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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on June 17, 2011, 12:03:09 PM
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Daley can’t defend Obama’s ‘indefensible’ economic policies
The Daily Caller ^ | 6-17-11 | Matthew Boyle
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White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley took heat from business executives Thursday for the Obama administration’s regulatory expansions. Daley also said he didn’t have any good answers for some of what President Obama is doing and expressed frustration about the “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”
“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” Daley said at a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) meeting.
Daley couldn’t answer basic questions and continually faced criticism from the executives in the room. The business leaders even applauded each other’s criticism of the administration. “At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government ‘throws sand into the gears of progress,’” wrote Peter Wallsten and Jia Lynn Yang in the Washington Post.
Americans for Limited Government Communications Director and former Labor Department Public Affairs Chief of Staff Rick Manning told The Daily Caller that Daley’s inability to defend Obama’s regulations is an indication that the administration’s plans aren’t working. Manning also points out that Daley’s meeting may have large political implications.
“Business community to William Daley, your Jedi tricks don’t work on us,” Manning said in an email. “The chickens are coming home to roost from the wholesale assault by Obama on the free enterprise system and the private job creators who make it run. The meeting itself is incredible in that it demonstrates just how vulnerable Obama feels in 2012.”
(As goes the economy, so goes Ohio?)
The Workforce Fairness Institute’s Fred Wszolek told The Daily Caller that Daley’s lackluster performance is even more questionable when comes to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and its campaign against the Boeing Company. The NLRB has gone after the Boeing Company for opening a new plant in South Carolina. Boeing’s new plant is an addition to its already-existing production lines in Washington state. The NLRB’s case hinges on whether Boeing made the decision to open the new plant as “retaliation” against machinist unions in Washington, even though no jobs were lost there. In fact, Boeing has added thousands of new jobs in Washington.
As a former Boeing board member before taking on his White House job, Daley voted in favor of opening the new South Carolina plant. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has challenged Daley to come out and defend his vote in the face of the NLRB’s case, but he hasn’t yet done so.
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Are you idiots getting a clue yet? When even your own COS can't defend your policies, you know you are on the wrong track.
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Wow.
When your Chief of Staff refers to your economic policy decisions as indefensible in the middle of a recession, you have really hit rock bottom as a President.
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Wow.
When your Chief of Staff refers to your economic policy decisions as indefensible in the middle of a recession, you have really hit rock bottom as a President.
Not according to Mal, Lurker, Straw, 240, et al!
Their biggest problem with Obama is that he did not go far enough on the crazy!
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This administration is starting to go down in flames, I love it. We just need this whole Libya WPA violation thing to blow up in Obama's face and that will be the end of this freak show.
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WOW. If Obama doesnt agree to do a real about face, I wouldnt be surprised if this guy steps down soon.
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I still am not sure obama will make it to 2012 the way he is going.
These policies are collapsing the economy and people are pissed off.
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Bump for straw, Benny, blacken, 240 Vince mal and whatever other moron still supports Obama.
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When your own chief of staff says your policies are not defensible - are you morons supporting this shit show beginning to get a clue yet?
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bUMP FOR 240 & sTRAW
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Source: Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley to Step Down
Published January 09, 2012
| FoxNews.com
William Daley is resigning as White House chief of staff and budget chief Jack Lew will take his place, President Obama will announce Monday, Fox News has learned.
Daley entered the White House a year ago after Rahm Emanuel left to become Chicago mayor, replacing Daley's retiring brother, Richard Daley, in that post.
Obama was to announce the change in a statement Monday afternoon. The change will be effective at the end of this month.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/09/source-obama-chief-staff-bill-daley-to-step-down/#ixzz1izWxrfTl
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Wow.
When your Chief of Staff refers to your economic policy decisions as indefensible in the middle of a recession, you have really hit rock bottom as a President.
And when that Chief of Staff is a Chicago politician, you know you've really got problems.
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Departures of this sort are annoying. Obviously the White House is not served by them and by extension neither is the country. Why don't this guys really think this through before taking these jobs? At least stay through the end of the term.
Tony Snow did the exact same thing to Bush. Appointed White House press secretary on May 8, 2006, he left on September 13, 2007. ::)
Everyone wants the glamour of working in the White House... until they get there and realize it is not so glamorous! ::)
That said, WH Chief of Staff is a horrible job! I wouldn't want it. :-X
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Departures of this sort are annoying. Obviously the White House is not served by them and by extension neither is the country. Why don't this guys really think this through before taking these jobs? At least stay through the end of the term.
Tony Snow did the exact same thing to Bush. Appointed White House press secretary on May 8, 2006, he left on September 13, 2007. ::)
Everyone wants the glamour of working in the White House... until they get there and realize it is not so glamorous! ::)
From what I have read - Daley can't deal with the bizaroo world in the WH regarding policies.
Like he said above - the policies of Obama simply are indefensible.
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btw - guys go do some research on Jacob Liu - he is a Citi Bank thug who is also knee deep in the bankster bs.
HOPE AND CHANGE!!!!!
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Departures of this sort are annoying. Obviously the White House is not served by them and by extension neither is the country. Why don't this guys really think this through before taking these jobs? At least stay through the end of the term.
Tony Snow did the exact same thing to Bush. Appointed White House press secretary on May 8, 2006, he left on September 13, 2007. ::)Everyone wants the glamour of working in the White House... until they get there and realize it is not so glamorous! ::)
That said, WH Chief of Staff is a horrible job! I wouldn't want it. :-X
Tony Snow left in 2007 because he had cancer. He died less than a year later.
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Michelle Obama: "Distressed" about Daley, Madigan, Hynes clout
By Lynn Sweet on January 8, 2012 4:16 PM | No Comments
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2012/01/michelle_obama_distressed_abou.html
WASHINGTON-- When Michelle Obama worked in Mayor Daley's City Hall in the early 1990s, she was "distressed" by how a small group of "white Irish Catholic" families -- the Daleys, the Hynes and the Madigans -- "locked up" power in Illinois.
And as she prepared to become first lady, Mrs. Obama naively wanted to delay a move into the White House for six months, so her daughters could finish the school year. Her initial thought was to "commute" to the White House from her South Side home.
And Marty Nesbitt, one of President Obama's best friends, had been recruited to run for Chicago mayor by African-American leaders -- but never ended up challenging Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama's chief of staff who went on to win City Hall.
Details about Mrs. Obama's initial reluctance to embrace her new life, her time in City Hall, the influence she has in the White House, tensions between Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, Emanuel and former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs -- are in a new book about the first couple by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor.
The Chicago Sun-Times has obtained a copy of The Obamas, to be published Tuesday. Kantor hits Chicago for an East Lake Shore Drive book party on Jan. 16; the next day, Jan. 17, she headlines a 6 p.m. event at the Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State.
Mrs. Obama worked in the Daley administration between Sept. 16, 1991, and April 30, 1993, according to City of Chicago personnel records. She was hired by Jarrett, then Daley's deputy chief of staff.
Kantor writes Mrs. Obama "disapproved of how closely Daley held power, surrounding himself with three or four people who seemed to let few outsiders in -- a concern she would echo years later with her own husband.
"...She particularly resented the way power in Illinois was locked up generation after generation by a small group of families, all white Irish Catholic -- the Daleys in Chicago, the Hynes and Madigans statewide."
When Jarrett was forced out of City Hall in 1995 -- even though she was close to Daley -- "the Obamas were horrified, their worst suspicions about the world confirmed."
Jarrett, Gibbs, Obama's top strategist David Axelrod, Mrs. Obama's former chief of staff Susan Sher and Chicago pals Eric Whitaker and Marty Nesbitt "gave me many hours of interview time each," Kantor wrote in her acknowledgements. In all, Kantor got the cooperation of 33 current and former members of the Obama administration and close friends.
Still, with reports about issues in the administration -- and an Emanuel who did not welcome Mrs. Obama's influence -- the Obama White House gave the book a frosty reception.
"The book, an overdramatization of old news, is about a relationship between two people whom the author has not spoken to in years," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. "The author last interviewed the Obamas in 2009 for a magazine piece, and did not interview them for this book. The emotions, thoughts and private moments described in the book, though often seemingly ascribed to the president and first lady, reflect little more than the author's own thoughts. These secondhand accounts are staples of every administration in modern political history and often exaggerated."
Camille Johnston, Mrs. Obama's former communications chief, told the Sun-Times, "We had some disagreements over how certain things would be handled, but in the end we all got back to the place Mrs. Obama had set at the onset: nothing on my agenda is more important than what's on his."
Categories:2012 Obama re-elect, Michelle Obama
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FLASHBACK
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Daley to leave W.H. after election
By: Jennifer Epstein and Glenn Thrush
October 11, 2011 11:38 AM EST
Bill Daley has long hinted that he’d head back to Chicago after the 2012 campaign, but the White House chief of staff — increasingly a lightning rod for criticism — is now making it clear he’ll be gone in January 2013.
The news was no secret to Obama insiders, who say Daley’s plans have been known for at least several weeks.
“I made a commitment to the president through his reelection, which I’m confident he will do, and then my wife and I will return to Chicago,” Daley said in an interview at the White House with NBC’s Chicago affiliate, WMAQ-TV.
Daley, who joined the Obama administration in January, has told reporters and associates that he never expected the gig was a long-term commitment, but the former JPMorgan Chase executive and scion of Chicago politics had never been quite as definitive in public about his planned departure.
The 63-year-old former commerce secretary — who has soured some West Wingers by crimping access to President Barack Obama and cutting junior staffers out of planning sessions — wouldn’t say what he’ll do after he leaves the White House but didn’t rule out running for office.
“All I’m trying to do is get through day to day. I have no plans,” he said in the interview posted online Monday. “The beauty of this job, to be very frank with you: It’s probably the only job I’ve ever had where I’ve not thought about what’s next. Maybe because it’s so consuming and there’s so much to do and be involved in … so it’s light-years away and just not something I give any thought to, what’s next after this.”
The buttoned-down chief of staff has smoothed out the rougher edges of day-to-day West Wing operations, sharply curtailed the number and duration of meetings and instituted a much more disciplined chain of command than existed before his arrival in January 2011. The president is said to be pleased with Daley’s calm, unflappable style and the no-drama atmosphere engendered by Daley and senior adviser David Plouffe.
But Daley’s tenure at the White House has been rocky. In addition to the in-house criticism, Democrats on Capitol Hill — especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — have complained that Daley ignored their wishes, POLITICO reported last month.
“Is there a level of unhappiness with Bill around the White House? Yeah,” one person close to Obama said in an interview at the time.
Daley has been criticized for cutting all but key players out of meetings, having poor relationships on the Hill and operating like a corporate executive.
“Nobody can hit the ground running,” Daley told the NBC affiliate. “There’s a great staff here, great people who support the president, many of whom have been with him for a number of years and through the campaign. So there’s great history here of people who have been here since the day he walked in on Inauguration Day.”
“It’s been a fascinating nine months,” Daley said. “The president’s a terrific guy to work with and work for. … It’s been a great honor.”
Daley’s predecessor in the Obama White House, Rahm Emanuel — now mayor of Chicago, a job that Daley’s father and brother both held — is a close friend who helped persuade Daley to take the job. The two talk occasionally, Daley said, and have the kind of relationship expected of two tough Chicago guys.
“We kind of BS back and forth, he gives a little advice, I give him advice,” Daley said, noting that they’ve known each other for 25 years.
During a National Journal/Atlantic magazine-sponsored forum earlier this month, Daley jokingly blamed claims that the White House is less than female-friendly on Emanuel, saying that such problems were “during my predecessor’s era.”
But Daley, who had a reputation as a smooth deal-cutter during his years as Bill Clinton’s commerce secretary, has had more trouble maneuvering in his return to Washington and has often complained about the incivility of partisan warfare in the divided capital.
Last month, Daley took heat for mishandling negotiations surrounding Obama’s jobs speech before a joint session of Congress. Daley, according to sources in both camps, simply assumed House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would say yes to the proposed night. Boehner declined and the White House was forced to reschedule.
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Bill Daley Barely Lasts One Year Under Obama - President To Discuss Live At 3 PM
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/09/2012 14:33 -0500
Housing Market Jamie Dimon Obama Administration President Obama White House
Remember when the hiring of former Wall Street insider and JP Morgan career man, Bill Daley, by the Obama administration as its latest Chief of Staff was big news last January? Well so much for that. The LA Times reports that the detente between Obama and Wall Street has reached new levels, with Daley's resignation expected to be announced at 3 pm by the president and is to be replaced by Citi's Jacob Lew, who in turn was the guy who oversaw the bank unit that "shorted the housing market." Well, at least Obama now knows to keep away from the JPM crew, whose Jamie Dimon is not all that happy with the president, if he wishes to avoid looking like not only the Wall Street's patsy, but also the guy who fails at sloppy seconds.
From the LA Times:
William Daley is stepping down as White House chief of staff and budget director Jack Lew is taking over the President Obama’s team as it heads into a tough election year, senior administration officials say.
Daley gave his letter of resignation to the president in a private meeting in the Oval Office last week, recounting the administration's successes of his one year on the job and saying it was time for him to return to his hometown of Chicago.
Obama plans to announce the change in leadership in a public event Monday afternoon. The official shift will take place at the end of the month, giving Lew time to complete the administration’s budget proposal while Daley leads the team through the crafting of the State of the Union address due in two weeks.
The choice of Lew puts a veteran staffer of the White House, Capitol Hill and State Department in a critical position at a difficult time for the president. Obama hopes he can work through tough budget and economic issues with Congress this year despite fierce opposition from Republicans in the GOP-led House. Having a strong team captain who can deal with lawmakers, staffers and business leaders is considered crucial to their strategy.
But aides say Obama had faith in Daley to lead that effort, and that he had not been discussing making any changes prior to last week. Daley’s letter took the president by surprise, said three officials familiar with the personnel discussions that followed. They requested anonymity to speak about the internal talks in advance of the public announcement.
The presidential address to explain how Daley has more pressing family obligations can be hear here live at 3pm, with the now customary 45 minute fashionably late delay.
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Tony Snow left in 2007 because he had cancer. He died less than a year later.
He had cancer before he took that job. I seem to recall him mentioning something about wanting/needing to make more money... so he was quitting. As if the salary range for WH Press Secretary was not known beforehand. ::)
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He had cancer before he took that job. I seem to recall him mentioning something about wanting/needing to make more money... so he was quitting. As if the salary range for WH Press Secretary was not known beforehand. ::)
I don't think that's entirely accurate:
In February 2005, while still at Fox News, Snow was diagnosed with colon cancer. He returned to broadcasting in April 2005 after having surgery.[10][11] On March 23, 2007, after almost a year as press secretary, Snow once again took a leave of absence to seek treatment for recurrent cancer.[12][13][14][15] Treatment for the spreading cancer in his final few months forced periodic absences from Snow's duties as press secretary, his subsequent position as a CNN commentator, and his public speaking engagements.[16][17] In the early morning of July 12, 2008, Snow died at Georgetown University Hospital as a result of colon cancer that had spread to his liver.[18] Reacting to Snow's death, former President George H. W. Bush praised Snow's ability to bring "a certain civility to this very contentious job."[8] He was 53 years old. Snow was later cremated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Snow#Career_timeline
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Incoming Chief of Staff Jack Lew's Past Statements Coming Under Fire
Big Government ^ | 1/9/12 | Wynton Hall
Posted on January 9, 2012 10:37:16 PM EST by Nachum
President Obama’s decision today to replace White House chief of staff William Daley with the director of the Office of Management and Budget Jack Lew is raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill as Washington watchers recall Mr. Lew’s past statements.
On Feb. 13, 2011, Mr. Lew appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley and said of Mr. Obama’s proposed budget:
Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we’re not adding to the debt anymore; we’re spending money that we have each year, and then we can work on bringing down our national debt.
Mr. Lew’s statement was deemed “false” by the nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com.
“The contention that ‘we will not be adding more to the national debt’ after the middle of the decade seems incorrect on its face,” reported PolitiFact. “So what is the administration thinking?”
(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...
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Daley Departs as Obama Shifts Strategy to Confronting Congress
January 10, 2012, 9:59 AM EST
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-10/daley-departs-as-obama-shifts-strategy-to-confronting-congress.html
By Mike Dorning
Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The departure of White House Chief of Staff William Daley reflects President Barack Obama’s choice to abandon a strategy of seeking accommodation with congressional Republicans and his critics in corporate America.
Daley’s resignation a year after taking the job is a “not inevitable but logical consequence” of Obama’s movement since September toward confrontation with Congress, said William Galston, who was a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton.
Jacob Lew, currently director of the Office of Management and Budget, will succeed Daley once he has completed work on the administration’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal, due to be delivered to Congress during the first week of February.
Obama turned to Daley, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and U.S. commerce secretary, in January 2011 as the president sought to improve relations with U.S. businesses and congressional Republicans following the 2010 midterm elections in which Democrats lost their House majority and saw their margin in the Senate shrink.
He was a central player in Obama’s failed attempt to reach a long-term budget deal with Republicans last July. The president’s job approval ratings plunged after the August standoff on the debt ceiling that brought the nation to the brink of default. Congressional Democrats criticized Daley for concessions such as Medicare cuts the White House offered in its attempts to achieve a grand bargain.
Speech Scheduling
Daley also took blame for a misstep in scheduling Obama’s Sept. 8 address to a joint session of Congress to announce his jobs plan. Daley spoke by telephone with House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, prior to the White House’s announcement of a speech and then Boehner publicly requested the speech be delayed a day.
After the $447 billion jobs bill was blocked in Congress, Obama changed course.
Going into the 2012 election, the president is seeking to portray himself as champion of middle-income Americans who is confronting Wall Street and an obstructionist Congress. He signaled his new message with a Dec. 6 address in Kansas, saying the nation is at “a make-or-break moment for the middle class.”
The strategy that Daley was supposed to implement “had hit a wall,” said Galston, now a governance analyst for the Brookings Institution in Washington. “The skill set and the relationships that he brought were much less applicable to the new White House political strategy.”
Returning to Chicago
Daley, 63, informed the president of his decision to leave when he returned to Washington last week after the holidays. Obama said yesterday that he didn’t immediately accept it, and he asked Daley to think it over. In the end, Daley said he wanted to return to his hometown of Chicago, where his family has dominated local politics for decades.
“No one in my administration has had to make more important decisions more quickly than Bill,” Obama said. “There is no question that I’m going to deeply miss having Bill by my side.”
Lew, Obama said, “has my complete trust.”
The change is occurring as the White House gears up for Obama’s re-election campaign with the economy still struggling to gain steam and the unemployment rate at 8.5 percent.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Daley’s departure “makes it even more clear every decision is being made through the lens of re-election” at the White House.
Priebus said Daley had been hired to bridge a divide between Obama and U.S. business and “found himself trying to defend the indefensible” with the administration’s policies.
New Confrontation
Obama ratcheted up tension with congressional Republicans last week by installing Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board through recess appointments. Republicans had used procedural maneuvers to block Cordray’s confirmation.
Lew will be Obama’s third chief of staff. His first, Rahm Emanuel, resigned last October to begin his successful run to succeed Daley’s older brother, longtime Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who retired.
Lew brings continuity as a key member of Obama’s existing team and deep relationships from a long career in Washington that can be used either to ease negotiations with Republicans or strengthen partisan unity in battle, Galston said.
Congressional Relations
“If the name of the game politically is close coordination with the Democratic congressional leadership to respond tactically to whatever the controversies are or whatever the openings happen to be, I would expect him to be quite good at that,” Galston said.
Obama named Lew as his budget office director in July 2010. Lew, 56, previously served in the State Department and was budget chief under President Clinton. He also has experience in Congress, having served as policy director for the late House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Lew played a role in such bipartisan deals as the 1983 Social Security Trust fund rescue and the 1997 balanced budget deal when he was Clinton’s deputy budget director. Former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin called Lew “a very skilled negotiator.”
“He’s quiet,” she said. “He doesn’t throw his weight around, but he gets the job done.”
Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the former top-ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said Lew is respected by both parties as “a straight shooter.”
“He’s a partisan, but he’s a fair guy,” Gregg said.
A graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown Law School, Lew’s background also includes academia, as chief operating officer at New York University for five years, and the private sector, as managing director of Citigroup Inc.’s Alternative Investments until January 2009 and chief operating officer of Citi’s Global Wealth Management before that.
--With assistance from Kate Andersen Brower and Roger Runningen in Washington. Editors: Joe Sobczyk, Jim Rubin.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net
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This administration is starting to go down in flames, I love it. We just need this whole Libya WPA violation thing to blow up in Obama's face and that will be the end of this freak show.
Hahhaa. The WPA is unconstitutional my friend.
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WLS Radio’s Bill Cameron Reports
CHICAGO (WLS) - Mayor Rahm Emanuel is talking about the departure of the now former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley but WLS Radio’s Bill Cameron reports the mayor put a self-serving twist on his remarks.
Mayor Emanuel, who was also the White House Chief of Staff before Bill Daley, said that Daley can hold his head high for the loyal one year of service he gave for what he called the toughest job in America.
LISTEN: Hear the Mayors Remarks About Bill Daley - Click Here
But even as he was praising Bill Daley, Emanuel took a little jab about who lasted longer as the Chief.
“Historically, the modern Chief of Staff is an 18 month job. It is a grinding job. It’s exciting! But basically every problem, before it gets to the oval office sits at that desk. So that’s the historic norm. I lasted past the 18 months. Bill didn’t.”
It worth noting that Emanuel also predicted Bill Daley will now be heading to the private sector, so if Daley is involved in the Obama campaign, it apparently won’t be a major role.
© Content Copyright 2012 WLS Radio 890AM and WLSAM.com. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Obama’s real reelection problem
By John Feehery - 01/10/12 01:41 PM ET
The Chicago Sun-Times’s Lynn Sweet picked out an interesting morsel in Jodi Kantor’s book about the Obama family:
“When Michelle Obama worked in Mayor Daley’s City Hall in the early 1990s, she was 'distressed' by how a small group of 'white Irish Catholic' families — the Daleys, the Hynes and the Madigans — 'locked up' power in Illinois.
"She particularly resented the way power in Illinois was locked up generation after generation by a small group of families, all white Irish Catholic — the Daleys in Chicago, the Hynes and Madigans statewide.”
Obama White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, one of those hated white Irish Catholics, resigned the same weekend the book’s juiciest tidbits leaked out.
It is probably all just a coincidence, but sometimes coincidences reveal bigger truths.
And the bigger truth is that Bill Daley left the White House because he lost to Valerie Jarrett and to the president’s wife in the battle for the philosophical direction of the Obama White House.
I don’t know if Michelle Obama’s antipathy toward white Irish Catholics finally became too much of a barrier to Daley or not. But I do know that Daley was only ineffective because his boss would not let him be effective.
Bill Daley is a political pragmatist. He cuts deals. Like his father and his brother, he is not a left-wing ideologue; nor is he a Republican in Democratic clothing.
He is a pro-business Democrat, an increasingly rare breed these days in Washington.
Obama is not a pro-business Democrat. His wife is not a pro-business Democrat. They don’t like the business community. They don’t trust the free market. They want to spread wealth around (other people’s wealth, I might add).
It has become increasingly clear over the last several months that Obama has little interest in tacking to the political middle to improve his standing with the broad center of the country.
He has decided that he wants his presidency to mean something different, and he has made the fateful decision that he will govern as a left-wing political populist. That is why he has embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement, why he keeps using class-warfare rhetoric, why he has given up on deal-cutting, why he has decided to run against Congress rather than on his accomplishments.
But the problem for the president is that this tactic is not working with crucial swing voters. More specifically, it is not working with white voters.
As Ron Brownstein pointed out, in writing about an Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll released on Dec. 16, Obama’s approval ratings among all white voters are absolutely terrible:
“In 2008, he carried 52 percent of those college-educated white women, but attracted much smaller shares among college-educated white men (42 percent), white women without a college degree, the so-called waitress moms (41 percent) and the non-college white men (just 39 percent).
"The new survey shows that with all four groups his approval rating is appreciably lower than his 2008 performance. He’s fallen to 42 percent of the college-educated white women, 37 percent among the college-plus white men, just 34 percent among the non-college white men and all the way down to 30 percent with the waitress moms.
"Looking at whites by age underlines the picture of broad-based weakness. In 2008, Obama carried a 54 percent majority of whites under 30; but in the new poll his approval rating with them has tumbled to 39 percent.
"His standing with white seniors now is almost identical: In 2008, he won only 40 percent of them, and his approval rating with them now is 41 percent. His numbers are lowest with whites in the prime working years: just 29 percent of whites [age] 30-44, and 35 percent of whites 45-64 say they approve of his performance. In 2008, he won 41 percent of the former and 42 percent of the latter.
"Among all whites, now just 35 percent approve of his performance and 58 percent disapprove. That’s virtually identical to the results in the 2010 congressional election, when whites gave 60 percent of their votes to Republicans and just 37 percent to Democrats, according to the National Election Pool exit poll conducted by Edison Research ... "
Some might conclude that these white voters don’t like Obama because they are inherently racist, but I think that is a dangerous and stupid conclusion. After all, Obama won the majority of white voters in the last election.
I think it is because the Obama White House has made the decision that it doesn’t need those white voters to win. That may be true in 20 years, but it is not true today.
The swing vote in this next election is the same as it has been in the last six elections. It is the white working-class voter.
Ignoring and marginalizing Bill Daley might have pleased the wife and Valerie Jarrett, but Daley’s departure is very bad news for Obama’s hopes for reelection.
Those white Irish Catholics whom Michelle Obama so despises are the key to her husband's campaign success. And getting rid of Bill Daley is one more example of President Obama’s real problem this coming election year.
Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/203361-obamas-real-reelection-problem
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House Republican links Daley’s departure to Solyndra probe
By Andrew Restuccia - 01/10/12 12:57 PM ET
The House Republican leading the investigation into the Obama administration’s $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee alleged Tuesday that White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley resigned in part because of the GOP probe into the failed solar company.
“I understand his desire to leave the White House given the seriousness of this and other investigations marring the integrity and credibility of this Administration,” Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative panel, said in a statement.
Stearns, who is heading up a months-long Republican investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee, said Daley “has lead the Administration’s obstruction” of the probe.
Republicans on Stearns’ panel subpoenaed the White House in November for all documents related to the Solyndra loan guarantee. Daley was named in the subpoena, along with Vice President Biden’s Chief of Staff Bruce Reed.
The White House ultimately rejected the full scope of the GOP subpoena, arguing the request was overly broad and burdensome. The White House instead delivered about 135 pages of documents that administration officials say meet the “legitimate oversight interests” of congressional investigators.
“Daley holds the keys to the gate at the White House and is failing to comply with the subpoena for the White House’s documents and records related to Solyndra,” Stearns said in the statement Tuesday.
Stearns called on Daley’s replacement, Office of Management and Budget chief Jack Lew, to fully comply with the subpoena, threatening congressional action to obtain additional documents.
“I expect that the next chief of staff will comply with the subpoena or Congress will take the next step to force the White House to meet the requirements of the U.S. Constitution,” Stearns said.
The Obama administration has provided Republicans on the committee with more than 180,000 pages of documents related to the Solyndra loan guarantee.
None of the documents provide evidence that the administration approved the loan guarantee for political reasons, as Republicans have alleged. But Stearns and others have vowed to continue their investigation.
Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in September about two years after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration.
President Obama announced Monday that Daley is stepping down.
"Bill told me that he wanted to spend more time with his family, especially his grandchildren, and he felt it was the right decision," Obama said. Daley will serve as co-chairman of Obama's reelection campaign.
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Exit the moderates
By CHARLES GASPARINO
Last Updated: 12:33 AM, January 11, 2012
Posted: 10:45 PM, January 10, 2012
The announcement that Bill Daley will step down as President Obama’s chief of staff is further proof that as the 2012 election approaches, Obama is embracing his inner leftist on anything touching the economy. The administration has moved so far left that even one of the country’s most prominent Democrats can’t fit in.
Embracing Wall Street protesters, massive government programs and tax hikes might seem like a losing formula for re-election, but Team Obama is betting it’s the best way — maybe the only way — to win.
A scorched-earth assault on the GOP nominee as a plutocrat, and on Republicans in Congress as the roadblock to progress, seems to be their chosen strategy for distracting the public from the disaster of the president’s economic policies.
That left Daley — as one of the last moderates left in the administration — as odd man out at the White House. Of course, it’s also rotten news for the struggling economy: At least one more year of full-throttle Obamanomics, with the promise of four more if the strategy works.
As moderates like Daley depart, anti-business crusaders increasingly fill key slots at the new consumer bureau, the National Labor Relations Board and elsewhere in the administration — giving businesses ample reason to scale back hiring for the foreseeable future.
The administration can celebrate anemic economic growth and an unemployment rate of “only” 8.5 percent — but millions more Americans have been out of work so long they’ve stopped looking, and no longer show up anymore in the “unemployed” tallies.
Daley’s departure, it should be noted, had been in the cards for months. He was brought in last January to convince the business community that, despite constant verbal jabs and plans imposing both new taxes and onerous regulations, the president really wasn’t all that anti-business.
Daley would work to change both the perception and the reality. A former banker and Clinton-era commerce secretary (and son and brother of two Chicago mayors), he saw the “shellacking” the Democrats received in the 2010 elections as proof positive that Team Obama needed to move to the center in order to have a chance at a second term.
He even had the guts to preach economic moderation in public, agreeing with a businessman at one gathering that regulations are too onerous to support decent economic growth.
Daley thought he had the president’s blessing to move the Obama economic agenda to the center, but that support quickly evaporated as the ideologues and the spin masters like Valerie Jarrett and David Plouffe assumed bigger roles in the administration’s daily affairs.
As I reported on the Fox Business Network back in September, Daley grew increasingly agitated about his role. He openly complained that he was being isolated by Jarrett, Obama’s friend and personal adviser, who’s been at the forefront of Obama’s most recent leftward tilt, and let it be known that he wanted to do something else — maybe serve as treasury secretary, given his banking background at JP Morgan.
At the time, I received an interesting phone call from Daley himself, grousing about my report without offering any specific complaints. When I asked him if he wanted the treasury, he told me he didn’t “lust” for the job. He issued a similar nondenial when I asked him about his issues with Jarrett.
Those issues were obviously too much for Daley to overcome; he had no choice but to resign and “spend more time with his family.”
One thing is certain: Bill Daley may want to spend more time back in his native Chicago, but the president’s ultraliberal handlers clearly wanted him to spend less time with the man in the White House.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/exit_the_moderates_nRQa6VyfZ8ZqLNIxIeFyjL#ixzz1jBdENRwZ