Here's Hoping Pres. O. Figures Out How to Use What Little Control He Has, Bef. He Has None.

[snot]

(Cross-posting; in response to a post re- our visually-satisfying Pres.)

Sorry;

he's compromised far too much, far too far. Truly sorry; but look at his appointments. Summers? Geithner? Arne Duncan? Tom Wheeler? et al., all in CRITICAL areas; and those appointees have already done, or are on the brink of doing, horrific damage. (Dear Pres. O.: have you no power at least to forestall the inestimable harm your appointee, Wheeler, is trying to do to the internet?? Pls listen to someone besides your donors/sycophants/people who aren't really paying attn to the future of humanity??? Do you have access to an internet that you're sure isn't filtered???? NO YOU DO NOT. I doubt you can overestimate how much you DON'T control.)

Somehow Obama got Sotomayor and Warren right; but, it seems, against his own odds.

He's no Jimmy Carter; but he's up against much more, now.

Shades of Bush's paintings.

Here's hoping he manages to figure it out before he can't do anything about it.

[Exposethefrauds]

1. The Answer is - The Hamilton Project

Want to see the play book, get familiar with the Hamilton Project.

[BlindTiresias]

2. Good heads up

For those curious: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/obama-at-the-hamilton-project-2006-this-is-not-a-bloodless-process.html

[merrily]

4. Also

http://www.hamiltonproject.org/about_us/

[snot]

3. Good gawd.

Summers and Geithner are on the Advisory Council. Please don't waste our time.

CORRECTION: Thank you for bringing to our attention this new best-case-ineptitude/less-best-perfidy.

[Exposethefrauds]

5. Wasting time, I don't think so but if you want to ignore were PBO is coming from and what he really

believes, that is your choice.

Just because you do not like the answer does not make it any less true.

[merrily]

6. The 2008 nominees were not a compromise.

[snot]

8. OK . . . .

I think that just makes it worse?

[snot]

7. Pls feel to contribute actual info that helps. AND . . .

Last edited Sat May 10, 2014, 07:28 AM - Edit history (3)

Not seeing any so far.

Here are the advisory people re- the Hamilton Project as of 2014-05-10 (note inclusions: Summers, Geithner, Rubin, a Goldman employee, a Carlyle Group employee; this is supposed to reassure me???; exclusions: Liz Warren, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Diane Ravitch, any of the people who have actually been right about anything, lately??) (Bookmarking or future reference {how clueless are you/they, really, to call our attention to whatever this is supposed to be???}):

George A. Akerlof
Koshland Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley

Roger C. Altman
Founder & Executive Chairman, Evercore Partners

Alan S. Blinder
Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics & Public Affairs, Princeton University

Jonathan Coslet
Senior Partner & Chief Investment Officer, TPG Capital, L.P.

Robert Cumby
Professor of Economics, Georgetown University

John M. Deutch
Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Christopher Edley, Jr.
Dean and Professor, Boalt School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

Blair W. Effron
Founding Partner, Centerview Partners LLC

Judy Feder
Professor & Former Dean, Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University

Roland Fryer, Jr.
Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics, Harvard University; Faculty Director, EdLabs

Mark T. Gallogly
Cofounder and Managing Principal, Centerbridge Partners

Ted Gayer
Vice President and Director, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution

Timothy F. Geithner
Former Secretary of the Treasury

Richard Gephardt
President & Chief Executive Officer, Gephardt Government Affairs

Robert Greenstein
President, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Michael Greenstone
Former Director, The Hamilton Project; 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, MIT

Glenn H. Hutchins
Co-Founder, Silver Lake

Jim Johnson
Vice Chairman, Perseus LLC

Lawrence F. Katz
Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Mark McKinnon
Senior Advisor, Hill + Knowlton Strategies

Eric Mindich
Chief Executive Officer, Eton Park Capital Management

Suzanne Nora Johnson
Former Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Peter Orszag
Vice Chairman of Global Banking, Citigroup, Inc.

Richard Perry
Managing Partner and CEO, Perry Capital

Meeghan Prunty
Senior Advisor, The Hamilton Project

Robert D. Reischauer
Distinguished Institute Fellow and President Emeritus, Urban Institute

Alice M. Rivlin
Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; Director, Greater Washington Research at Brookings; Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University

David M. Rubenstein
Co-founder & Co-Chief Executive Officer, The Carlyle Group

Robert E. Rubin
Co-Chair, The Council on Foreign Relations; Former U.S. Treasury Secretary

Leslie B. Samuels
Senior Counsel, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP

Sheryl Sandberg
Chief Operating Officer, Facebook

Ralph L. Schlosstein
President & Chief Executive Officer, Evercore

Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman, Google Inc.

Eric Schwartz
76 West Holdings

Thomas F. Steyer
Business Leader and Investor

Lawrence H. Summers
Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University

Peter Thiel
President, Thiel Capital LLC

Laura D’Andrea Tyson
S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

[Android3.14]

9. The error here is in thinking Pres. Obama made a mistake

We keep thinking that our government represents us, or that, at a minimum, the party represents us. The data are rather compelling that this is a fallacy.
I think the Prez. did exactly what he intended to do.

[Vincardog]

12. Bingo! "the Prez. did exactly what he intended to do" He appointed people to promote HIS policy

I do not believe there is any doubt that the Banksters and insiders appointed by PBO represent anything but PBO's own beliefs. The defenders and "Don't be a BASHERs" can answer "WHY DID HE APPOINT SUCH DESPICABLE PERSONS if he doesn't agree with them"?

[bvar22]

14. That was obvious from Day One of his administration:

[font size=5]
The DLC New Team
Progressives Need NOT Apply
[/font]
(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)


Koch Industries gave funding to the DLC and served on its Executive Council
http://americablog.com/2010/08/koch-industries-gave-funding-to-the-dlc-and-served-on-its-executive-council.html


Hope & Change was a great marketing slogan,
but that was ALL it was.


You will know them by their WORKS.

[Vincardog]

15. Be careful or you will be labeled a Obama Basher. It happened to me.

[bvar22]

16. I was called a "Democrat Basher" just today by a member of the Holy Faith of Unquestioned Fealty.

I found it funny.
I've voted Straight Democratic Tickets for over 47 years,
a solid DEMOCRAT,
and get called a "Democrat Basher" for voicing my displeasure with out Party Leadership
and the current Ever Rightward Drift of the Party.

There are members who call themselves "Democrats" who do nothing but bash loyal members
of the Democratic Party on THIS site.
It is ALL they do...all day long.
Apparently, they have no sense of irony,
nor can appreciate the inherent paradox that as soon as they bash (ad hominem attack)
on a loyal Democrat,
they become what they deplore!
(no wonder they are so angry)
LOL

[TBF]

10. I think we're missing the forest for the trees here -

Last edited Sat May 10, 2014, 10:00 AM - Edit history (1)

It isn't the individual actors - though some are particularly grotesque (Hi Cheney!) - it is the system.

Get rid of the capitalism, or at the very least regulate the hell out of it, tax the large corporations, and start sending anyone over 40 & now unemployed (likely forever) a minimum income. Then we might make it through this without a revolution.

Because if it keeps going as it is people will rebel at some point. Not condoning this - just pointing out the obvious.

[madfloridian]

11. A classic Harold Meyerson article on the Hamiltonian Democrats. Also my post from 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/18/AR2006041801176.html

It's come to this: The chief project to restate Democratic economics for our time was unveiled a couple of weeks ago, and it's named after the father of American conservatism, Alexander Hamilton.

Necessarily, the authors of the Hamilton Project preface their declaration with an attempt, not altogether successful, to reclaim Hamilton from the right. The nation's first secretary of the Treasury, they note, "stood for sound fiscal policy, believed that broad-based opportunity for advancement would drive American economic growth, and recognized that 'prudent aids and encouragements on the part of government' are necessary to enhance and guide market forces."

Which is true, as far as it goes. Hamilton believed in balanced budgets and in the government's taking an active role to build the infrastructure and fiscal climate that business and the nation need to succeed -- ideas as alien to the current administration as support for collective farms. But Hamilton also feared the common people, dismissed their capacity for self-government and supported rule by elites instead.

That might be enough to deter most Democrats from naming their firstborn economic revitalization scheme after him, but the authors of the Hamilton Project are made of sterner stuff. They include Peter Orszag, an estimable Brookings Institution economist; investment banker Roger Altman, formerly of the Clinton Treasury department; and, chiefly, former Treasury secretary and current Citigroup executive committee Chairman Robert Rubin, whose iconic status within the Democratic mainstream has waxed as the median incomes of Americans under the Bush presidency have waned. Rubin has also become a seal of good housekeeping for Democratic candidates seeking money from Wall Street. When Bob Rubin talks, Democratic pols don't just listen; they scramble for front-row seats and make a show of taking notes.

And my post from 2011:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/7875

"Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and most influential Democratic economic adviser, launched an initiative on Wednesday aimed at influencing the economic policy debate and charting a course “diametrically opposed to the current policy regime”."

..."The Hamilton Project, which will be based at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, will be run by Peter Orszag, an economist and senior fellow at Brookings. Policy papers unveiled yesterday proposed vouchers for summer schools and giving teachers tenure based on standards for effectiveness. “That is not consistent with certain orthodoxies we are familiar with. I think that’s a fairly controversial proposal. I wouldn’t say that’s a yawner,” said Mr Altman.

The white paper also called for entitlement reform but acknowledged the political constraints that helped stall Mr Bush’s drive to reform Social Security. “The principal problem is one of political choice and will and what is most needed is a bipartisan approach for deciding among the options,” it said.

Barack Obama, a Democrat senator from Illinois, welcomed the initiative as a way of transcending “tired ideologies”.

More at the link.

[bettyellen]

13. Shades of Bush's paintings? LOL. Shades of ODS.