Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive.
[…]
Despite enormous pent-up Democratic frustration, Obama and his team realize they must strike a balance between undoing Bush actions and setting their own course, said Winnie Stachelberg, the center’s senior vice president for external affairs.“It took eight years to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out of it,” she said. “The next administration needs to look ahead. This transition team and the incoming administration gets that in a big way.”
An interesting, vaguely unrelated point was made by, I think, Pat Buchannan on The McLaughlin Group this weekend regarding the missiles Bush wants to put in Poland and the ones the Russians would put next door as a counter. What will probably happen is Obama will suggest the Poles have a referendum on the missiles which they would vote down and then we would honor that. Gets us out of a pointless confrontation with the Russians and we don’t build a hideously expensive system that some say won’t work if it was.
71 days and counting…
This is going to be funny (in a noir-kinda way).
We’ll have one “dictator’s” order overturned by someone else in the same fashion. Does that mean the next one gets to do the same thing?
Perhaps the newly elected congress should try to undo this damage instead of using the executive order so vehemently opposed by the democrats. Assuming they can cure their cranial-analitis long enough to actually DO something.
You bet ya.
The biggest post-election chuckle is watching the Bush-defenders wasting space and air criticising anyone for using the same means – even if it’s just to correct the anti-liberty crap Bush rang down.
“Liberty”? Hypocrite!
#3, I’m not defending Bush at all.
I’m criticizing the technique. I didn’t like some of the things Bush did either.
However, it WAS a rubber-stamp congress that passed that abomination called FISA so I guess they can share the blame with him.
Where are the liberals now when we need them most to put that POS in a hole?
“Gets us out of a pointless confrontation with the Russians..”
So Putin will just calm down and play nice? Worth a try but we had better have a Plan B just in case.
I miss those checks and balances.
#5 Exactly.
I love the thinking that we will be safe because the opponent has direct, unequivocal, control of every nuclear launch asset within his realm.
And that we need no protection from even one multi-megaton weapon.
Ignoring the issue seems to be the height of stupidity.
I hope FISA and such is on the list, I didn’t see it mentioned. I don’t know if a DEM controlled congress will roll FISA back though.
The rest look like reversing decisions to give Fed $ to lib interest groups. Surprising.
Yawn. Politics as usual.
Obama’s appointment of the #1 receiver of Wall Street campaign contributions in the House (Rahm Emmanuel) as chief of staff tells us a lot about how much “change” he’s going to bring economically. More ‘bailouts’ and boondoggles.
Since Obama is, as measured by his positions, the farthest-left president in history (although you might argue for Carter),
I agree that a lot of Bush abuses need to be rolled back, but it’s more important that the POWER asserted by Bush to abuse be rolled back. This would require some restraint and constitutional respect that Obama has not displayed yet.
71 days until we can start discussing Oblaba’s failed policies.
Here’s my short list of policies that need to be reversed asap in order of importance.
1. The illegal war in Iraq
2. Most of the traitorous trade agreemants (outsourcing)
3. No taxes for rich people.
#11-Rich people pay NO TAXES? That’s weird.
# 11 Grandpa said,
“Here’s my short list of policies that need to be reversed asap in order of importance.
1. The illegal war in Iraq
2. Most of the traitorous trade agreemants (outsourcing)
3. No taxes for rich people.”
1: The Dems have been in Aof continued funding in Iraq for 2 years.
2: Clinton’s NAFTA?
3: The richest 5% of Americans pay over 50% of the taxes.
So, what are you babbling about?
BDS in full bloom.
On the other hand
The Obama election has has and will open the spigot for more taxes and user fees at the Town, City, County, and State levels. They are wasting no time to start raising more taxes. http://bit.ly/13cfY
1,456 days and counting…
#13
If you look purely at income tax then your argument sort of makes sense. Look at other taxes like payroll, investment, and consumption taxes. Add on government program supplements (e.g. interest rate write offs on mortgages) and various debt forgiveness at all levels.
And let’s be honest, health care has become a tax for you personally and the company/organization you work for.
Quoting a single figure (I don’t care which side you’re on) is disingenuous. Right now the US is teetering under the weight of it’s own massive checks and balances of taxes, credits, and regulations.
The whole mess is one big Gordian Knot. Wholesale destruction of it (a la Ron Paul) would be cataclysmic. Untangling it one thread at a time is too slow. It’ll be interesting to see if Obama has the guts to do the right things. God knows Bush and Clinton didn’t.
# 15 QB said, “If you look purely at income tax then your argument sort of makes sense. Look at other taxes like payroll, investment, and consumption taxes.”
Okay time for a little education:
Payroll taxes are an employees income tax (already figured into the % I listed.)
Investment is cap gains (paid by the rich).
Consumption: sales tax paid as a % of purchase.
The rich purchase MUCH more than the poor and therefore pay MUCH more.
It is amazing how uneducated the average person is.
#16 Wow, could you be anymore condescending?
Of course, rich people buy more. Try looking at it out as a percentage of income, not pure dollar value.
#17 Not trying to be condescending. What point were you trying to make? Your statements didn’t add up.
#18 – Paddy-RAMBO
>>Not trying to be condescending
What was the point of your post then? Grampy listed three things he’d like to change, and you go off on some weird-o rant about capital gains tax, and how wealthy individuals buy more shit than poor ones.
“Gets us out of a pointless confrontation with the Russians and we don’t build a hideously expensive system that some say won’t work if it was.”
there seems to be a lot of conflicting views on the whole ‘Star Wars’ thing.
(1) everybody (even the Bushies) agrees that the ABM system they are building could be very easily overwhelmed by the Russian arsenal. (that is, if it will work at all. the tests have been largely rigged. AFAIK, there have been no tests conducted with a surprise launch from an surprise direction.)
(2) the Bushies claim it is not directed at Russia. However, the host countries set aside their internal political objections and accepted it shortly after the Russia-Georgia fracas. Why the hurry-up under those circumstances, if the real target is Iran?
so:
(3) How can it be targeted at Russia if even its proponents (and opponents) agree that it would be utterly ineffectual against the Russians? And why do the Russians have their undies in a bunch about it under such circumstances?
I suggest there is a lot of strange thinking going on about this whole deal.
Undoing the inefficient solar panels.
Solar Power Game-Changer
“Lin’s discovery could antiquate these automated solar arrays, as his antireflective coating absorbs sunlight evenly and equally from all angles. This means that a stationary solar panel treated with the coating would absorb 96.21 percent of sunlight no matter the position of the sun in the sky. So along with significantly better absorption of sunlight, Lin’s discovery could also enable a new generation of stationary, more cost-efficient solar arrays.”
http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2507
Stuff keeps becoming antiquated faster these days. This could be interesting. Even automation is becoming obsolete. The stranded cost for solar investors could be huge. Change!
All we have are smart phones. They built a robot that is smarter than most of us. ““PERI” (Psychometric Experimental Robotic Intelligence) is a four-foot-tall artificial intelligence system equipped with a gripper and a vision system. PERI can reason, see, and physically manipulate objects.
To test PERI’s intelligence, Bringsjord and Schimanski used a section of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS), one of the gold standards in IQ testing. PERI passed the exam with a perfect score. That’s something few people achieve.”
http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=258
Maybe this is what all the “change” talk is about. The whole human race becomes obsolete, so Obama puts these things in charge creating a new political machine down in Washington. Who knows, maybe the things are smart enough to build copies of themselves and will take over the empty GM factories and start building more robots and we’ll all be working for them. If we can get them building cars, maybe they’ll save GM from the humans. We might of been better off voting for a robot. He isn’t going to BS you.
The length and detail of this write up by the constitutional scholars at ACLU should say how much Obama needs to do just to revert all of the constitutional destruction.
http://aclu.org/transition/
Of course, that doesn’t even begin to address the environmental destruction which, if we don’t fix it, will make the current economic crisis look like a very minor issue by comparison.
Now is probably a good time to join 350.org at least to take action on alerts, even if you don’t want to give them money. I’m already spread a bit thin myself.
http://350.org/
#25. I would agree with most of the ACLU’s recommendations.
Gitmo should be closed down as a propaganda black eye for the US. Those who can be tried as criminals should be. Those captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan can continue to be held as POWs, though. But they should be returned to Afghanistan, imprisoned there, and treated consistent with the Geneva Convention.
>> Proud Alien said,
>> I miss those checks and balances.
Me, too.
Obama has no choice — if he wants to reverse a presidential fiat, he needs to reverse it the same way it was made.
After this correction, my hope is that Obama will return to traditional Presidential behavior.
But I’m nervous! This is exactly the problem we Democrats warned about — Bush set HORRIBLE precedent that will be very hard to fix.
And, of course, the conservatives called us anti-American and Bush-haters for wanting checks and balances.
#21 QB “But overall, if you look at the cost per capita of administering my taxes, credits, etc it is far less than the US. I am arguing that the problem is not just the tax rate, but the administration of the labyrinth of rules to organize your overly complex and litigious system.”
Absolutely. I know Canadians. I think your Gov does a better job of using tax $.
One thing you do have to remember, is that the US has in the past, provided the primary defensive capabilities for Canada…
I suppose the DOJ is on the list of things the Obama administration will be fixing. Once fixed with non-partisans or at least pros who understand (and agree with) the constitution I wonder how many former Bushco members will be held accountable.
#28 Paddy-O said: “One thing you do have to remember, is that the US has in the past, provided the primary defensive capabilities for Canada…”
LOL, I was wrong. You can be more condescending. I’ll ask Princess Pats if their members want to return the bronze and silver stars they’ve received from the US military for their fighting in Afghanistan.
Canadians are proud of their soldiers in Afghanistan and enjoy good relations there especially with their US and UK comrades. Our guys are slogging in some heavy shit in Kandahar but we’re glad your new President has made the Taleban and Bin Laden a priority again.
Maybe we can finish the job this time, eh?
Hey! Wasn’t there another Palin-Worship article here this morning? I think it was another poll.
Where did it go?
#30 “In the past” as in Cold War.
Without US spending Canada would have Russian as its primary language. Not because lack of courage but rather lack of ability.