The KGB Oracle
Posted By: Sini The Obama Memos - 01/29/12 04:03 AM
Bipartisanship can only work with two rational players

You can't have bipartisanship if your players are not rational.
Posted By: Sini Re: The Obama Memos - 01/29/12 04:15 AM
Choice quotes:


Quote:
To some extent, his health-care plan had been designed and employed by a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, of Massachusetts. His policy for addressing climate change, known as “cap and trade,” had its roots in the first Bush White House. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, a bipartisan policy to rescue failing banks, was designed by the second Bush Administration.



Quote:
Polarization also has affected the two parties differently. The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.


Quote:
Two well-known Washington political analysts, Thomas Mann, of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agree. In a forthcoming book about Washington dysfunction, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” they write, “One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Posted By: Sini Re: The Obama Memos - 01/29/12 04:24 AM
Quote:
When it came time for Obama to write his fiscal 2011 budget, which was his next big opportunity to help the economy, he began to chip away at some dramatic campaign commitments. For instance, in 2008 he had promised a bold space program. “As President,” he had said, “I will establish a robust and balanced civilian space program” that “not only will inspire the world with both human and robotic space exploration but also will again lead in confronting the challenges we face here on Earth, including global climate change, energy independence, and aeronautics research.” In November, 2009, his advisers, in a memo, delivered some bad news: “The 10-year deficit has deteriorated by roughly $6 trillion.” The next sentence was in boldface type and underlined: “Especially in light of our new fiscal context, it is not possible to achieve the inspiring space program goals discussed during the campaign.”


Quote:
As he worked on his budget, Obama scoured his briefing materials for ways to cut spending. Next to a discussion of continuing “spending levels associated with the Recovery Act,” he wrote, “Not possible.” He even questioned funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is generally considered politically untouchable. It was going to receive a 7.2-per-cent increase, the largest two-year percentage increase in the department’s budget in more than thirty years. Obama was informed that it would “underscore the Administration’s commitment to our veterans. Specifically, it will do so by continuing to improve care for our wounded warriors, expand programs to reduce and prevent the incidence of homelessness among veterans.” Obama wrote, “Given what we did last year, does the increase need to be this high?”


Quote:
One Cabinet official made it clear that she did not share the President’s growing commitment to coupon-clipping: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She rejected the White House’s budget for her department, and wrote the President a six-page letter detailing her complaints. Some in the White House saw the long letter as a weapon, something that could be leaked if Clinton didn’t get her way. “At the proposed funding levels,” Clinton wrote, “we will not have the capacity to deliver either the full level of civilian staffing or the foreign assistance programs that underlie the civilian-military strategy you outlined for Afghanistan; nor the transition from U.S. Military to civilian programming in Iraq; nor the expanded assistance that is central to our Pakistan strategy.” She went on, “I want to emphasize that I fully understand the economic realities within which this budget is being constructed, and I share your commitment to fiscal responsibility. But I am deeply concerned about these funding levels.”


Quote:
Many of Obama’s liberal allies have been disillusioned, too. When Steve Jobs last met the President, in February, 2011, he was most annoyed by Obama’s pessimism—he seemed to dismiss every idea Jobs proffered. “The president is very smart,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “But he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done. It infuriates me.”


Quote:
Obama made important mistakes in the first half of his term. He underestimated the severity of the recession and therefore the scale of the response it required, and he clung too long to his vision of post-partisanship, even in the face of a radicalized opposition whose stated goal was his defeat. When, in 2009, he was presented with the windfall pot of thirty-five billion dollars that he could spend on one of his campaign priorities or use for deficit reduction, Obama wrote, “I would opt for deficit reduction, but it doesn’t sound like we would get any credit for it.” At other moments, the memos show a President intensely focused on trying to restrain the government Leviathan he inherited, despite an opposition that doesn’t trust his intentions.


I normally don't over-quote links so much, but with on-going "don't read and dismiss" problem I am making it harder to go directly into denying mode.
Posted By: Cheerio Re: The Obama Memos - 02/19/12 04:32 AM
One of the things that ive been wondering about- not directly related to this but it got me thinking- Did the "Obama stimulus" work as well as the multiple "Bush stmuli"?
The reason i wonder is because the Bush stimuluses send me, the taxpayer, a check to spend. The Obama stimulus send it to some favored corporation or pressure group. Im not sure either worked, but which worked "better"?

It is disturbing if even the Beast himself cant contain Leviathan. Maybe the US isnt governable

Any wonder why Romney is disliked by conservatives?

And last, your initial thesis about repubs moving farther to the right may be true depending on where you define the middle.
Free abortions on demand isnt the middle
"free" healthcare to all is not the middle
govt employees making almost double the median income is not the middle

O could get bipartisan support for reducing the military and not defending europe and asia
he could get support by sealing the border with mexico
he could get support with an austerity program for all federal workers. 5% per year for 4 years, raise retirement age, reduce benefits just like social security is gonna have to do


He wont because he cant fragment the coalition that put him in power. thats why his hands are tied
Posted By: Wolfgang Re: The Obama Memos - 02/19/12 05:45 AM
Originally Posted By: Cheerio
One of the things that ive been wondering about- not directly related to this but it got me thinking- Did the "Obama stimulus" work as well as the multiple "Bush stmuli"?
The reason i wonder is because the Bush stimuluses send me, the taxpayer, a check to spend. The Obama stimulus send it to some favored corporation or pressure group. Im not sure either worked, but which worked "better"?

It is disturbing if even the Beast himself cant contain Leviathan. Maybe the US isnt governable

Any wonder why Romney is disliked by conservatives?

And last, your initial thesis about repubs moving farther to the right may be true depending on where you define the middle.
Free abortions on demand isnt the middle
"free" healthcare to all is not the middle
govt employees making almost double the median income is not the middle

O could get bipartisan support for reducing the military and not defending europe and asia
he could get support by sealing the border with mexico
he could get support with an austerity program for all federal workers. 5% per year for 4 years, raise retirement age, reduce benefits just like social security is gonna have to do


He wont because he cant fragment the coalition that put him in power. thats why his hands are tied


Very well put!
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