Open letter To My Sister Regarding President Obama's Current Direction

Regina,

As for Geithner and Summers I said when they were first appointed by Barack to his administration over a year ago that it was a major mistake and he would definitely live to regret it. so did many other people across the country. Like I said before Obama's economic policy team--like his defense and military security team of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Jim Jones as National Security Advisor, and the former Bush appointee Robert Gates--who Obama incredibly kept on in his own administration as Secretary of Defense (!)--was a blatant indication that Obama was afraid of Wall Street, the corporations, the banks and the Pentagon and that all this would decisively come back to bite him on the ass and eventually help bring down his administration if he didn't appoint entirely different people to these positions.

Now here it is only A YEAR LATER and ALREADY the reactionary sharks smell Obama's blood and are in the water and Obama finds himself completely ON THE DEFENSIVE. As many outright political and personal enemies as Obama surely had and has in Washington and in the elitist circles in new York you would have thought the brother was savvy and streetsmart enough to COVER HIS OWN DAMN BACK. But alas he arrogantly thought that he was simply intelligent and CHARMING enough to SEDUCE people out of their hatred, fear, and ideological opposition on his own without standing up to their bullying and disdain. He also thought as anobsessive CONTROL FREAK he could FINESSE AND MICROMANAGE all the many problems, contradictions, and conflicts automatically induced by a black man becoming President in one of the most racist societies on earth. Clearly like all cocky muthafuckas who depend FAR TOO MUCH on their individual EGOS Barack erroneously thought he could simply sidestep these monumental conflicts and still come up smelling like a rose. That's just how DELUSIONAL you can become about yourself if you don't simply STAND ON PRINCIPLE and refuse to knuckle under to your enemies just because they don't "like it" or "like you." WHAT I WANNA SAY TO BARACK IS THIS: IT AIN'T ABOUT BEING LIKED ALL THE TIME. AS A LEADER SOMETIMES YOU HAVE DO WHAT IS RIGHT DESPITE BEING FIERCELY HATED OR DISAGREED WITH. That's what REAL LEADERS have to contend with no matter WHO they are and personal EGO does not enter into it. You have to know and do the right thing even if your nearest and dearest don't completely "understand" or "agree" with you. Barack has yet to learn that fundamental lesson and that is what is kicking his ass at the moment politically. And dig this: Until such time as he courageously ABANDONS the fear, confusion, depression, and indecision that comes with not being "personally liked" (which in this public context is not only futile and illusory but shallow as well).

If Barack is not very careful he and his presidency will end up like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter--two Democratic Party presidents who both compromised their principles far too much and far too often with the reactionary assholes who opposed them, and wound up FAILING to be the Presidents they could and should have been by depending far too much on their own EGOS to guide and distort their ability to LEAD the country. I hope Barack learns the lessons of the past year (and especially the last horrendous week that included losing Ted Kennedy's seat in the Senate, the reactionary Supreme Court decision on behalf of wealthy corporations and against the American people, and the breakdown of his national healthcare reform proposals which are at this point another complete political failure caused by not only the Republicans but himself and the rest of the Democratic Party as well). Right now I gotta be honest and say THINGS DON'T LOOK GOOD AT ALL. So unless and until Barack wakes up from this self induced political COMA he's currently in both he and the rest of us are--how shall I put this?--O yeah--FUCKED!

The name of the brilliant brother who Obama let go after public pressure from of all people the insane rightwing racist maniac GLENN BECK is VAN JONES who still lives and works here in OAKLAND. Remember the articles and essays I wrote about him in The Panopticon Review last year? (see the following link):

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/search/label/Van%20Jones...

Kofi


On Jan 23, 2010, at 12:15 PM, Regina wrote:

Yes. Also, Keith Olbermann added Sumners and Geithner to this list of Obama appointees that many people want to see go. I wonder if Obama will have the guts to remove them? He certainly didn't hesitate to remove that Environmental/Green African American appointee - I can't recall his name right now...

Opposition Grows Against Second Term for Bernanke

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/economy/23fed.html?th&emc=th

All,

As I said before the very idea that Obama is even supporting this man to repeat as Chairman of the Federal Reserve is an indictment of his own administration's currently backward economic policies. Mr. President if you have any guts left at all: Please get rid of this shamelessly blatant tool of Wall Street NOW...

Kofi



Bernanke’s Bid for a Second Term at the Fed Hits Resistance
By SEWELL CHAN and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: January 22, 2010
New York Times

The Obama administration struggled on Friday to secure confirmation of Ben S. Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, underscoring the political upheaval as both parties tried to find their footing amid a powerful wave of populism.

Two Democratic senators who are up for re-election this year announced that they would oppose Mr. Bernanke, whose four-year term as head of the central bank expires at the end of this month. Their decisions reflected a surge of opposition among some Democrats and Republicans to Mr. Bernanke, a primary architect of the bailout of the financial system and a contributor to policies that critics contend put the economy at risk in the first place.

With no vote scheduled and Capitol Hill abuzz with the possibility that more senators would use the nomination to show voters they understood the anger about bailouts and economic hardship, the uncertainty about Mr. Bernanke’s fate spread to Wall Street.

It contributed to another day of losses for investors at the end of a three-day slide that drove the markets down almost 5 percent. The Dow ended the week at its lowest close since early November.

By the end of the day, the White House had extracted a statement of support for Mr. Bernanke from the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who had been noncommittal. Mr. Reid’s statement, issued after the markets closed, was intended to signal that Democrats, backed by some Republicans, could come up with the 60 votes necessary to break a deadlock and reconfirm Mr. Bernanke.

But even then Mr. Reid’s statement was remarkably unenthusiastic. After meeting with Mr. Bernanke on Thursday, Mr. Reid warned: “The American people expect our economic leaders to keep Wall Street honest and level the playing field for middle-class families.”

And in his statement Friday, Mr. Reid said he had decided to support Mr. Bernanke with trepidation and only after he received a commitment that the Fed chairman would take additional steps to increase the flow of credit to middle-class Americans.

While some Republicans were certain to oppose Mr. Bernanke, the minority leadership had its own strategic calculations to make.

Rejecting Mr. Bernanke, a Republican economist who was named chairman by President George W. Bush in 2005 and took over in 2006, could lead Mr. Obama to appoint someone from the ranks of Democratic economists that Republican lawmakers find less appealing. And if markets swooned, Republicans would share in the blame.

But even if the nomination is approved, the spasm of anxiety surrounding it will have highlighted how members of both parties are reassessing their stands on many issues as they try to understand the strain of anger toward the government, Wall Street and other institutions.

In the days since the Democrats lost a crucial Senate seat in Massachusetts, Mr. Obama has struck a tougher tone toward big banks. In the process he signaled a shift away from less aggressive regulatory policies backed by another architect of the bailout, Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary. On Friday in Ohio, Mr. Obama took a combative approach on health care reform and banking regulation.

But Mr. Obama cannot afford a failed nomination — the Senate has never before rejected a president’s nominee for Fed chairman — and he has publicly and privately backed Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Geithner for their roles in stabilizing the financial system and averting what could have been a wholesale collapse.

Opposition to Mr. Bernanke has emerged from both the left and the right, as anger has mounted over the Fed’s extraordinary interventions in the market in 2008 — which have been lumped together with the huge bailouts of big financial institutions — and over its regulatory failings before the crisis. Mr. Bernanke has also been criticized for backing an easy money policy earlier in the decade that critics say fueled the housing bubble.

“The anger at the Treasury has been spilling over to the Fed,” said Frederic S. Mishkin, a former member of the Fed’s board of governors and a close friend of Mr. Bernanke.

“My view is Chairman Bernanke helped save the world from depression,” said Mr. Mishkin, an economist at Columbia University. “Whether you agree with every policy he’s pursued or some of the ways the bailouts were done, the outcome here, given the severity of the shock, is a good one. But that’s hard to explain to the American public when we’re sitting with 10 percent unemployment.”

The two Democratic senators to come out against Mr. Bernanke on Friday, Barbara Boxer of California and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, called for a chairman more attuned to the suffering of ordinary Americans.

“It is time for Main Street to have a champion at the Fed,” Ms. Boxer said. “Our next Federal Reserve chairman must represent a clean break from the failed policies of the past.”

Mr. Feingold was unsparing in his criticism: “Under the watch of Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve permitted grossly irresponsible financial activities that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

By day’s end, other Democratic senators had rallied around Mr. Bernanke. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the chairman of the Banking Committee, warned that a no vote would “send the worst signal to the markets right now in the country and send us in a tailspin.”

Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana announced qualified support, saying that “failing to reappoint Mr. Bernanke would only add turmoil to markets that are just beginning to recover.”

The White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and Secretary Geithner were both making calls to senators on Mr. Bernanke’s behalf, administration officials said.

At least 11 senators have said they would oppose Mr. Bernanke, including four Democrats, Ms. Boxer, Mr. Feingold, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota and Jeff Merkley of Oregon; one independent, Bernie Sanders of Vermont; and six Republicans.

“Especially since the election in Massachusetts, Democrats are waking up to the fact that Americans are profoundly disgusted with the behavior on Wall Street that led to the disaster we’re currently in,” Mr. Sanders said. “In the last week the president has decidedly changed his tone on Wall Street — in my view, quite appropriately. He would be well served to have an ally at the Fed who shares those concerns.”

Senate Democratic leaders had contemplated a vote this week on the nomination, but were forced to hold off after encountering opposition at their caucus’s weekly luncheon on Wednesday. The leaders asked for a show of hands and, though aides would not provide a precise count, Mr. Reid was said to be surprised at the number.

And in a sign of such uncertainty, Mr. Reid asked the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to count the votes on the Republican side. Mr. McConnell has not said how he will vote, but some influential Republican senators, including Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, have said they will back Mr. Bernanke.

If Mr. Bernanke’s term as chairman expires, he would still remain a member of the board of governors, where he holds a separate 14-year appointment that does not expire until 2020. It is also possible he could continue on as chairman pro tempore. The Federal Reserve Act states that the vice chairman — Donald L. Kohn now — acts as chairman in the chairman’s absence, but how an absence is defined is not clear.

The New York Times Attacks the Supreme Court's Anti-Democratic Decision to Allow Corporations Control Over American Politics

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22fri1.html?em

All,

The New York Times excoriating editorial take on the disgraceful Supreme Court sellout of the American people and the political system to super wealthy corporations...

Kofi


January 22, 2010

EDITORIAL

The Court’s Blow to Democracy

New York Times

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)

The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.

This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.

These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.


Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Rightwing Supreme Court Sells Out Country to Corporations

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html?th&emc=th



Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 22, 2010
New York Times

WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business.

The decision will be felt most immediately in the coming midterm elections, given that it comes just two days after Democrats lost a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and as popular discontent over government bailouts and corporate bonuses continues to boil.

President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

The justices in the majority brushed aside warnings about what might follow from their ruling in favor of a formal but fervent embrace of a broad interpretation of free speech rights.

“If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of the court’s conservative wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

The ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, overruled two precedents: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions.

The 2002 law, usually called McCain-Feingold, banned the broadcast, cable or satellite transmission of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations or labor unions from their general funds in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections.

The law, as narrowed by a 2007 Supreme Court decision, applied to communications “susceptible to no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”

The five opinions in Thursday’s decision ran to more than 180 pages, with Justice John Paul Stevens contributing a passionate 90-page dissent. In sometimes halting fashion, he summarized it for some 20 minutes from the bench on Thursday morning.

Joined by the other three members of the court’s liberal wing, Justice Stevens said the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech the same as that of human beings.

Eight of the justices did agree that Congress can require corporations to disclose their spending and to run disclaimers with their advertisements, at least in the absence of proof of threats or reprisals. “Disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way,” Justice Kennedy wrote. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented on this point.

The majority opinion did not disturb bans on direct contributions to candidates, but the two sides disagreed about whether independent expenditures came close to amounting to the same thing.

“The difference between selling a vote and selling access is a matter of degree, not kind,” Justice Stevens wrote. “And selling access is not qualitatively different from giving special preference to those who spent money on one’s behalf.”

Justice Kennedy responded that “by definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate.”

The case had unlikely origins. It involved a documentary called “Hillary: The Movie,” a 90-minute stew of caustic political commentary and advocacy journalism. It was produced by Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit corporation, and was released during the Democratic presidential primaries in 2008.

Citizens United lost a suit that year against the Federal Election Commission, and scuttled plans to show the film on a cable video-on-demand service and to broadcast television advertisements for it. But the film was shown in theaters in six cities, and it remains available on DVD and the Internet.

The majority cited a score of decisions recognizing the First Amendment rights of corporations, and Justice Stevens acknowledged that “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment.”

But Justice Stevens defended the restrictions struck down on Thursday as modest and sensible. Even before the decision, he said, corporations could act through their political action committees or outside the specified time windows.

The McCain-Feingold law contains an exception for broadcast news reports, commentaries and editorials. But that is, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a concurrence joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., “simply a matter of legislative grace.”

Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion said that there was no principled way to distinguish between media corporations and other corporations and that the dissent’s theory would allow Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, on television news programs, in books and on blogs.

Justice Stevens responded that people who invest in media corporations know “that media outlets may seek to influence elections.” He added in a footnote that lawmakers might now want to consider requiring corporations to disclose how they intended to spend shareholders’ money or to put such spending to a shareholder vote.

On its central point, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Justice Stevens’s dissent was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

When the case was first argued last March, it seemed a curiosity likely to be decided on narrow grounds. The court could have ruled that Citizens United was not the sort of group to which the McCain-Feingold law was meant to apply, or that the law did not mean to address 90-minute documentaries, or that video-on-demand technologies were not regulated by the law. Thursday’s decision rejected those alternatives.

Instead, it addressed the questions it proposed to the parties in June when it set down the case for an unusual second argument in September, those of whether Austin and McConnell should be overruled. The answer, the court ruled Thursday, was yes.

“When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”


Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Hey Barack!--Bernanke is Part of the Problem, Not the Solution

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/economy/23fed.html?nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1

All,

The very fact that Obama actually nominated Bernanke for a second term-- a Republican who was chosen to run the Federal Reserve by the Bushwhacker himself-- and under whose watch the national economy was plunged into the greatest economic breakdown since the Great Depression-- speaks volumes about how deeply compromised and hopelessly conservative Obama really is in dealing with the rampaging economic elites in the financial and corporate sectors and on Wall Street. Bernanke should have been fiercely opposed by Obama from day one of his Presidency but just like in the egregious cases of the rest of Barack's "Republican-lite" economic policy team of Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers (incompetent Wall Street lackeys who should be fired) Obama has shown once again just how foolishly enarmored of and politically frightened by the super wealthy assholes and corrupt whitecollar criminals who run this country he really is. Bernancke is a national disgrace, he always was and the sooner Democrats in Congress can get rid of him the better no matter what Obama says to the contrary...

Kofi


January 23, 2010

Opposition Grows Against Second Term for Bernanke

By SEWELL CHAN

The confirmation of Ben S. Bernanke to a second four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve ran into further trouble on Friday as two more Democratic senators said they would vote against him.

The White House came to Mr. Bernanke’s defense, but the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, appeared uncertain about whether there were the 60 votes necessary to confirm Mr. Bernanke before his term as chairman expires on Jan. 31. Mr. Reid said late Friday that while he planned to vote for Mr. Bernanke’s confirmation, his support was “not unconditional.”

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the Banking Committee, warned Friday that a no vote would send the “worst signal to the market right now,” and could lead to an economic “tailspin.”

In a statement Friday morning, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, came out against Mr. Bernanke, who was named to his post during the Bush administration. She said she had “a lot of respect” for him and praised him for preventing the economic crisis from getting even worse. “However, it is time for a change,” she said. “It is time for Main Street to have a champion at the Fed.”

“Our next Federal Reserve chairman must represent a clean break from the failed policies of the past,” Ms. Boxer said.

Another Democratic senator, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, also announced Friday that he would vote against Mr. Bernanke.

“Under the watch of Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve permitted grossly irresponsible financial activities that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,” Mr. Feingold said in a statement.

Senate Democratic leaders had contemplated trying to hold a vote this week on Mr. Bernanke’s nomination to a second term, but they were forced to hold off after several senators unexpectedly voiced opposition to his confirmation at the party’s weekly luncheon on Wednesday. Democratic leaders asked for a show of hands and, though aides would not provide a precise count, Mr. Reid was said to be surprised at the number.

Senators Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, and Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, are leading the opposition to Mr. Bernanke within the Democratic caucus. “As chairman, Dr. Bernanke failed to recognize or remedy the factors that paved the road to this dark and difficult recession,” Mr. Merkley said last month.

Allan H. Meltzer, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on the Fed, said that the Senate had never voted to outright reject a nominee for Fed chairman and that he knew of no instance in which the president had withdrawn the nomination of a Fed chairman after it was clear that the Senate would not confirm.

Senators’ stances on Mr. Bernanke have not fallen along the usual partisan lines. Last year, President Obama nominated Mr. Bernanke, a Republican who was named the 14th chairman of the Fed by President George W. Bush in 2006, to a second term. In December, the Senate Banking Committee voted 16-7 to support Mr. Bernanke for another four years. Only 4 of the 10 Republicans on the panel supported him: Senators Robert Bennett of Utah, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Mike Johanns of Nebraska.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has not indicated how he will vote. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, said Thursday that she was leaning toward voting for Mr. Bernanke but had not made up her mind.

Several liberal Senate Democrats have said they remain undecided as well. And in a sign of the uncertainty on the Democratic side, Mr. Reid has asked Mr. McConnell to count the votes on the Republican side.

To some degree, Mr. Bernanke is caught up in the same kind of populist anger that defined the Massachusetts Senate race, in which the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, pulled off a remarkable upset on Tuesday by beating his Democratic opponent to take the seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy.

Mr. Feingold, who announced his opposition on Friday, is among the most liberal senators, and Ms. Boxer faces re-election this year, a tough mid-term cycle for Democrats.

But opposition to Mr. Bernanke has emerged from both the left and the right, as anger has mounted over the Fed’s extraordinary interventions in the market in 2008 — which have been lumped together with the huge bailouts of big financial institutions — and over the perceived regulatory failings of the Fed in the years preceding the crisis.

Some economists also believe that the Fed’s policy of low interest rates in the early part of the last decade laid the groundwork for the housing bubble; Mr. Bernanke was a member of the Fed’s board of governors for part of that period, when Alan Greenspan was chairman.

On Friday morning, a White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said President Obama “has a great deal of confidence in what Chairman Bernanke did to bring our economy back from the brink” and “continues to think he is the best person for the job and will be confirmed by the United States Senate.”

Mr. Reid said that he had met with Mr. Bernanke on Thursday and had received assurance that the Fed would soon outline plans for helping consumers get “access the credit they need to buy or keep their home, send their children to college or start a small business. The Fed chairman, Mr. Reid said, also deserves some credit for taking steps to avoid a depression.

Four senators have placed holds on Mr. Bernanke’s nomination: three Republicans, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and David Vitter of Louisiana, and an independent, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who describes himself as a socialist and who caucuses with the Democrats.

Other Democratic senators who are strong supporters of Mr. Obama have so far withheld their support. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri said Thursday that she was undecided. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said he was “not leaning favorably,” the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported.

Mr. Bernanke, a renowned Princeton economist and an expert on the Great Depression, is also seen as having not sufficiently answered questions from members of both parties during his confirmation hearings last year.

Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, criticized Mr. Bernanke on Thursday, saying he was part of the problem of banks considered “too big to fail.”

Mr. Shelby told CNBC that he had supported the Fed in the past, “but as a regulatory body, I believe they failed the American people.”

He added, “I asked Chairman Bernanke how much time his board of governors spent on regulatory affairs: Was it 1 percent, 2 percent, 10 percent? And he never gave us even an answer. It was 1 percent. So I’m not going to support the Fed chairman.”

If Mr. Bernanke is not confirmed, his term as chairman will expire on Jan. 31. However, he would remain a member of the board of governors, as he holds a separate 14-year appointment that does not expire until 2020.

The Federal Open Market Committee — the panel that votes on the Fed’s crucial interest rate — is to hold the first of its eight meetings this year next Tuesday and Wednesday, a few days before Mr. Bernanke’s term is to expire. At that meeting, as is the custom, Mr. Bernanke is to be elected chairman of the committee, by virtue of his position as chairman of the board of governors.

The next meeting to set monetary policy is scheduled for March.

David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.


Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Why Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts was lost--and who lost it

All,

It's a much deeper fundamental crisis in the national Democratic Party than has been properly acknowledged--as well as Obama's clearly inept administration-- that's really responsible for the horrendous loss of Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat than anything that Martha Coakley, the DP candidate in Massachusetts, individually failed to do. The senatorial election in Massachusetts in the final analysis had very little to do with Coakley, even though she obviously didn't run a very good campaign. But the simple truth of the matter is that she didn't lose because of that. She lost because a very significant number of white independent voters were sending a loud ugly message to Congress (i.e. the Democratic majority in both houses) and specifically to President Obama that they categorically oppose his reform agenda in healthcare and beyond and they also have no confidence in the weak half-assed and frankly "running scared" positions that Obama has taken on the banks, Wall Street, major corporations, and national unemployment. People are very frustrated, angry and fedup--on both the right AND the left! While it's true that much if not most of the anger on the right is fueled by racism, some of it is also an ideological rejection of Obama's general political and economic agenda and the disturbing sense that many people (not just rightwingers!) feel--and I think justifiably--that both Obama and the Democratic Party generally have failed to seriously address their very real needs and problems in the national economy. Many people on the Left--including myself--also feel that over the past 5-6 months the president and the Senate especially (where Democrats outnumber Republicans 60-40) have fundamentally failed to provide genuine progressive leadership and clarity on healthcare reform, unemployment, financial regulation, and many other pressing domestic policy issues. In addition Obama's absurd decision to send 30,000 more troops to the endless destructive quagmire that is Afghanistan in the midst of this major economic crisis in the U.S. was not only wrong but politically foolish and economically wasteful.

In the end Coakley couldn't do anything about any of that. As it was she still lost by only 120,000 votes out of nearly 3 million votes that were cast. That tells me that not only was there a much smaller democratic voter turnout in this election--in a state where registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 5 to 1!-- but that clearly a small but pivotal number of independent and Republican voters in the white suburbs (by far Coakley's weakest demographic in this election--she won a sizeable majority in every major urbanized district within the state) decided that this senatorial election was to be a public referendum on President Obama's agenda and the flailing and clueless Democratic Party majority in the House and Senate. Under these circumstances Coakley--or any other DP candidate in this election except Ted Kennedy himsef-- didn't have a chance in hell of winning this election.

What we all had better remember in the larger context is that President Obama received only 43% of the white vote in the national presidential election in 2008. McCain received 55% of the white vote. This means of course that if the national election for President had been left up to white voters only Obama would have lost the election in a LANDSLIDE to McCain. It is this stark political reality that is taking Obama down now on the right and among independents because the truth is that nearly 60% of white voters have ALWAYS rejected Obama anyway-- and still do. This means of course that without the 81% of the black, Latino, and Asian American voters who voted for Obama HE WOULDN'T BE PRESIDENT TODAY. Black folks cast an incredible 95% of their total votes for Barack (or 15.5 million votes) and Latinos cast 67% of their votes for him which added up to another 16 million votes. Without those 30 million votes we wouldn't even be having this discussion about Obama now because he would have already lost bigtime.

So I say all that to remind us that the reasons for Obama's severe difficulties now can't possibly be attributed only to Martha Coakley. The problem has always been much bigger than that for both Obama and the Democratic Party. Which is all the more reason why the way they've been spending their --and our--political capital is both strategically and tactically suspect at best because they keep trying to foolishly accomodate the Republican party through emptyheaded and self destructive "compromises" that the nihilistic Republicans and the right generally have absolutely NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER of making with them. This is the major reason why Scott Brown--who is to the right of Atilla the Hun AND Sarah Palin-- is the new Senator from Massachusetts. It's basic political ineptitude on the part of the President and the DP and no amount of lofty or apologetic rhetoric can possibly cover up that fundamental fact in this situation. If the President doesn't fight back--and I mean HARD--from this point forward he and the DP will be BURNT TOAST by the midterm elections of November 2010. Because if the Republicans take back Congress Obama won't be able to pass one piece of significant legislation for the remainder of his entire first term! It'll be much worse than the debacle of 1994 when Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, Phil Gramm, Richard Armey and all the other super rightwing white supremacist demagogues in the Republican Party took over the House & Senate and effectively crippled the agenda of not only the last two years of Bill Clinton's already heavily compromised first term but also completely paralyzed his scandal ridden second term as well (even the Lewinsky sex scandal was ultimately merely a footnote in that poisonous context).

Kofi

President Obama Must Fight For Real Change or Surrender to His Enemies--He Can't Do Both!

http://www.truthout.org/will-obama-fight-health-care-reform56322?print

All,

Real questions demand real answers. Are you listening Barack?...

Kofi


Eugene Robinson | Will Obama Fight for Health Care Reform?
Sunday 24 January 2010
by Eugene Robinson
Op-Ed
Washington Post

Washington - If President Obama has decided to give up on health care reform, he should just come out and say so. Then we could all get on with our lives -- those of us with health insurance, that is. But I don't see how his talk about some sort of slimmed-down package, reduced to its "core elements," could possibly inspire Democrats in Congress to do anything but run for the hills.

Republican Scott Brown's victory Tuesday in Massachusetts, grabbing the Senate seat that was held for decades by the late Ted Kennedy, left Democrats rattled. Actually, frantic would be a better word. Thus far, Obama has said nothing that would help calm the waters -- or help the party get out of what now can officially be called the Health Care Mess. If anything, Obama is making it messier.

In an interview Wednesday with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama said this about health care: "I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on." He said that we have to keep insurance companies from "taking advantage of people," that we have to contain costs, and that we have to give small businesses help to provide health insurance to their employees.

That's all well and good. But there is already a measure on the table that would do these things -- the bill passed on Christmas Eve by the Senate. Now that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority, it is all but inconceivable that the Senate could produce a new bill with all those elements. And it's not possible to do health care reform a la carte.

One thing that "people agree on" is prohibiting the insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions. But doing that in isolation would cause insurance premiums to skyrocket. To make it work, you need a mandate that forces everyone -- including millions of young, healthy people -- to buy insurance, thus effectively subsidizing the older, sicker people whom the insurance companies would be forced to cover. But if you make low-income and moderate-income people buy health insurance, you have to give them financial assistance because otherwise they can't afford it.

Later in the interview, Obama acknowledged this chain of "interconnected" imperatives that any workable health reform package would have to accommodate. And why shouldn't the House just pass the Senate bill?

"I think it is very important for the House to make its determinations," Obama said. "I think, right now, they're feeling obviously unsettled and there were a bunch of provisions in the Senate bill that they didn't like, and so I can't force them to do that."

Would a full-court press by the president have been able to cajole or coerce the House into passing a reform bill that many in the Democratic caucus consider insufficiently progressive? It looks as if we'll never know. On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi flatly declared that for now, at least, she cannot find the 218 votes needed to pass the Senate bill.

"I'm not going to get into the legislative strategy," Obama said in the ABC interview. That has been the White House approach all along, and it managed to bring meaningful health care reform legislation closer to final passage than ever before. But close doesn't count: Reform didn't make it across the finish line.

Yet.

Pay no attention to the Cheshire Cat claims by Republicans that they'd love to cooperate on a bipartisan reform bill. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has already ruled out modifying the current bill, insisting that the Senate has to start the process from scratch. There remains another way, and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., mentioned it Thursday: Pass a reasonable reform package using the parliamentary tactic known as budget reconciliation, which would require only a simple majority of 51 to get through the Senate rather than a supermajority of 60.

The problem with budget reconciliation is that it would require considerable intestinal fortitude on the part of nervous Democratic senators following the Massachusetts result, even though it left them with an 18-vote majority. I don't know if that courage can be summoned. I'm certain that it won't be if the message from President Obama is: "Whatever."

The president can surrender and blame Republicans for killing health care reform yet again, or he can fight tooth and nail on behalf of the 46 million Americans who remain uninsured. But he has to do one or the other. He can't do both.


Eugene Robinson's e-mail address is
eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.
(c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group