C-SPAN Video Player - The 44th President

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What I expect from Obama

What I expect from President Obama is pretty much summed up here:

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/01/obamas-first-choice.html

Almost every economist will tell you the stimulus has to be massive in order to have any real impact. Even Marty Feldstein, who headed Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, told Congress it had to be $800 billion. My own view is at least $900 billion. But a price tag like that scares Republicans and so-called “blue-dog” Democrats who worry about government debt.

So here’s our new president's strategic choice. He can flight for the biggest stimulus politically possible – twisting arms and counting noses to get a bare majority in the House and sixty votes in the Senate. That’s how Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush got their huge tax cuts, and how Bill Clinton got his first budget through Congress.

Or Obama can aim to get the backing of a much larger majority than he needs to get the stimulus enacted – including a majority of blue dogs and Republicans. To do this he’d likely have to settle for a smaller stimulus package – one that may not be enough to jump-start the economy.

Why would he ever choose the second strategy? Because his goal is not just to get the biggest stimulus package he can squeeze through Congress. It’s to get a Congress that’s mostly united behind whatever stimulus package emerges. This would ensure that Republicans and blue-dog Democrats take some ownership of the package, and therefore responsibility for making it work.
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It’s not the strategy his predecessors used to get their economic plans enacted. It’s not hardball politics, and it may not be the best move for the economy in the short run. But given the challenges our new president and our nation face over the long run, this may be the smartest politics and smartest economics.

Obama's Cabinet off to a good start

First, the right wing hasn’t lost any time in making false statements about Obama:

On job-loss numbers, Fox’s Garrett changed the metric, falsely asserting Obama’s statement was untrue

Summary: Summary: On Special Report, Major Garrett falsely accused President-elect Obama of making an untrue assertion when Obama said that the 2.589 million jobs lost in 2008 were “the most since World War II.” In fact, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been no greater net job decline in any calendar year since the end of World War II than occurred in 2008. [...]

Garrett said of Obama’s comments: “Mr. Obama says the 2.6 million jobs lost last year was the worst since 1945. Is that true? No.” Garrett continued:

Last year’s job losses were the fifth worst since 1945. The key statistic is percentage of workforce laid off, meaning the number of layoffs as a percentage of the entire workforce. In 1945, 6.6 percent of workers lost their jobs. Last year, 1.9 percent lost their jobs. Are things bad now? Of course they are. As bad as 1945? No. And four years — four other years between then and now were much worse than what we’ve just gone through.

Rather than note that he was using a different index from Obama — percentage loss rather than net loss — Garrett simply accused Obama of a falsehood. In fact, data from the BLS, shown in the graph [1] below, confirm that the estimated net job loss for 2008, totaling 2.589 million jobs, was indeed the worst in absolute numbers since 1945, when 2.75 million jobs were lost:[...]

Ok.

And, of course, we have Dick Morris whining that Obama is going to stop the U. S. from torturing people:

President-elect Barack Obama’s new head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, Dawn Johnsen, called the legal reasoning which gave the president broad powers to authorize “rough” interrogation of terrorists “shockingly flawed…bogus…outlandish.” She said it allowed “horrific acts” and demanded to know “Where is the outrage? The public outcry?” This is the person who will decide how to interrogate terrorists. If she errs on the side of weakening methods of questioning, there’s no chance her boss, Eric Holder the new Attorney General, will reverse her. He approved of the Clinton/Reno “wall” preventing intelligence from finding out what criminal investigators had found out and took the lead in pardoning the FALN terrorists.

What is Obama thinking? How could he weaken so dramatically our protections against terrorism? Doesn’t he realize that without warrantless FISA wiretaps we could never have uncovered the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge (how could we have gotten a warrant for conversations about the bridge when we didn’t yet know that al Qaeda had it in its sights?) Has he forgotten that we only found the name of the operative who was tasked with destroying the bridge because we subjected Kahlid Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, to “rough” interrogation techniques? Does he really mean to leave us vulnerable to terrorist attacks?

Yes he does. Not because he is callous or fiendish, but because the new president seems to carry the thinking that animated the decisions of the Warren Court on defendant’s rights over into the battle against terror. [...]

Or maybe it is because Obama is listening to experts?

NEW YORK—Fifteen former interrogators and intelligence officials with more than 350 years collective field experience have declared that torture is an “unlawful, ineffective and counterproductive” way to gather intelligence, in a statement of principles released today.

The group of former interrogators and intelligence officials released a set of principles to guide effective interrogation practices at the conclusion of a meeting convened by Human Rights First last week in Washington. The meeting participants served with the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. military.

The principles are based on the interrogators and intelligence officials’ experiences of what works and what does not in the field. Interrogation techniques that do not resort to torture yield more complete and accurate intelligence, they say. The principles call for the creation of a well-defined single standard of conduct in interrogation and detention practices across all U.S. agencies. At stake is the loss of critical intelligence and time, as well as the United States’ reputation abroad and its credibility in demanding the humane treatment of captured Americans. [...]

Meanwhile, it looks as at least two of Obama’s top picks are doing well.

Hillary Clinton had a good afternoon.

At the opening of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings for the post of Secretary of State on Tuesday, the ranking Republican on theSenate Foreign Relations Committee offered a bit of perfunctory praise for the former first lady.

“President-elect Obama has boldly chosen the epitome of a big leaguer,” said Sen. Richard Lugar, who spoke of Clinton’s confirmation as a certainty. “Her qualifications for the post are remarkable… Her time in the Senate has given her a deep understanding of how United States foreign policy can be enriched… She is fully prepared to engage the world on a myriad of issues that urgently require attention.”

The sentiments may have been customary Senate pleasantries. But Clinton, over the course of several hours, proved the Indiana Republican correct. Her confirmation hearing was a tour de force, one that demonstrated not just her breadth of understanding of the policy issues, but the meticulous preparation that she has brought to most every political task in her career — and, likely soon, Foggy Bottom.

Pressed by her soon-to-be-former Senate colleagues, Clinton fielded questions on topics ranging from the impact of the Law of the Sea treaty on Alaska, to Russia’s purchase of a Serbian gas utility, to the piracy crisis off the coasts of Somalia.

“I’ve never seen anybody know so much about so much,” Chris Matthews, a sometimes-critical voice on the Clintons, would gush on Hardball later that day.

If Clinton’s performance was, as Matthews claimed, virtuoso, it was owed to hard, behind-the-scenes preparation. [...]

Stephen Chu had a good day as well:

It wasn’t exactly a love-fest, but the initial hearing, today, on Steven Chu’s soon-to-be-formal Energy Secretary nomination couldn’t have been more cordial.

Although senators can be a fairly imperious lot, members of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources were respectful — in most cases, downright deferential — towards the Nobel physicist that Barack Obama wants to head federal energy-research and -development enterprises.

Most senators at the hearing asked whether Chu would support a reinvigoration of the U.S. nuclear power industry. Yes, Chu said again and again — as long as work continues on how to cope long-term with nuclear wastes.

How about coal, which powers half of U.S. electricity? Yes, Chu would support continued use of coal — as long as work continues on limiting the release of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from conventional coal burning. Carbon sequestration and cap-and-trade emissions limits were mentioned repeatedly.

Only a couple senators actually showed any interest in research details. Among the few: Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). She asked about the Helios program at the national facility Chu currently heads, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. According to the lab’s website, this renewable-fuels initiative has a heady goal: to “cut across divisions and programs in profound ways to produce transforming technologies in synthetic biology and nanotechnology.” It also seeks to “fuse our core strengths in biological, chemical, and physical sciences in the search for a sustainable carbon-neutral source of energy.”

No wonder Lincoln asked what, in practical terms, this venture actually involves.

Chu explained that the two-year-old program is striving to develop fourth-generation biofuels. To date, researchers at the lab have “trained” bacteria and yeast to take simple sugars and produce “not ethanol, but gasoline-like substitutes, diesel-fuel substitutes and jet [fuel] substitutes.” He says a cadre of “brilliant” scientists who had previously spent most of their careers in basic research is now “very focused on making this technology commercially viable.”

Asked about what type of plant material would be used — since Lincoln was hoping it might be grown in Arkansas — Chu perked up and chuckled: “Now we’re getting to science. I love this!” [...]