I don’t often read all of a NY Times story, for the same reasons I don’t wander around asking people to hit me with a baseball bat. And while the story is somewhat interesting, the language, focus, and mindset of the reporter John Broder, the editors, and the organization that produced it are much more interesting. The primary source is Lisa P. Jackson, Defender of The Children, versus Bill Daley and Cass Sunstein, Stalking Horses for the League of Darkness, battling over a new ozone rule.
Industry groups and their Republican allies praised the move, which leaves a far more lenient ozone rule in place for at least a year. But then they reeled off a dozen other proposed environmental, labor and health regulations they also wanted killed
Do industry groups not have Democrat allies? President Goldman Sachs could not be reached for comment. Far more lenient rule? You mean the current rule? What else do those Republicans want killed?
The ozone decision pitted Ms. Jackson, a Princeton-trained chemical engineer and self-described “New Orleans girl,” against the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, a son and brother of bare-knuckled Chicago mayors who was brought in to help repair relations with business and Congress. It also shows the clout of Cass R. Sunstein
Princeton Chemical Engineer and New Orleans Girl against bare-knuckled politicians with clout.
While Mr. Daley has recently given up some responsibilities at the White House, he remains the administration’s conduit for business interests.
No one gives up responsibilities at that level. Obama took them from Daley and gave them to someone else. Have a business interest? Talk to the hand next man under the bus business conduit.
The business community and its Republican allies in Congress went to war. The ozone rule became a symbol of what opponents called a “regulatory jihad” and brought out a swarm of industry lobbyists and Republicans in Congress who identified it as one of their top targets.
Did I do this one already? Ah, now is it the business community that does not have Democrat allies. War. Those blood-thirsty bastards. Hell, it’s worse than war, it is all-out jihad. Fundamentalists, they’re all the same.
They claimed the rule would cost $90 billion a year — far above E.P.A.’s estimates — and put much of the industrial heartland out of business. Local and state officials complained to Congress and the White House that they lacked the resources to enforce the new rule. Even some Democratic lawmakers warned the White House that the regulation would damage their re-election prospects.
Your side claims, our side estimates. And an accidental truth telling – some people are concerned about jobs, some health, but the Democrat lawmakers only warn about damaging their re-election prospects.
Sunstein, on leave from teaching at Harvard and a onetime colleague of Mr. Obama’s at the University of Chicago Law School. One of the most respected liberal legal scholars of his generation,
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Mr. Broder has never written a sentence with the phrase “respected conservative * “, where * = anything.
They tried a hard sell, according to R. Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the Chamber of Commerce, noting that the new rule would push hundreds of counties out of compliance with the Clean Air Act and force them to devise costly new air pollution control plans. They suggested she wait until the next review in 2013. “Lisa is very smart, cordial, friendly,” Mr. Josten said of Ms. Jackson. “She listened to us, but then talked about how important it was to do this, the lung thing, the asthma thing, the kids’ health thing. She felt it was important to go ahead.”
Did Mr. Josten call it a hard sell? There are no quotes there. Let’s imagine: I say this rule will cost jobs, and you respond with babies and asthma. Who’s throwing the hard sell?
For the West Wing gathering that day, Jack N. Gerard, the pugnacious head of the American Petroleum Institute
Pugnacious.
Mr. Daley listened politely, then asked, “What are the health impacts of unemployment?” It was a question straight out of the industry playbook.
A little slip there? Shouldn’t this be “critics say” or something?
The timing turned out to be terrible. The White House was locked in an ugly battle with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling, job creation had stalled and the presidential campaign was already under way with a singular focus on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the foundering economy.
First mention the debt ceiling, then job creation stalling, implying causation and pinning responsibility for the lack of job creation on those pugnacious Republicans and their ugly jihad for their business allies. Then pretend that it wasn’t Obama that started the 2012 Presidential campaign.
They are all in, and they are relentless.
We need more pugnacious heads.
I kind of like this cut-to-the-chase technique. It weeds a lot of the crap out of newspaper columns, and most of today’s newspaper columnists are expert crapnologists.
That photo looks a little odd. The buildings in the foreground are clear as a bell, then everything right behind them is fuzzed. And I can see teh pixels!
Nick Ut, the guy who took the picture, is the same guy who took the picture of the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing napalm attack. So probably not shopped.
He was so much older then, he’s younger than that now.
Excellent post. Bravo.
in addition
Link
This JounoLista is yet another example of someone that has a complete lack of fear of getting kicked in the teeth.
Lisa Jackson should fear that even more
Oh, noes, Dennis Miller jumps the shark. Says he is off the Cain Train ‘cuz of the 11 second pause over Libya, but then says he would support Ron Paul. Despite his foreign policy views; anyone is better than Obama and we have to have someone that can win…
The world is awhirl.
Hummph, seems to me sensible folks never got on the O’Reilly train on account of the bombastic asshole is an ignorant menace. But then, Miller’s getting paid.
that’s not the same as jumping the shark Cain has really let a lot of people down
but not as many as Perry
“Cain has really let a lot of people down”
Some people need to start looking for a man to be president and not a God to deliver salvation.
As it so happens, I just got this via email:
I’d still be happy to vote for Mr. Herman but just like with Mr. Governor Rick I wouldn’t be so happy to have to convince someone else to
Mr Herman’s argument in favor isn’t so much an argument for Mr. Herman as it is an argument for the notions of political order our Constitution contemplated building. In that sense, he falls to an afterthought, but stays a topic only on account of his view of the order, in contrast to the others.
that would be a lot easier to sell if he had a record I think
Lisa Jackson is not long for this Administration. The Cabal knows what to do to those who break omerta.
“that would be a lot easier to sell if he had a record I think”
July 11, 2011 5:17 PM Herman Cain gospel album surfaces
How was it in the early days of the nation (pre-1774-6), I wonder, when no one had much of a record as a political office holder save in nominal service to the King and the King’s possessions here; when the political world turned upside-down and former earnestly protested loyalties became suspect? Must’a’ been quite the frisson for the fellas talking in the taverns.
back then only your smarter more responsible sorts were politically active is my impression
it might even be true
Hmmm, but not the run of the well connected, or the sons of men who were well connected, or the friends and business partners of the already connected, and so on? While the names that are well remembered do stand out — in general — as remarkably well educated and forward thinking sorts, and even some of these weren’t quite so, I’ve little doubt that those who’ve been forgot were much as we have them today.
Hit’em again Snowbillie, harder, harder.
It occurs to me that the reason Occupy Chicago is so relatively tame & lame is that all of the truly radical community organizers from Chicago are busy in the West Wing.
Update:
Yeeeeooowwww. Barnhardt Capital Management goes Galt.
Quoth the pikachu:
That’s really the problem, isn’t it? Not just with ‘feets, but more generally. Too many people on our side, ostensibly, are afraid of being associated with a candidate (or candidates) who fail to live up to an artificial standard that the media never intended for them to meet.
I swear, somedays I think this country deserves four more years of Barak Obama. Not because of the country’s sins, but because of ours.
Not because of the country’s sins? But the country’s sins are our sins, if we have to use the language of sin to point to our faults. Which after all is the fallback position of the left in any event. “You voted us in!”, they say. The country has accepted an interpretation of its Constitution that makes a mockery of its intent, and being self-ruled, you people (say they to us), all you people (they constantly say to us) accept this Social Security, this view of Wickard v Filburn, this power grab by the Executive, this gross bending of the tax code, and on and on. It’s enough to make me want to puke.
Two NYC Council members and SEIU president George Gresham arrested in OWS protest at Brooklyn Bridge.
I’m not afraid of being associated I just don’t know how to make the case that poor bumbling herman is anything to get excited about – I think we just keep coming back to obama sucks ass so you should vote for x.
I think it’s past time to acknowledge that the teadoodles screwed the pooch. They didn’t produce a candidate. I think too many of them spent too much energy pining for this one or that one and far far too much energy shooting down them ones what could have made an eloquent case about the spendings and the freedoms.
Team R is not in any danger whatsoever of producing a candidate that matches the moment, and that’s an indictment of our entire form of government I think. And that makes me sad and scared and kinda forlorn to where I just sigh and pretend to a wan sort of hopefulness that I don’t really feel.
“the teadoodles screwed the pooch”
That’s kinda a-historical in light of the election results of 2010, from the lowliest county councils to the state houses and Senates to the House of Representatives to State Governorships taken over, with ground laid for even more impressive gains to be made at all those levels come 2012. And nevermind that even with the Republicans stumbling, I think it’ll be near impossible to see Obama regain the office.
they didn’t even produce a challenge to douchebag Orrin and not a very strong one to useless geriatric piece of shit Lugar and they’re running a first-grader against the inept and clingy Boehner
but mostly I mean they screwed the pooch specifically with respect to the contest for the presidency
They really did I don’t see how you can look at this sorry and quixotic display and feel like the moment is infused with any kind of ideological import at all.
politico seems to think the teadoodles are loaded for bear, at least with respect to Boehner’s House
The import is entirely in the weight laid on the Constitution as intended, if I’m to say. Herman Cain may not be some shiny star in the tv firmament, but that’s neither here nor there from the long view of political philosophy. It seems to me we’ve too long put our emphasis on trivialities, failing to hew to the main thing, and the main thing isn’t and can’t be one personality or one gifty-gabby Obama type emptiness, or Bushian careful cultivation of poll tested twaddle.
I’m saying if we’re afraid to defend the people who express our views however imperfectly (according to some bullshit standard), we deserve to lose.
Or win with Romney, which is the same thing.
Seriously. Barak Obama can’t say “good morning” without a fucking teleprompter, but Herman Cain is the unqualified, unpresidential idiot. Fuck that.
Here’s the problem with ‘feets argument in 30 & 32:
We keep pining for a Reagan to emerge, someone who gets conservatism/classical liberals, and can articulate it in a manner than end runs the Democrat/media filter, and whom we can identify with —he’s cool and so our we because we think just like him. And then we sit around with our thumbs in our own asses and grin stupidly while scratching our heads in confuzzled befuddlement that one hasn’t. I ask
Do you seriously thing that’s by accident?
The tea-party is what it is. If a single faction captured it, and that faction were a campaign for a specific candidate, it wouldn’t be the tea-party anymore.
Furthermore, you, of all people, ought to be grateful. Because as far as I can tell, the only person who could capture the tea-party in the manner you describe, is the dreaded hoochie cum-slut snow-billy.
The country could use a genuine statesman at this critical moment, but then the country (and every country) could always use a genuine statesman at whatever moment it happens to find itself in. These, however, don’t grow on trees. How they come about ever is a mystery to me, and to everyone else I’d wager, else we’d have figured out how to make them appear at will or by determination.
I’m also saying, in response to sdferr’s 28, that if the country has chosen “an interpretation of its Constitution that makes a mockery of its intent, and [of] being self-ruled,” it’s because we’ve failed to articulate the correct interpretation, for the reasons sdferr lays out in 34.
Mostly it seems I’m talking to myself.
insomnia and whisky will do that to you
Maybe not talking to myself as much as I thought.
“Statesman” is a sobriquet applied to guys who couldn’t get elected president.
Webster, Clay, Teddy Kennedy.
Not in my lingo, buddy.
Fair enough pal.
For my 2/100ths of a dollar, the closet thing we have to a statesman is Sarah Palin, who, we’re told, is unelectable. So maybe we’re both right.
Closest. I wasn’t kidding about the whisky.
We want a rule edged with Calvin Coolidge. Flexibly bland as the day is long. Diamond hard for liberty. Cold front is here. Time to take out the blankets.
Yes we do, but the culture that cultivated the Calvin Coolidges is gone and largely forgotten.
Ha! I thought you were going to say, “No one gives up responsibilities” like the Obama administration, but the hand-under-the-bus thing was good too.
golfclap/we’renotworthy. Seriously, I laughed out loud at that one.
I think the problem with happyfeets is that he’s pining for the candidate who does not exist, and would sooner flay the rest of the lot alive than consider supporting them with reservations. Possibly because his mind is too simple to disagree with someone and yet lend his support to them, for the reason that they are way, way better than the alternatives.
Plus, he needs to up his vocabulary past the 1st grade bully level. Teadoodles? Seriously? He sounds like an idiot. He may very well be an idiot. Who’d pay any heed to the opinions of an idiot, besides other idiots? He should realize how insulting it is to our host, for one, that he thinks that his kneejerk, emotive, poorly thought out and juvenile arguments are worth even the time it takes to scroll past.
He needs to up his game, is my advice. If he’s capable. Which I’m not at all sure of.
Ernst:
Slart:
You both misunderstand the malignant penguin thug. You assume he’s searching for an acceptable conservative candidate. On the contrary: he’s against any and all conservative candidates.
Look at Palin’s actual record on what, according to his behavior, is the malignant thug’s most important issue: gay rights. Now contrast her actual record with what he apparently believes it to be. His preferred source of information on conservative candidates is from the far-left, not from the actual candidates themselves. This is not the behavior of a person looking rationally at the alternatives; it’s the behavior of someone intent on poisoning the well, of a person whose primary goal is to declare ALL possible conservative candidates as unacceptable.
He’s a Moby. For someone reason, people have been blinded to that fact by his baby-talk.
Fixed, then.
You are correct Crawford, I long ago disengaged.
Well, ya gotta admit, babytalk is the language best suited to the proglodyte mentality.