For months now, Bill Daley has been living in a sort of Washington purgatory. His title, White House chief of staff, usually the second most powerful job in Washington, remained the same. But his role was something less. Over the …
White House
With Cordray’s Appointment, Obama Expands Legal Fight with Conservatives
There are straightforward political reasons for President Barack Obama’s “recess” appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau: Obama’s base wants him to fight big banks and Republicans’ opposition to the agency; and picking a fight with the Hill, especially if it …
17 Days Till Iowa: Let’s Talk Obama
After a youth spent immersed in the romance of The People, with the populist movement of the 1890s and the united front of the 1930s among my favorite periods in American history, I’ve come to have grave doubts about populism over the past 30 years. No, it’s actually been longer than that: If you read classic works of American history, …
White House: We’ll Gloat If We Want
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mBGZiKi9yQ]
When we suggested Thursday that it might be nice if people toned down their political rhetoric for awhile over the end of the U.S. military’s role in Iraq, we didn’t have President Obama in mind. Turns out, we should have.
Plan B: When Politics Beat Science
President Obama came into office promising to restore scientific integrity to policy-making, but his Administration has allowed politics to trump science several times—including with this week’s move to keep the emergency contraceptive Plan B from being sold without a prescription. But science—in climate change and in other …
Osawatomie On My Mind
Ah, class warfare! Here’s my favorite example, so far, of right-wing Soviet-style agitprop. It comes from the minimally talented, but maximally gaseous, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. He writes that Obama’s was a speech that could have been delivered in Caracas, by Hugo Chavez presumably. He actually writes this, although I …
Obama Navigates the New Political Landscape of Inequality
The theme of President Obama’s speech on Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kans., was not wholly unfamiliar. Fairness, he argued, is a core American value that has been lost in the past decade of wage stagnation and economic crisis, and …
Obama Trades a Likely Consumer Bureau Loss for a Political Win
Now that President Barack Obama has embraced his inner populist, he’s finding all kinds of weapons lying around to beat Republicans with. The payroll tax cut is getting a lot of attention. If his success with conservative appellate court judges is any indication, the constitutionality of ObamaCare will be another. The latest weapon …
Amid Familiar Debate, Obama Slams GOP for Tax Hypocrisy
There is enough bipartisan support in Congress to extend a payroll tax holiday first introduced by President Obama along with an extension of unemployment benefits. If nothing is done, both will expire early next year. So, what’s the problem? The debate over how to pay for it has devolved back into the same squabble Republicans and …
Obama’s Christmas-Tree-Lighting Immigration Sermon
Between Kermit the Frog’s antics and the christening of a new National Christmas Tree Thursday night, you may have missed the moment President Obama preached on immigration reform. And unlike his Thanksgiving address that did …
Obama’s Simpson-Bowles Dilemma
Stick around long enough in Washington, and everything does happen. The party of Abraham Lincoln eventually rallied against the Civil Rights Act. The individual mandate eventually became a left-wing idea. Democrats eventually argued for a cut in payroll taxes, depriving Social Security of its much needed revenue stream. Today we see …
President Obama Seeks Dedicated Couch Potato
My colleague Mark Thompson, a devoted reader of FedBizOpps, points out this new job opportunity from the Obama Administration. Call it the boob tube stimulus.
The purpose of this Statement of Work (SOW) is to obtain the necessary television clip service for the Executive Office of the President (EOP), Office of Administration (OA). The
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Obama Meets Occupy Protesters
Awkwardness ensues:
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