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Rigid conservatives in the RNC want to establish a purity test for the party’s candidates. Guess what? Reagan the conservative hero would have failed most of the criteria.

The most rigidly conservative members of the Republican National Committee are circulating a proposal to establish a purity test for the party’s candidates.

If adopted, the party would withhold money from any contender who disagreed with conservative principles on more than two of 10 essential issues identified by the right-wingers.

“The problem is that conservatives have lost trust in the Republican Party that we will govern as conservatives,” argues James Bopp Jr., an RNC member from Indiana who has spearheaded the purity-test push. “I think that loss of trust is warranted to a certain extent because of the fact that we in the final several years of the Bush administration were supporting increased government, earmarks and, ultimately, bailouts.”

Earlier this year, Bopp and his compatriots pressured RNC chair Michael Steele to declare President Obama to be a “socialist.” The conservative crusaders were rebuffed then, but if they win approval for their purity test at the committee’s winter meeting in January, the party will officially express: “Republican solidarity in opposition to Obama’s socialist agenda is necessary to preserve the security of our country, our economic and political freedoms, and our way of life.”

With Orwellian irony, Bopp and his buddies have labeled their proposal: “Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates.

(The relevant portion of the resolution can be viewed at the Wall Street Journal, if you have the stomach for it.)

Fair enough.

So here’s a question: Applying the standard established in the resolution – review of the candidate’s official record, public statements and answers to questions – would Ronald Reagan pass the purity test?

Let’s see:

(1) Deficit spending soared during Reagan’s presidency.Strike one.

(2) As governor of California, Reagan oversaw the development of Medi-Cal, the nation’s largest Medicaid program – expanding it to cover long-term care and developed massive new managed care systems. Strike two.

(3) As governor of California, Reagan Reagan established the Air Resources Board to battle California’s smog problems and supported aggressive government intervention where the market had failed to protect the environment. As president, Reagan signed more wilderness protections laws – which restrict private-sector exploitation of natural resources – than any president in history. Strike three.

(4) Reagan was a former union president who campaigned against the Taft-Hartley Act and other restrictions of the right of unions to organize. Strike four.

(5) Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to most undocumented workers who could prove they had been in the country continuously for the previous five years. After he finished his presidency, Reagan continues to speak out forcefully for immigration rights. Strike five.

(6) After the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut, Reagan was urged by some to surge more troops into the region. Instead, he ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. Strike six.

(7) Reagan acknowledged that during his presidency the U.S.sold weapons to Iran. Strike seven.

(8) Reagan was the first president to invite an openly gay couple to spend the night in the White House and he famously argued that gays and lesbians should not be discriminated against in a 1978 television advertising campaign. Strike eight.

(9) Shortly after his inauguration as governor of California, Reagan signed into law the most liberal abortion statute of its day”. Strike nine.

(10) Here’s Reagan, in 1991, on gun control: “I support the Brady Bill, and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay.” Strike ten.

Of course it is true that Reagan, like John Kerry, was for some ideas before he was against them.

Reasonable people might debate the proper point at which to try and pin Reagan down.

But no reasonable person can suggest that Ronald Reagan would have met the eight out ten test the RNC right-wingers seek to apply – especially on hot-button issues such as gun control, gay rights and immigration.

Indeed, one of the favorites of the RNC’s extreme conservatives, Florida U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio, recently declared that Reagan was wrong to support amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

And it is probably worth noting that, when Reagan was seeking the Republican nomination in 1980, conservatives Phil Crane and John Connolly suggested that “the Gipper” was an amiable fellow but just not pure enough. Crane positioned himself that year as as a pure conservative alternative to Reagan.

Crane, the purist, won 1.8 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary and exited stage right.

Looking back at Tim Geithner’s less than a year at the helm of Treasury, one can point to rather considerable successes: the economy is growing again (+3.2 percent for the third quarter), and the Dow stands at over 10,400, a remarkable comeback. Even housing is picking up nicely (albeit artificially fueled by the Federal $8,000 exemption for first time buyers), which caused the market to go up some 130 points Monday when the announcement on housing for October came out. However in terms of the employment situation (10.2 percent unemployment, the highest in 26 years) there is growing nervousness about the 2010 elections among Democrats, and monetary policy has not been terribly effective. Even the Republicans, to whom unemployment is not a matter to lose sleep over when profits are up, are grousing about Geithner, as Asim Shah of Bob’s Guide reports:

Mr Geithner has faced a barrage of criticism from the Republican Party in recent weeks over his failure to cut unemployment, improve the strength of the dollar and speed up the pace of economic recovery.

…SNIP…

Dick Bove, a banking industry analyst at Rochdale Securities, said that it was vital the US had a Treasury secretary who had the necessary experience in the sector and the full support of Congress.

“That is not Timothy Geithner,” he said.

“It is Jamie Dimon.”

There is a definite upwell of calls for Geithner to be replaced, and J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon seems to be atop of the list of those considered to replace him. Why the big push to oust Geithner now?

Partly directly because of the employment situation and Democratic nervousness about the elections: if Geithner goes, then the Obama administration is ‘making changes’ to help Americans get jobs (since Geithner’s leadership saw rather poor results in that area). But the reasons go much deeper, including a series of moves which have been rather unpopular and unsuccessful, and also some blowback about the AIG bailout and Geithner and his pals’ deep ties to Goldman Sachs. From Forbes’ Thomas Cooley:

As president of the New York Fed from 2003 until January of this year, Secretary Geithner has been in the midst of the maelstrom from the beginning. But he has been performing triage, making quick, instinctive decisions to stop the bleeding. Now it is time for more thoughtful decisions, for reconstructive surgery if you like, and so far that hasn’t seemed to be his forte.

…SNIP…

Secretary Geithner has seemingly been wrong-footed on financial reform as well. In June the Treasury put forth its list of financial reform proposals. They were far reaching and covered virtually all of the important issues that need to be addressed: systemic risk regulation, regulation of the consumer mortgage market, regulation of derivatives, the structure of the regulatory system. But the devil was in the details, and the details were at best vague. The basic structure drew immediate objections from many.

A centerpiece of the reform plan was to give the Federal Reserve responsibility for monitoring system risk–that is, risk to the stability of the whole financial system caused by the activities of an individual institution. That scheme met with almost immediate objections from many, because it would have changed and broadened the mandate of the Federal Reserve in ways that made it more connected to the Treasury and threatened its independence. And it risked diverting the focus of the Federal Reserve away from its primary task of conducting monetary policy and insuring the integrity of the payments system.

The reform proposals also set off a turf war among regulators. Even the Fed argued that it was the institution to regulate mortgages and consumer credit, a job it had manifestly failed at over the past decade.

More recently, Geithner and the Treasury lost an argument in the House Financial Services Committee over how to structure a resolution fund for large complex financial institutions that fail.

Cooley then explains for us Geithner’s involvement in a growing anger over the AIG bailout, at least among those liberal-minded people in the know:

The most recent bump in the road has been the scathing criticism of Geithner by Neil Barofsky, the TARP special inspector, over the funneling of taxpayer funds intended to bailout AIG (AIG – news – people) to its counterparties including Goldman Sachs (GS – news – people ). As the report put it: “There is no question that the effect of the FRBNY’s decisions–indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG–was that tens of billions of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties.” And the report was particularly critical of the fact that there was no attempt to extract haircuts from the counterparties–they were all paid 100 cents on the dollar.

The overall giveaway bailout to AIG amounted to a whopping $62 billion. Ouch.

Cooley continues:

As a result, the conspiracy theorists are having a field day. Consider their fuel:

As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner worked very closely with Henry Paulson (THAT b*stard, you know, Bush’s …well, let’s not call names) –his predecessor as Treasury Secretary and before that head of Goldman Sachs –as was warranted by the situation.

Geithner’s primary deputy at the New York Fed was William Dudley, a former Goldman Sachs economist.

The chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until May 2009 was Stephen Friedman, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs, and a member of the Goldman’s board at the time of his New York Fed service.

Friedman also chaired the search committee that selected Geithner’s replacement (at the N.Y. Fed) –William Dudley.

At the time his former Goldman Sachs colleague Dudley was appointed–December 2008–Friedman purchased an additional $3 million of Goldman stock in violation of the rules.

Now ask yourself, surrounded by this crowd of influences, how likely is it that Geithner would have asked Goldman Sachs to take a serious haircut on their AIG positions?

You don’t have to be a black helicopter fan to recognize that the proximity of the small world that is Wall Street to the very institutions and public servants who are meant to regulate them can seriously compromise their credibility. This proximity and the fact that Wall Street ran amok on Geithner’s watch as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York–the top regulator–has damaged his credibility in his current role.

Apparently, even for the Wall Street crowd, even at the top, Limburger cheese can only smell so bad before you realize that it’s rotten and replace it….

The days ahead will see if Tim Geithner weathers the storm, or if Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan is Obama’s new knight in shining armor. Bob’s Guide gives us J.P. Morgan’s bottom line with Dimon at the helm, which is so appealing as a model of success: “Last month, JPMorgan Chase reported third quarter net income of $3.6 billion, up from $527 million in the same period in 2008.” Forbes reports that Dimon’s “JPMorgan Chase, (is) the largest bank in the country by market capitalization ($168 billion)” and “is the best-capitalized large bank in America ($31.5 billion of loan loss reserves and $162 billion of shareholder equity as of Sept. 30).” That looks pretty good after the debacle of 2008, where insufficient reserves and risky gambles with derivatives based on shaky mortgages brought down the economy.

Plus Dimon “is on nobody’s hate list,” is “a longtime Democrat” and “has connections inside the beltway.” (Forbes) He gained a lot of “stock” (no pun intended) with the government when he helped out by rescuing Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, too.

But does he have the right ideas for America? As the following YoungTurks video points out, he has come out “against every single regulatory measure proposed, not just by the White House, but by Congress as well” and is for pure market capitalism, unvarnished. For example he is the leading proponent of the “no bank is too big to fail” argument. He also seems dead set against consumer protections and regulation of derivatives. Maybe as CEO of J.P.Morgan Chase HE is capable of managing the large risk of derivatives successfully, but what of other institutions, and how will ordinary American consumers be protected?

His perspective is purely that of the predatory professional banker, and ordinary Americans will fall by the wayside. Is this supposed to be some kind of improvement?

Tim Geithner Replacement – Could He be Worse?

Will The Unemployment Disaster Be Obama’s Katrina?, © The Huffington Post, November 23, 2009, by Arianna Huffington, photo of urban youth dumpster diving © Stockxpert, photo of Larry Summers from Wikipedia, large excerpt quoted verbatim:

There’s a Category 5 storm about to make landfall, and the president and the officials in charge of preparing for the approaching disaster don’t seem to be particularly worried. Sound familiar?

Just as Katrina exposed critical weaknesses in the priorities and competence of the Bush administration, the unfolding unemployment disaster is threatening to do the same for the Obama White House.

The members of the Obama administration may not be attending a birthday party at John McCain’s ranch in Sedona or shopping for expensive Ferragamo shoes in New York as a great American city is destroyed, but their decidedly lackadaisical response to what job losses are doing to multiple great American cities raises the question: will unemployment be Barack Obama’s Katrina?

His economic team’s resistance to a second round of stimulus, “lukewarm” reaction to Congressional jobs legislation, and prioritization of deficit reduction over job creation certainly has the feel of a taking-in-the-damage-from-2,500-feet flyover moment.

“There is no discussion of a package like a second stimulus,” said deputy White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki. “But we are working closely with Congress and consulting with outside experts to determine the right policies and next steps.” No word on whether those outside experts include the 1 in 6 workers currently unemployed or underemployed.

Of course, the real problem isn’t the outside experts; the administration’s wrongheaded approach is a classic inside job. Sen. Sherrod Brown summed it up on CNN, telling John King that when it comes to putting the focus on Main Street, the president’s “advisors are mixed.”

Which makes one wonder: what level of unemployment would it take to unmix them? Even 10.2 percent, the highest level in 26 years, after 22 straight months of job losses, doesn’t seem to have quickened the pulse of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.

And it’s not like the levees haven’t begun to crack, with the real unemployment rate — factoring in discouraged and partially employed workers — at 17.5 percent, the unemployment rate for workers aged 16 to 24 at 19 percent, and the unemployment rate for young African-Americans at 30 percent. What’s more, the average length of unemployment is at a record high, while the ratio of job seekers to open positions is now 6 to 1.

A new ABC/Washington Post poll reported that 30 percent of Americans say someone in their home has lost a job. I’m guessing that Summers and Geithner are comfortably in the other 70 percent. But even if it hasn’t hit home for them, it should be clear that unemployment is going to be the singular issue of 2010.

Congressional Democrats have certainly gotten the message — and have grown tired of waiting for the White House to take the lead. According to The Hill, House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Pelosi, are “worried they’ve appeared unresponsive to rising unemployment because they were absorbed by health care.” The article also says that Harry Reid has told colleagues he wants a jobs bill soon.

As John Larson, the fourth-ranking House Democrat puts it: “It’s jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. Members of this caucus feel… that a jobless recovery is just simply unacceptable to us.”

The problem for the White House and for the Democratic Party — and, most importantly, for the country — is that the administration’s response on jobs is being led by Summers, who actually opposed the extension of unemployment benefits Obama just signed. At this point you have to wonder what Obama’s attachment to Summers and Geithner is. We know if you become a target of Glenn Beck and cause five seconds of embarrassment to the administration you need to start updating your resume (ask Van Jones), but if you slowly bring down the administration, and the party, and the country, that’s apparently fine.

Back in February, when the $787 billion economic stimulus bill was signed, Summers and company promised that it would keep the unemployment rate from going any higher than 8.5 percent. With another 3.4 million jobs lost since then — and the official unemployment rate at 10.2 and rising — what does Summers say now?

“I think we got the Recovery Act right.”

Really, Larry? What would getting it wrong look like?

Read the ful article, here.

*****

Summers, Geithner and Bernanke must go! ~ Paul Evans

One in Four Borrowers Is Underwater, © The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2009, by Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty, excerpt quoted verbatim:

The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery.

Nearly 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes in the third quarter, according to First American CoreLogic, a real-estate information company based in Santa Ana, Calif.

These so-called underwater mortgages pose a roadblock to a housing recovery because the properties are more likely to fall into bank foreclosure and get dumped into an already saturated market. Economists from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said Monday they didn’t expect U.S. home prices to hit bottom until early 2011, citing the prospect of oversupply.

Home prices have fallen so far that 5.3 million U.S. households are tied to mortgages that are at least 20% higher than their home’s value, the First American report said. More than 520,000 of these borrowers have received a notice of default, according to First American.

Read the full article, here.

Obama’s Afghanistan Decision: 34,000 More Troops And An Exit Strategy, Reports Say, The Huffington Post, November 23, 2009, © The Associated Press, excerpts quoted verbatim:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House braced for a tough sell of President Barack Obama’s long-awaited decision on whether to commit tens of thousands of new U.S. forces to the stalemated war in Afghanistan, even as the president met Monday with top advisers for the last major discussion before an announcement “within days.”

Military officials and others expect Obama to settle on a middle-ground option that would deploy an eventual 32,000 to 35,000 U.S. forces to the 8-year-old conflict. That rough figure has stood as the most likely option since before Obama’s last large war council meeting earlier this month, when he tasked military planners with rearranging the timing and makeup of some of the deployments.

The president has said with increasing frequency in recent days that a big piece of the rethinking of options that he ordered had to do with building an exit strategy into the announcement — in other words, revising the options presented to him to clarify when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government and under what conditions.

As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it to reporters on Monday, it’s “not just how we get people there, but what’s the strategy for getting them out.”

Obama held the 10th meeting of his Afghanistan strategy review since mid-September on Monday night, with a large cast of foreign policy and military advisers, to go over that revised information from war planners. The two-hour Situation Room session was aimed at discussing “some of the questions that the president had, some additional answers to what he’d asked for,” Gibbs said.

…SNIP…

McClatchy News reported:

A U.S. military official used the term “decisional” to describe Monday evening’s meeting among Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Gates, Clinton, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Eikenberry and senior U.S. military commanders.

The administration’s plan contains “off-ramps,” points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or “begin looking very quickly at exiting” the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.

“We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that’s it,” the U.S. defense official said. [...]

As McClatchy reported last month, the Obama administration has been quietly working with U.S. allies and Afghan officials on an “Afghanistan Compact,” a package of political reforms and anti-corruption measures that it hopes will boost popular support for Karzai and erase the doubts about his legitimacy raised by his fraud-tainted re-election.

See Obama Says He Intends to ‘Finish the Job’ in Afghanistan, The New York Times, November 24, 2009, by Jeff Zeleny and David Stout.

See Bill Moyers Plays LBJ Tapes, Draws Similarities With Obama And Afghanistan War, The Huffington Post, November 21, 2009.

See Top Democrat Warns Afghanistan Will Bankrupt Domestic Programs, Threatens War Surtax If Obama Sends More Troops, The Los Angeles Times, Top of the Ticket, November 23, 2009, by Johanna Neuman.

Bill Moyers Journal on More Troops for Afghanistan

February 20, 2009 – 2:19

William Black Nails It: Obama, Get Rid of Bush’s Wrecking Crew, Daily Kos, November 23, 2009, by Badabing, large excerpt quoted verbatim:

Thank god for a voice of sanity coming from our financial sectors these days. William K. Black has a must read article Monday on Huffington Post concerning the ‘meme’ that drives me completely insane:

That somehow Americans are supposed to believe (and be thankful) that Treasurer Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke of the FED ‘saved our nation’ from a total financial meltdown.

That is without a doubt the biggest ‘lie’ out there in ‘Wall Street Bizarro World’ that there is…. it is sort of like dressing the Foxes up in brand spanking ‘New Big Red Roosters Jumpsuits’ hoping that no one will notice that their ‘Fox tails’ are still hanging out of their ‘Rooster Suits’…it just don’t cut it babe. The jig is up.

For those of you unfamiliar with William K. Black, here is a bit of background:

William K. Black is an American lawyer, academic, author, and a former bank regulator. Black’s expertise is in white-collar crime, public finance, regulation, and other topics in law and economics. He developed the concept of “control fraud”, in which a business or national executive uses the entity he or she controls as a “weapon” to commit fraud.

Black is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry, 2005, University of Texas Press, ISBN 0292721390, (link points to Amazon page to purchase book).

On April 3, 2009 Black appeared on “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS and provided critical commentary on the U.S. banking crisis.[3] In the interview with Bill Moyers,[4] Black asserted that the banking crisis in the United States that started in late 2008 is essentially a big Ponzi scheme; that the “liar loans” and other financial tricks were essentially illegal frauds; and that the triple-A ratings given to these loans was part of a criminal cover-up. He said that the “Prompt Corrective Action Law” passed after the Savings and Loan crisis mandated that ailing banks should be put into receivership. Black also stated that trying to hide how bad the situation is will simply prolong the problem, as happened in Japan’s lost decade. Black stated that Timothy Geithner is engaged in a cover-up, and that the administration does not want people to understand what went wrong or how bad the banking situation is today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black

Mr. Black talks about a new book by Tom Frank’s entitled:  The Wrecking Crew which explains how the Bush administration destroyed our nation, our social fabric and our economy. The short sighted decision of the Obama administration to reward two of the worst leaders of Bush’s crew — Geithner and Bernanke with not just promotions but reappointments, instead of dealing with the ’cause’ of the financial meltdown by appointing ‘sane’ economists, has in fact damaged the economy (how much worst could it get?) and has caused a huge backlash that is now coming from every sector (the left, the right, the middle) and is increasing political fallout that is unlikely to ‘go away.’

As Mr. Black states about last week:

Last week was a bad one for Geithner and Bernanke. Senator Dodd said that Bernanke’s confirmation was no longer a done deal. The House Financial Services Committee revolted against the administration, the Fed, and Chairman Barney Frank. It voted for a strong bill to audit the Fed. Senate Banking Chairman Schumer went to a conference at Columbia University — where a generation of students salivated at the prospects of Wall Street wealth — and was overwhelmed by an audience denouncing the continuing stranglehold of the finance industry over successive administrations and the Congress. Neither Barney’s blarney nor Schumer’s schmooze was any avail before an outraged public.

The backlash is building, and President Obama would be well advised to face this head on, instead of continuing to ignore the growing outrage this is continuing to damage his own administration.  The ‘old school’ of Barney and Schumer’s schmooze is not pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes, and as one Kossack noted on a recent diary I did concerning what is going on by ‘pretending’ that everything is just ‘hunky dory’ out there by President Obama, the real bottom line is this:

We come clean, and it will hurt.  We continue to try to hide the truth, and we will be destroyed.
by JesseCW on Fri Nov 20, 2009 at 07:52:58 AM PST

I could not agree with Jesse more, and that is what is really going on in our nation right now, and if anyone believes that the Obama Administration is just going to ‘ride this one out’ and that it will all just ‘blow over’ then they are running on ‘delusional fuel.’

Mr. Black goes on to dispel the ‘meme’ that drives me insane, mainly that we should all be throwing a ‘ticket tape parade’ for Geithner and Bernanke (aka, the Wrecking Crew) for ‘saving the nation’ from disaster. Which is the biggest crock of sh** I’ve ever heard in my life.

The Washington Post article then offers a metaphor that serves as an apology for the Bush Wrecking Crew. The metaphor is driving over a cliff: “‘Secretary Geithner has helped steer the American economy back from the brink, and is now leading the effort on financial reform,’ White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.” Geithner pushed back against Republicans who questioned his performance, telling them, “you gave this president an economy falling off the cliff.”

You? How about we? Bush’s financial Wrecking Crew “gave this president an economy falling off the cliff.” Geithner was President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from October 23, 2003 until President Obama chose him as his Treasury Secretary. He was supposed to be the lead regulator of many of the largest bank holding companies. His failures as a regulator were a major cause of the “economy falling off the cliff.” Bernanke held prominent positions in the Bush administration from 2002 to the end of the administration and failed as a regulator an economist. Geithner and Bernanke failed to regulate even after the FBI publicly warned in September 2004 that (1) there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud and (2) it would lead to a financial crisis if it were not contained. Their refusal to take responsibility for the harm they inflicted on our nation as leaders of Bush’s financial Wrecking Crew adds to their unsuitability. Rewarding their perennial failures with a promotion and reappointment represents a dereliction of duty by the Obama administration.

The administration apologists praise Geithner and Bernanke for “steer[ing] the American economy back from the brink.” Greenspan, Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner were the leaders of Bush’s financial Wrecking Crew. They were the guys blinded by their pro-Wall Street ideology that drove the car 120 mph down an icy mountain road and lost control of it. They took us to the “brink” of running “off the cliff” and creating the Second Great Depression. The bizarre claim is that we should praise them because they, and Wall Street, only wrecked the economy — they haven’t (yet) utterly destroyed it. Under their metaphor, we’re supposed to cheer Geithner and Bernanke because once they finally figured out that they were careening toward the cliff, they decided to sideswipe a row of trees in order to avoid going over the edge. They wrecked the car but they walked away from the crash without a scratch. If your teenager gets drunk, speeds, crashes into a school bus (injuring dozens of kids), and flips the Ford Focus — but walks away from the crash — you don’t praise him, give him the keys to the family minivan, and have him drive the soccer team to practices. You take all the keys away from him and ground him.

‘Yeah, Brownie you’re doing a heck of a job’…..if that sounds familiar then so be it.  Ignoring the growing outrage is going to swallow up any efforts that President Obama is trying to set forth to put our country back on a sane footing, and as noted in the recent letter from FireDogLake on the failed Watt Amendment to ‘water down’ the transparency of the Audit The FED bill, President Obama would be well advised to understand that the backlash against his ‘Wrecking Crew’ is growing everyday:

Firedoglake.com is the nation’s leading progressive blog, with over 2.4 million unique viewers a month.

Text of the letter:

November 18, 2009

House Financial Services Committee
2129 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C.  20515

Dear Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, and Members of the Committee,

During the past two years, the Federal Reserve dramatically changed its operating procedures.  Instead of simply setting interest rates to influence macroeconomic conditions, it rapidly acquired a wide variety of private assets and extended massive secret bailouts to major financial institutions.

There are still many questions about the Fed’s behavior in these new activities, including potential cronyism and favoritism in its distribution of many trillions of dollars. As the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program recently wrote about their bailout of AIG, the Fed’s “strategy to pursue concessions from counterparties offered little opportunity for success, even in light of the willingness of one counterparty to agree to concessions.”

The Federal Reserve balance sheet expanded to more than $2 trillion, along with implied and explicit backstops to Wall Street firms that could cost even more.  Who received the money? Against what collateral? On what terms  and conditions? The only way to find out is through a complete audit of the Federal Reserve.  That’s why we support the Paul-Grayson  amendment requiring a complete audit.

The Watt amendment does not repeal the existing provisions that prohibit a GAO audit of the Federal Reserve. In fact, it adds entirely new additional categories of restrictions. Instead of opening up the Fed’s secretive activities to public inspection, the Watt amendment cloaks it in further secrecy.

A vote for the Watt amendment is a vote for more secret bailouts.  We urge you to support Paul-Grayson instead.

Sincerely,

Dean Baker, Economist, Center for Economic Policy Research
William Black, Professor of Economics and Law
Tyler Durden, Blogger, Zero Hedge
Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Boston
James K. Galbraith, Economist, University of Texas
Leo Gerard, President, United Steelworkers Union
Jane Hamsher, Blogger, Firedoglake.com
Rob Johnson, Economist
Naomi Klein, Author, No Logo and The Shock Doctrine
Yves Smith, Blogger, Naked Capitalism
Andrew Stern, President, SEIU
Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO
L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics, Center for Full Employment and Price Stability

http://workinprogress.firedoglake.co…

The ‘idea’ that people who want to ‘audit the FED’ are just a bunch of wing nut neo nazis tea baggers has completely lost its credibility.  That is not what is going on now in our nation.  If you take a look at the list of people above, what is really going on is that people nationwide are opening their eyes to the ugly truth of the ‘Bush Wrecking Crew’s’ continued program of ‘insane and corrupt’ fiscal policies that have literally destroyed our national fabric, inside and out.

Continue reading the article, here.

See Why Is Obama Championing Bush’s Wrecking Crew?, The Huffington Post, November 23, 2009, by William K. Black.

*****

COMMENTARY by Paul Evans: If this article or my statement “hits home” with you, be sure to share it with your contacts.

Read Audit the Federal Reserve: HR 1207 and S 604. This is on Ron Paul’s website…. Evans Politics certainly DOES support Dr. Paul’s views about the Federal Reserve. Think to yourself, “why is that?” This is not because there is any kind of political consensus as to monetary policy. No, it’s simply because the Fed, with it’s promoters Geithner et. al. in the White House, under Obama as under Bush, is acting as a rogue organisation. We’re simply saying, let’s audit the Fed and bring truth and accountability to the light of day. That’s something liberals, progressives, Indendents AND Republicans should agree on.

See the YouTube video on Alan Grayson speaking to Congress against the Watt Amendment, here.

President Obama, you made the wrong choice to line your Administration with these same failed economic theorists. Almost ANYone would have been better than Geithner, Bernanke and Summers, who are corrupt, who are bankrupting this nation and impoverishing it, and who MUST BE DISMISSED FROM YOUR ADMINISTRATION.. Americans are NOT fooled by these slick Wall Streeters, and if you DON’T purge them from your Administration and start over from square one on economic policy, the outrage and anger in America is going to sweep the Democrats from power in Congress in 2010 and YOU from office in 2112.

(The economic point man I trust to tell me the truth about what’s happening with our economy and on Wall Street is Bob Swern over at Daily Kos. If you really want to know, yourself, look at his blogroll there and find enlightenment. In particular, as a basic though somewhat dated document, read 10 Stunning New Truths On Wall St., Economy, Jobless from back on October 3rd, and the follow-up to this, “…Tuesday’s just as bad…”, Daily Kos, November 17, 2009. Dig through his whole blogroll to get at the full horror of it all.)

I supported Barack Obama almost from the beginning in his candidacy, canvassing for his support across northern rural Wayne County, Ohio, making phone calls, and doing data entry on the State of Ohio Democratic Party website. And I like the stimulus and am a loyal Democrat, but what’s going on with the Fed, Wall Street and Obama’s economic advisers smells to high heaven. I still support you, President Obama, but just barely, mainly because you are letting these Wall Street crooks bankrupt and impoverish the future of a country I love far beyond any party affiliation. Get these crooks, these slick Wall Streeters, OUT of your administration and replace them with honest men who will work for ALL Americans, not just the one percent of the rich who are far too much controlling your economic policy. Start by cleaning house and getting rid of Geithner, Bernanke and Summers. Then America will start to believe in you as they once did. As for me, I’m very, very disappointed, and I never understood why you brought these people into your administration, but, believing in you unswervingly as I did, took it that somehow you must be doing the right thing.

Now I feel certain, and increasingly America is certain, that these Wall Street insider economists are a big part of what is wrong with our economy. I notice a studied silence about the strong movement to audit the Federal Reserve…. Why is that? You have to do the right thing for America. Bite the bullet, admit you were wrong, take your medicine, and make a clean start by totally revamping your economic team. I suggest that perhaps Robert Reich would be a good place to look for direction. And Krugman.

America asks no less from you than what you are capable of.