WASHINGTON — With much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities…

Mr. Obama has already decided to create a bipartisan budget commission under his own authority after Congress refused to do so. His administration has signaled that it plans to use its discretion to soften enforcement of the ban on openly gay men and lesbians serving in the military, even as Congress considers repealing the law. And the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with possible regulations on heat-trapping gases blamed for climate change, while a bill to cap such emissions languishes in the Senate.

In an effort to demonstrate forward momentum, the White House is also drawing more attention to the sorts of actions taken regularly by cabinet departments without much fanfare. The White House heavily promoted an export initiative announced by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke last week and nearly $1 billion in health care technology grants announced on Friday by Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, and Hilda L. Solis, the labor secretary.

White House officials said the increased focus on executive authority reflected a natural evolution from the first year to the second year of any presidency.

[…]

But Mr. Obama has to be careful how he proceeds because he has been critical of both Mr. Clinton’s penchant for expending presidential capital on small-bore initiatives, like school uniforms, and Mr. Bush’s expansive assertions of executive authority, like the secret program of wiretapping without warrants.

Already, Mr. Obama has had to reconcile his campaign-trail criticism of Mr. Bush for excessive use of so-called signing statements to bypass parts of legislation with his own use of such tactics. After a bipartisan furor in Congress last year, Mr. Obama stopped issuing such signing statements, but aides said last month that he still reserves the right to ignore sections of bills he considers unconstitutional if objections have been lodged previously by the executive branch.

NY Times article.

Update1: Obama back in May 2008

Update2: Perhaps Obama’s most notorious Executive Order is the Establishment of the Council of Governors, which creates a body of ten state governors directly appointed by Obama who will work with the federal government to help advance the “synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States”.

The subject came up in 2009 when the American Bar Association, has called the practice unconstitutional.

“UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” -- Barack Obama, Aug. 11, 2009

No institution has been the butt of more government- inefficiency jokes than the U.S. Postal Service. Maybe the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The only way the post office can stay in business is its government subsidy. The USPS lost $2.4 billion in the quarter ended in June and projects a net loss of $7 billion in fiscal 2009, outstanding debt of more than $10 billion and a cash shortfall of $1 billion. It was moved to intensive care -- the Government Accountability Office’s list of “high risk” cases - - last month and told to shape up. (It must be the only entity that hasn’t cashed in on TARP!)

That didn’t stop President Barack Obama from holding up the post office as an example at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, last week.

When Obama compared the post office to UPS and FedEx, he was clearly hoping to assuage voter concerns about a public health-care option undercutting and eliminating private insurance.

What he did instead was conjure up visions of long lines and interminable waits. Why do we need or want a health-care system that works like the post office?

[...]

Impromptu Obamanomics is getting scarier by the day. For all the president’s touted intelligence, his un-teleprompted comments reveal a basic misunderstanding of capitalist principles.

For example, asked at the Portsmouth town hall how private insurance companies can compete with the government, the president said the following:

“If the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining -- meaning taxpayers aren’t subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services and a good network of doctors, just like any other private insurer would do -- then I think private insurers should be able to compete.”

Self-sustaining? The public option? What has Obama been doing during those daily 40-minute economic briefings coordinated by uber-economic-adviser, Larry Summers?

Capitalism Explained

Government programs aren’t self-sustaining by definition. They’re subsidized by the taxpayer. If they were self-financed, we’d be off the hook.

Llewellyn Rockwell Jr., chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com, put it this way in an Aug. 13 commentary on Mises.org:

“The only reason for a government service is precisely to provide financial support for an operation that is otherwise unsustainable, or else there would be no point in the government’s involvement at all.”

[...]

The public is left with one of two unsettling conclusions: Either the president doesn’t understand the health-insurance reform plans working their way through Congress, or he understands both the plans and the implications and is being untruthful about the impact.

Neither option is good; ignorance is clearly preferable to the alternative.

Read the article at Bloomberg
_______________________________________________________________

Alex Knapp makes a very convincing argument.
_______________________________________________________________

Remember Barack Obama’s New Era of Responsibility? It got off to an inauspicious start, with a $787 billion economic stimulus package, a $410 billion appropriations bill, and a record $1.8 trillion budget deficit. But now the president wants to signal that he’s serious about cutting the federal budget. Unfortunately, writes Senior Editor Jacob Sullum, Obama's plan hinges on the assumption that Americans do not know how to calculate percentages.

Read all about it here.

_______________________________________________________________

• New York Times: Obama's health plan will cost $1 trillion, and still leave tens of millions uninsured.
• Khalid Shaikh Mohammed says he made things up—including bin Laden's whereabouts, and falsely implicating others as being members of Al-Qaeda—to get captors to stop torturing him. Meanwhile, the CIA tortured Abu Zubaida for three months before realizing he wasn't the person they thought he was.
• The English-firsters are back.
• None dare call it an earmark. But it's an earmark.

_______________________________________________________________

• American Medical Association announces opposition to Obama's health care plan.
• Washington Post says Holocaust Museum shooter lonely, broke, and seen as a bit nuts . . . even by other white separatists.
• Economic downturn hits members of Congress, too. Also, strip clubs.
• Obama wants to bring back pay-as-you-go.
• Nation's top college grads skipping financial sector, heading to Washington to work for the federal government, instead.
• U.S. will pay Pacific island nation of Palau $200 million to take Chinese Uighurs detained at Gitmo but cleared of enemy combatant status.
• Cintonista Terry McAuliffe gets trounced by relatively unknown state senator Creigh Deeds in the Virginia gubernatorial primary.
• Ten banks to repay TARP loans.
• Gitmo detainee and terror suspect Ahmed Ghailani arrives in New York for appearance in federal court.
• Car bomb kills at least 28 in Southern Iraq.

With Reason, Hit and Run
_______________________________________________________________

Bill Moyers sits down with award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill to examine the human and financial costs of America's wars:

_______________________________________________________________

A Rebel Reports article:

• 250,000 “Contractors” in Iraq and Afghan Wars, Increases Number of Mercenaries:Newly released Pentagon statistics show that in both Iraq and Afghanistan the number of armed contractors is rising. The DoD says it sees “similar dependence on contractors in future.”

• “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama” (AlterNet): The ‘Black Shirts’ of Guantanamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and ‘dousing’ them with chemicals.

• UN Human Rights Council Blasts US for Killing Civilians, Drone Attacks and Using Mercenaries: The UN group is also calling on the US to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate crimes by US officials.

• Obama Wants $736 Million Colonial Fortress in Pakistan:Critics say the White House wants to use the new “embassy” for “pushing the American agenda in Central Asia.”

• US Colonel Advocates US ‘Military Attacks’ on ‘Partisan Media’ in Essay for Neocon, Pro-Israel Group JINSA: “The point of all this is simple: Win,” writes Col. Ralph Peters. “In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win.”

• Military Admits "Errors" in Civilian Bombing in Afghanistan, But Still Defends the Attacks

_______________________________________________________________

• U.S. Senators to micromanage GM, Chrysler plans to close dealerships.
• Dana Milbank: Sotomayor begins important meetings with senators—important in the sense that it allows senators to show how important they are.
• Cheney personally oversaw CIA briefings of Congress on torture techniques.
• Obama's right aproach to Iran: "should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities..."
• 1 of every 6 dollars of Americans' income is government check or voucher
• Texas cop tasers 72-year-old woman for refusing to sign a traffic ticket.
• Weirdest attack on libertarianism.
  
• Cop damages photographers camera, wrongly arrests him for videotaping an accident scene.

With Reason, Hit and Run
_______________________________________________________________

• Previous year of federal spending comes to $55,000 per household.
• Pentagon prepares new military command for cyberspace, "to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare."
• European countries growing cold to taking in released Gitmo detainees, citing American politicians' refusal to take any into the U.S.
• Oklahoma state troopers pull over ambulance as it was taking a patient to the hospital. Officer is then caught on tape choking an EMT in the ensuing altercation.
• San Diego City official tells couple they must apply for permit to host Bible study sessions in their home.
• Off-duty NYPD officer chasing man he thought was breaking into his car is then shot and killed by other plainclothes cops.
• Government, accounting board give banks the okay to fudge numbers in quarterly reports to make themselves look stronger than they actually are.
• Headline: “Black Hawk chopper to scare shit out of suburban grade schoolers.” It’s the drug war, of course.
• Mixed news on Obama and transparency.

_______________________________________________________________

• Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) calls out Obama over preventative, indefinite detention.
• Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.
• Off-duty Chicago cop who struck and killed a boy on a bicycle was allowed by other cops to sober up for four hours before they gave him a breath test.
• Supreme Court loosens restrictions on when police can interrogate a suspect without his lawyer present.
• Next up for the British Nanny State: mandatory single-file queues at pubs, two-drink maximums, and rope barriers. The U.K. is turning into a Pink Floyd video

_______________________________________________________________

• Yes, there are still innocent people at Gitmo.
  
• Joshua Claybourn summarizes why the Chrysler deal brokered by the Obama administration is much, much scarier than you think.
• Retired Catholic archbishop says he was unaware of the fact that it’s illegal to have sex with children.
  
• Cop drives 109 in a 45 mph zone, no lights, no siren. Wasn’t wearing his seat belt, either. He plows into a pick-up truck trying to make a left turn. Cop dies. Police arrest the driver of the pick-up for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. They’ve also charged the guy with DUI, even though his blood test came back at .03, less than half the legal limit.
• Congressmen from Ohio and Oklahoma introduce bill to ban gay marriage in D.C.
• Another write-up in the local Mississippi paper about the Motorhome Diaries incident. This one’s much more sympathetic to the MHD crew.
• Amen to Mario Rizzo: “I do not believe that the philosophy of freedom has much to do, in an essential way, with conservatism. The relationship is largely due to historical accident. Furthermore, analytically speaking, the moral, political and economic basis of freedom does not fit coherently in the conservative intellectual framework.”

_______________________________________________________________

Obama nominating hardcore Nanny Statist to head up the CDC. The guy enthusiastically backed the trans-fat, smoking bans and calorie count requirements in New York.

Jack Shafer on the Maureen Dowd plagiarism kerfuffle.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford self-identifies as a libertarian, scolds Sen. Lindsey Graham for mocking them.

U.S. Copyright Office implements new system to speed up process, ends up taking three times as long to approve applications.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley move to repay TARP money.

U.S. Supreme Court narrowly rejects lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller by man who says he was detained and beaten shortly after September 11 because of their policies.

Facebook shutting down accounts of users with unusual-sounding names. Why?

Canada’s economy getting freer, may soon be freer than the U.S. Might explain something about why they’re handling the recession better than we are.

Speaking of Canadians, police in Montreal recently handcuffed and arrested a woman for not holding on to the handrail while riding on an escalator.

With Reason, Hit and Run
_______________________________________________________________

Meet the post-9/11 Scouts.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

via The Agitator
_______________________________________________________________

Some good news! Obama is dropping Chuck Hurley to head up the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

_______________________________________________________________

The Daily Beast:

“This is a very big deal,” Fred Kaplan writes at Slate of President Obama’s plan to replace General David McKiernan, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, with General Stanley McChrystal. “McKiernan's ouster signals a dramatic shift in U.S. strategy for the war in Afghanistan. And it means that the war is now, unequivocally, ‘Obama's war.’” So who’s the man Obama may be staking his presidency on? “Gen. McChrystal, a Green Beret who has spent most of the last year as the top staff officer to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spent the previous five years commanding special operations forces in Iraq—units that specialize in guerrilla warfare, including the training of indigenous armies,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Like Gen. David H. Petraeus, who will become Gen. McChrystal's new boss and is credited with turning around the Iraq campaign, Gen. McChrystal has won over converts in the Pentagon because of his intellectual rigor and a flexible decision-making process that lends itself to irregular warfare.”

Read it at Slate

_______________________________________________________________

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

The thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.

Obama made his push for frugality the subject of his first Cabinet meeting, ensuring it would command the capital's attention. It also set off outbursts of mental math and scribbled calculations as political friend and foe tried to figure out its impact.

The bottom line: Not much.

The president gave his Cabinet 90 days to find $100 million in savings to achieve over time.

For all the trumpeting, the effort raised questions about why Obama set the bar so low, considering that $100 million amounts to:

• Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.
• 4 percent of the military aid the United States sends to Israel.
• Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.
• 7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.
• 1/10,000th of the government's operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.

Obama only asked his Cabinet secretaries to identify waste in their annual operating budgets, which total a little over $1 trillion. He's leaving out war costs, the economic stimulus measure, the Wall Street bailout and benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare.

THE SPIN:

"He will challenge his Cabinet to cut a collective $100 million in the next 90 days," said a White House news release. "Agencies will be required to report back with their savings at the end of 90 days."

"I'm asking for all of them to identify at least $100 million in additional cuts to their administrative budgets," Obama told reporters afterward. "None of these things alone are going to make a difference, but cumulatively, they would make an extraordinary difference because they start setting a tone."

Read all about it here.

_______________________________________________________________

White House / Pete Souza

Air Force One, shrouded in fog, as it carries Barack Obama across Europe. The president’s detention policy is equally obscure. While he has ordered the closing of Guantanamo, Bagram air base, where so many humanitarian crimes are alleged to have occurred, remains open.

By Marie Cocco

    The strategic exposition of the “newness” theme during Barack Obama’s first presidential trip abroad reached its apogee in Turkey. Obama conducted a campaign-style “town hall” meeting with students in Istanbul, and toured the historic Blue Mosque, a masterpiece of Turkey’s multicultural history and architecture. 

    When he addressed the Turkish parliament, Obama pointedly referred to his own family’s Muslim roots and his upbringing in Indonesia to draw the obvious point that the United States will no longer accept the intolerance that marked so much of our cultural and political response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He implored the Turks to embrace “an enduring commitment to the rule of law” as the “only way to achieve the security that comes from justice for all people.”

    Now that he is home, Obama has to show that his words have meaning.

Truthdig

___________________________________________________

Expect to see variations on this story of weak oversight and big checks for the rest of your lives:

Housing agencies faulted in audits to get $300M of stimulus

The federal government will soon send more than $300 million in stimulus funds to 61 housing agencies that have been repeatedly faulted by auditors for mishandling government aid, a USA TODAY review has found.

The money is part of a $4 billion effort to create jobs by fixing public housing projects that have fallen into disrepair. Recipients include housing authorities in 26 states that auditors have cited for problems ranging from poor bookkeeping to money that was spent improperly, according to the review of summaries the agencies must file with the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

But don't worry, gentle taxpayer! This time, "the government has promised to closely monitor how the agencies spend the money."

Doesn't that make you feel better? Here's your government oversight at work:

Congress gave the Obama administration permission to withhold stimulus aid from housing authorities that the Department of Housing and Urban Development lists as "troubled" because of factors such as poor maintenance and financial management. But HUD decided to release the money to these authorities because they "should have the opportunity to improve their housing," spokeswoman Donna White said.

And here's USA Today's list of 61 agencies cited by auditors.

Whole story here.

with Hit and Run, Reason

___________________________________________________

The first question was; would Obama finally fulfill the US administrations promise to end prohibition, a promise that was made by President Jimmy Carter over 30 years ago. It was a legitimate question, since this is exactly what Obama promised when he made the following statement:

"The war on drugs has been an utter failure, and I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws."

Unfortunately, however, on 26 March 2009, during an Interactive Town Hall Meeting, Obama stated that:

"There was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high (sic, it was actually the number 1 question) and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation, and I don’t know what this says about the online audience,’ Mr. Obama said, drawing a laugh. He said he wanted to make sure the question got answered. ‘The answer is no, I don’t think that was a good strategy."

... I personally don’t understand how US citizens can laugh while prohibition laws are destroying their children’s lives, for what is essentially plant crime. Don’t they know that “the U.S. correctional population -- those in jail, prison, on probation or on parole -- totaled 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 adults”?

For the entire article.
___________________________________________________