Blocking Elizabeth Warren: "the president’s response has been to dither"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/opinion/11nocera.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1307797219-6ZqDahKztstlvZ+cxQCsKw

Blocking Elizabeth Warren
By JOE NOCERA
Published: June 10, 2011

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What’s worse, she’s been doing a pretty good job of it so far. When she was first appointed to set up the agency, I heard rumbling that she had no management chops and would make a hash of things. This prediction has turned out to be spectacularly wrong. She has attracted first-rate talent for virtually all the top jobs. The new bureau’s first move was to persuade two government agencies to combine mortgage forms into one easy-to-read document — no easy task given how government works. She has consistently talked about making bank disclosures easier for consumers to understand.

You would think that Republicans would like this sort of thing. Instead, they portray Warren as a polarizing ideologue bent on creating an agency that, as Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, put it recently, “could be a serious threat to our financial system.” How, precisely, an agency that tries to keep financial consumers from being gouged threatens the system is something no one ever explains. (Unless, of course, gouging consumers is central to bank profitability. Hmmm...)

On the Senate side, the approach of the Republicans has been to claim that their real issue is not with Warren but with the structure of the new bureau. Some 44 Republican senators recently sent a letter to President Obama saying that they would not approve any director without major changes. In particular, they want to deprive the agency of automatic financing, so that, unlike other bank regulators, it would have to go through an annual appropriations process. Which, of course, would then allow the Republicans to starve it via budgetary deprivation.

Unfortunately, the president’s response has been to dither. Despite the impending start date for the bureau — and despite the fact that Warren is the clear and obvious choice to run it — he still hasn’t been able to pull the trigger. For months, there were rumblings that he would name Warren in a “recess appointment,” which wouldn’t require Senate confirmation. But that is simply not going to happen: There are parliamentary maneuvers that will allow the Senate to remain “in session” even when there are no actual senators in the vicinity.

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only a banker can run the CFPB. An outsider would simply not understand the subtleties of giving the bankers everything they want then asking "Anything else you need? Anything at all?".

Avoidance gives the appearance of "dithering".
Republicans love to use this term to make the President
look weak.

Is having to defend himself against "inappropriate on-line relationships," whatever in hell that's supposed to mean in a Congress that has David Vitter and up until a short time ago featured the marital stylings of Jon Ensign. But a fighting Democrat is tossed out as if there are plenty more where he came from.

He's not 'weak', he's taking a dive.

...and the excuses and rationalizations are already written.

"You clearly don't understand how the process works."

"He doesn't have a Magic Wand."

"SEE! He tried it your way.
Now he needs to nominate a Pragmatic Centrist!"

"Its ALL Joe Lieberman's fault." :cry:

"It looked like we might not have the votes, so we quit." :cry:







Bush the Lesser managed to SEAT two actual Fascists on the Supreme Court.


"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

makes me ask- "WTF has happened to this party?"

Better to have pretended to care about the little people than actually have done something for us

:kick:

To expose the charade.

Where have all the very serious people gone?

So I don't think it's dithering. I think the decision has already been made. The challenge for Obama has been how do you keep Warren smiling and how do you break it to the informed public and angry consumers to minimize the fallout. And we're all too familiar with how they'll rationalize this latest turd.

So I really don't know what's going on here.

Senator Al Franken has a petition urging Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren

"President Obama: Appoint Elizabeth Warren to Lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau"

UPDATE: Nearly 350,000 signed our letter urging President Obama to give a recess appointment to Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Al Franken says: "It's a great letter -- can you add your voice?" Sign on the right.

http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/gwa_warren/?source=gwa-mgr-i1&gclid=CNig5_XkqqkCFUM65QodsliiMg

And:

"AFL-CIO Pushes Obama On Recess Appointment For Elizabeth Warren"

The most influential labor organization in the country is pushing President Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the next congressional recess.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/afl-cio-pushes-obama-on-recess-appointement-for-elizabeth-warren.php

him to be the kind of president that we need at this time.
This country is in crises and I do not feel the President is
up to the task. He gives pretty speeches but he does not
have fire in his belly, no fight in his soul.

:kick: