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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (33505)	9/19/2008 12:13:34 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

I am surprised the McCain campaign didn't know a president can't fire the SEC chair. McCain Flub? Republican Says He'd Fire SEC Chair as President September 18, 2008 1:47 PM ABC News' David Wright reports: At a joint rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Thursday, Republican John McCain slammed the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) for being "asleep at the switch" saying that if he were president, he would fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the SEC since 2005 and a former Republican congressman. McCain said the SEC has allowed trading practices such as short selling to stay in place that turned the "markets into a casino." "The regulators were asleep, my friends," McCain said. "The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the president. And in my view has betrayed the public trust. If I were president today, I would fire him." But while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair, a commissioner of an independent regulatory commission cannot be removed by the president. From time to time, presidents have attempted to remove commissioners who have proven "uncooperative." However, the courts have general upheld the independence of commissioners. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt fired a member of the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court ruled the president acted unconstitutionally. Asked how McCain would fire Cox if the president does not have the formal power to fire the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the McCain campaign pointed to former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt who resigned in 2002 when it was made clear to him that he had lost the confidence of the Bush administration. "Not only is there historical precedent for SEC Chairs to be removed, the President of the United States always reserves the right to request the resignation of an appointee and maintain the customary expectation that it will be delivered," said McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds. SEC Chair Chris Cox released a statement Thursday in which he disagreed with McCain that he should be fired and defended the regulatory agency he heads. “While I have great respect for Senator McCain, we have sometimes disagreed, and this is one such occasion," Cox said in a statement. "The SEC has made plain that we have zero tolerance for naked short selling. In this market crisis, the men and women of the SEC have responded valiantly as they always do – with the utmost dedication and professionalism." The White House said this week it wants to stay out of politics, but a Bush administration spokesperson said today of SEC Chairman Cox, who was nominated by President George W. Bush: "the chairman has the president's support." Campaigning together in Iowa today McCain and Sarah Palin accused the Obama campaign of taking political advantage of the recent economic crisis. "My opponent sees an economic crisis as a political opportunity instead of an opportunity to lead," McCain said. Said Palin of Obama: “He likes to point the finger of blame, but does he ever lift a finger to help?” McCain accused Obama of taking more campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives than anyone aside from the chair of the Congressional committee that regulates the lenders. “While Sen. Obama was lining his pockets with campaign contributors, he didn’t lift a finger” said McCain, who took credit for warning Congress of the impending crisis two years ago. McCain also noted that the former head of Obama’s vice presidential search committee Jim Johnson was formerly a Fannie Mae executive. The Obama campaign says when Sean Hannity asked Palin last night whether there should be an investigation of campaign contributions by Fannie and Freddie executives, she deferred saying, “that’s significant, but even more significant is the role that lobbyists play in this.” Obama campaign staffers note that several of McCain’s top advisors – including campaign manager Rick Davis, vice presidential vetter Arthur Culvahouse, and McCain consigliere Charlie Black – lobbied on behalf of the mortgage giants. ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Lisa Chinn, Alyssa Litoff, Bret Hovell and Imtiyaz Delawala contributed to this report. blogs.abcnews.com

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (33505)	9/19/2008 12:36:33 AM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 149317

A Conservative for Obama My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country. By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me. In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America . Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher. Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results. Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good. But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask. Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America ’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth. This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse. Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers. Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia , as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened. “Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.