her.
But Clinton friends believe Obama seems more serious now, and developments suggest she is getting a more thorough review.
Hoping to ease qualms about how the former president's tangled business dealings might affect his wife's shot at the job, Bill Clinton gave the Obama transition team a complete list of more than 200,000 donors to his presidential library and charitable foundation, according to a Democrat familiar with discussions between the two camps.
Clinton had not previously released that material, arguing many donors had given money believing the gifts would not be disclosed.
With that donor list in hand, Obama has important new information needed to investigate whether making her secretary of state might pose any conflicts of interest.
Clinton loyalists think her prospects of becoming secretary of state are improving as rivals for the position fall away. Allies of Clinton consider her possible nomination smart.
"You have to give the president-elect an incredible amount of credit for building a Cabinet with stars in it," said Gov. Ed Rendell, credited with helping Clinton win the Pennsylvania primary. "It goes against the grain. You're told, 'Don't have anyone in there with their own base of support, or too famous.' "
Still, Clinton could complicate things. Obama has a vast network of volunteers whom he is counting on to help him get what he wants out of Congress—supporters who worked for "change."
Tom Bethany, 22, briefly ran the Obama campus campaign organization at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He says he's worried about the abundance of people with ties to the Clinton White House landing jobs.
"I think Obama's message of change could very easily be lost," Bethany said.On the economic team, several Clinton veterans are in the mix. CBO Director Peter Orszag is the possible budget director.
And in an anxiously awaited pick, Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has been mentioned frequently as Obama's treasury secretary.
The fact that such positions are still up in the air makes it too early to guess the actual impact of a Clinton reunion, says Republican Holtz-Eakin.
"Key appointments haven't happened yet," he said. "The question is, 'What will he choose to do?' "
cparsons@tribune.com
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
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