1. “Obama Says He Can’t Deliver Change Because “We Don’t Want to Tilt at Windmills”
America elected Obama because he promised to bring change, including a change to the financial system.
But, as the New York Times reports:
The president’s [economic reform] plan results from many compromises with industry executives and lawmakers, and is not as bold as some had hoped.
Mr. Obama seemed to acknowledge as much when he posed the question: “Did, you know, any considerations of sort of politics play into it? We want to get this thing passed, and, you know, we think that speed is important. We want to do it right. We want to do it carefully. But we don’t want to tilt at windmills.”
Obama is not Don Quixote, but the President of the United States. He has the power to reign in the financial fraudsters and gamblers, especially since his party – the Democrats – are in control of both houses of Congress.
If he is not doing so, it is because his loyalty is with the banksters and not the people of the United States. It is not because he doesn’t have the power.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/06/obama-says-he-cant-bring-change-because.html
2. “
If I recall correctly — and I do — the primary criticism of the GOP-led Congress from 2002-2006 was that it abdicated its institutional responsibility to act as an independent branch and instead became a subservient arm of the executive branch due to political allegiance to the Republican President. Pat Leahy famously mocked Congressional Republicans for taking orders from Dick Cheney on how to vote at a weekly lunch they had with him. But at least Congressional Republicans had the decency to pretend that they were exercising their own independent judgment — not subordinating their judgment to the President’s will out of “loyalty.”
If these House Democrats had voted for this bill because they genuinely changed their minds and decided that war spending and the IMF bailout were good ideas, then one could argue with them on the merits, but at least they’d be fulfilling their function: exercising the independent judgment the Constitution requires of them. But voting for a bill with which they disagree out of “loyalty” to the President — a desire “to support my president” — is a total abdication of their primary duty. If they’re going to obey the President even when they disagree with him, they should abolish themselves and transfer all of their Article I authority to Rahm Emanuel and Obama.
…
There is reason why the Constitution created a Congress, and there is a reason the Congress — and not the President — has the Constitutional power to appropriate money. Members of Congress are supposed to exercise their own independent judgment about those matters, not submit their will to the President out of “loyalty” and a “desire to support my President.” That sounds like the meekest Roman Senators referring to their beloved emperor. In 2007 — after the latest capitulation by Congressional Democrats to George Bush — The Washington Post‘s Dan Froomkin wrote: ”Historians looking back on the Bush presidency may well wonder if Congress actually existed.” It sounds as though Congressional Democrats are intent on staying just as invisible, impotent and subservient in the Obama era.
…
One final point: who does Anthony Weiner think he’s fooling when he says that “We are in the process of wrapping up the wars”? Does anyone believe that? These two war are now being fully funded — without timetable or conditions — by a Democratic Congress under a Democratic President. Presumably, that’s because they believe these wars should continue, and they should admit that and then argue for that position.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
