President Obama, Wednesday:
As November approaches, leaders in the other party will campaign furiously on the same economic arguments they’ve been making for decades. Fortunately, we don't have to look back too many years to see how their agenda turns out. For much of the last 10 years we've tried it their way. They gave us tax cuts that weren’t paid for to millionaires who didn’t need them. They gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight.
The President is right, of course.
Gray wolves and polar bears:
On endangered species, the Center gave the administration a solid C, since for every positive action there seemed to be a negative action of equal scope. For example, the Obama administration rescinded regulations passed in the final days of the Bush administration that would have gutted enforcement of key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, but retained a rule weakening protection for the polar bear. The Obama administration also moved forward with a Bush initiative to remove protections for the gray wolf, and has only listed two new species as endangered, which is the fewest protected in the first year of any administration since Reagan.
National Parks and offshore drilling
In March 2009, he [Ken Salazar] called the controversy surrounding an 11th-hour Bush administration decision to allow people to carry concealed, loaded guns in national parks a "distraction" to Americans and his department.
The folks who know better--the ones who raise money for parks and former employees--disagreed. The National Parks Conservation Association and the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees filed suit, asking that the no loaded guns policy established under the Reagan administration be restored.
. . . Meanwhile, the MMS allowed the operators of the BP Deepwater Horizon rig to cut corners. And even with oil erupting into the Gulf, Salazar's underlings approved other underwater drilling permits.
Glass-Steagall
Since the McCain-Cantwell Amendment to the Dodd financial reform bill was introduced, which is effectively a return to the spirit of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act, Senator Dodd and the full weight of the Obama Administration including Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers have been put in play to stop it's incorporation.
Larry Summers:
Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the earnings for an entire year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama administration and the media for their supposedly exorbitant and "unsustainable" wages.
Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: "Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments."
Michael Froman:
Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup has thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod, Thomas Donilon, Louis Caldera:
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last year from two consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will garner him another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last summer and was placed under federal receivership.
"The presence of multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama administration as well."
Yes, Mr President, we have seen the results of gutting regulations and putting industry insiders in charge of industry. Sir, have you?