Obamas New Regulations on Business Cost $28 Billion

Obama names Daley as new chief of staff
Calling him "an experienced public servant," a "devoted patriot" and "my friend," President Obama named William Daley to serve as his Chief of Staff on Thursday. Daley, a fellow Chicagoan who served as commerce secretary under President Clinton , replaces Rahm Emanuel , who left the position to run for mayor of the Windy City. "Few Americans can boast the breadth of experience that bill brings to this job," Obama told an East Room audience packed with White House Staffers. "He's led major corpo...

Sperling to Head National Economic Council
Bloomberg reports: President Barack Obama will name Gene Sperling, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, as head of the National Economic Council, according to a person familiar with the matter. Sperling, 52, is returning to the post he held from 1997 to 2001 under former President Bill Clinton. He replaces Lawrence Summers, who was NEC director for the first two years of Obama’s presidency and left last month to return to Harvard University. Obama is set to announce several ap...

U.S. tells agencies: Watch 'insiders' to prevent new WikiLeaks
The Obama Administration is telling federal agencies to take aggressive new steps to prevent more Wikileaks embarrassments, including instituting "insider threat" programs to ferret out disgruntled employees who might be inclined to leak classified documents, NBC News has learned. As part of these programs, agency officials are being asked to figure out ways to "detect behavioral changes" among employees who might have access to classified documents. A highly detailed 11-page memo prepared by...

ADP shows addition of 297,000 private-sector jobs in December
Tomorrow the Bureau of Labor Statistics will report on the Unemployment Rate for December, and one early indicator shows promise of significant private-sector job growth.  ADP, which manages Payroll for millions of companies across the country, issued its monthly estimate yesterday that showed an additional 297,000 jobs added to The Economy.  It’s the best month for ADP’s report since the Recession began: Private-sector employment increased by 297,000 from November to December on...

Illinois to get an 83% tax hike?
 Illinois residents are in danger of watching their income taxes double if they don’t get on their phones and computers now and let their representatives know that they won’t stand for it. Local Tea Party member Bruce Donnelly saw this coming when Pat Quinn beat Bill Brady for Governor this past November. Governor Quinn warned Chicago and Illinois residents that he would have to raise taxes and he wasn’t kidding. The Illinois Policy Institute [IPI], a nonpartisan research ...

Ex-CIA officer charged with giving reporter secrets
By James Vicini WASHINGTON | Thu Jan 6, 2011 4:27pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former CIA officer was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally disclosing national defense information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. The U.S. Justice Department said Jeffrey Sterling, 43, was charged with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail Fraud, unauthorized conveyance of gov...

Ex-CIA officer charged with giving reporter secrets
By James Vicini WASHINGTON | Thu Jan 6, 2011 4:27pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former CIA officer was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally disclosing national defense information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. The U.S. Justice Department said Jeffrey Sterling, 43, was charged with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail Fraud, unauthorized conveyance of gov...

Obama choses William Daley new chief of staff. Transcript
William Daley, President Obama (photo by Lynn Sweet) Click below for transcript... THE White House Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release January 6, 2011 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ANNOUNCING WILLIAM M. DALEY AS WHITE HOUSE Chief of Staff East Room 2:29 P.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Please have a seat, everybody. Happy New Year. Last October, when my former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel departed to pursue other opportunities in Chi...

Barack Obama's Clinton makeover cannot hide fatal flaw
The convening of a new Congress is traditionally an occasion when the White House allows the denizens of Capitol Hill their day if not in the sun, then at least on the Cable News channels. That was not the case on Wednesday when John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, accepted an outsize gavel from Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco liberal who became the first woman to occupy the post four years ago. Just over a mile away, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, President Barack Obama was intent on mak...

Senior Republicans Weigh In On Debt Ceiling Vote
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today urged Congress to vote to raise the $14.3 Trillion Debt ceiling by March 31, and Obama Administration officials want a vote with no strings attached. Republicans, however, say they’ll only vote for the increase in exchange for a major reduction in spending. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.): “I view it as an opportunity — an opportunity for both sides to come together and say to the American People, ‘We understand tha...

Can the GOP serve the two constituencies of the midterms successfully?
The Republicans scored a big success in November by forging a coalition between Independents disillusioned by Democrats and Barack Obama’s false promises of Fiscal Responsibility and moderation, and energized Conservatives looking for a massive pushback against the radical agenda of Obama and Nancy Pelosi.  The GOP succeeded mainly by keeping themselves focused on the Budget Crisis and regulatory burdens that have created lingering Unemployment at the highest levels since the Great Depr...

Sheriff Volcker leaves Wall Street untamed
Sheriff Volcker leaves Wall Street untamed Posted by Colin Barr January 6, 2011 3:47 pm Paul Volcker is riding into the sunset, but it's just as well. Any hope the Obama Administration might clean up the financial Wild West faded long ago. It was around this time last year that Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chief who was a major figure in Obama's 2008 presidential run, reemerged after a year in the policy wilderness. He stood with Obama at a White House lectern and announced a plan to ...

First Lady Gets New Chief-of-Staff In the New Year
The recent staff shakeups in the White House have hit the East Wing as well. First Lady Michelle Obama has announced an important change in her leadership team moving forward. Tina Tchen was promoted to Assistant to the President and Chief-of-Staff for the First Lady.  She will be responsible for leading all staff efforts around Mrs. Obama, serving as the key link between the First Lady and her constituents. Tchen came into her new role as a White House insider with deep connections to the ...

Sheriff Volcker leaves Wall Street untamed
Paul Volcker is riding into the sunset, but it's just as well. Any hope the Obama Administration might clean up the financial Wild West faded long ago. It was around this time last year that Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chief who was a major figure in Obama's 2008 presidential run, reemerged after a year in the policy wilderness. He stood with Obama at a White House lectern and announced a plan to crack down on the risk-addicted banks that helped drive The Economy into a ditch. The birth...

What the Bill Daley hire tells us about the White House
The best of the best of state-based political blogs -- as of April 2009. The hiring of former Commerce Secretary William Daley as White House Chief of Staff is a telling indication of where President Obama sees himself and where he wants to go between now and his 2012 re-election race. 1. Liberals, schmiberals : Much was written during the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress about the relationship (or lack thereof) between President Obama and the liberal left. The selection of Daley is furt...

Good riddance to Larry Summers
You shouldn’t miss Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott’s interesting piece about the anxious fluttering today among folks on the political left. Seems that some liberals are aghast that President Obama is set to pick William Daley, a former Clinton Administration appointee with extensive Wall Street connections, as his new Chief of Staff. The same people won’t be pleased, as Mark says, that the President is likely to give Gene Sperling (another former Clinto...

Medicaid: Cant Get Enough of Your Love Money, Baby
Someone at The Boston Globe is catching on. The paper opens its latest piece on the Bay State's Medicaid woes with the line: “The money, it seems, is never enough.” No kidding! It goes on to explain just how fiscally wrecked the state’s Medicaid program is: Governor Deval Patrick approved a record $9.6 billion last July for the state’s Health Insurance program for the poor — sufficient, he assumed, to last a year. But the program’s costs quickly outpaced expectation

Schumer says Obama should push China on trade
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Democrat in the Senate said on Thursday that President Barack Obama should back a bid to Crack Down on China's trade practices -- or get Beijing to take action on its own. Charles Schumer, a member of the Democratic leadership, said he expects his bill, to pressure China to let its currency rise, will enjoy Bipartisan support in the new Congress that convened this week and expressed hope it will become law. "It's one of the things that's seriously on the table," Schu...

Schumer says Obama should push China on trade
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Democrat in the Senate said on Thursday that President Barack Obama should back a bid to Crack Down on China's trade practices -- or get Beijing to take action on its own. Charles Schumer, a member of the Democratic leadership, said he expects his bill, to pressure China to let its currency rise, will enjoy Bipartisan support in the new Congress that convened this week and expressed hope it will become law. "It's one of the things that's seriously on the table," Sch...

White House Scribe Calls MSNBCs Olbermann Careless
Sam Youngman , White House Correspondent for The Hill, fired a few rounds at MSNBC “Countdown” Host Keith Olbermann today for being “careless.” Mediate reported today that on Wednesday night’s show Olbermann made an off-the-wall comment that the “professional left” remarks made by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs were made without ground rules. Youngman was the reporter who wrote that story after an extensive interview with Gibbs. Mediaite called...

Wendy Wright: Theres No Discrimination in America, Except for that Committed by Homosexual Activists
Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America, in the conservative publication The American Thinker ridicules the Obama Administration’s claims that Bigotry and inequality still exist in the U.S., but goes on to claim that the Religious Right represents the actual Victim of Discrimination at the hands of “Homosexual Activists.” Such fatuous allegations are nothing new from Wright, who participated in the “Green Dragon” series that believes the environme...

WaPo columnist compares Darrell Issa to Joe McCarthy
Stumble This! A longtime columnist and associate editor of the Washington Post suggested the new House Oversight chairman might follow in the footsteps of one of US history's most notorious demagogues. David Ignatius on Wednesday warned Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his Republican colleagues not to get too comfortable with their new Subpoena powers, writing on the Washington Post's "PostPartisan" blog that it would tempt them to pursue "witch-hunts." In the post -- titled "Is Darrell Issa the ne...

David Ignatius Confuses Joe McCarthy and Dan Burton
David Ignatius got it wrong, IMO, when he asked whether Darrell Issa is going to be the next Joe McCarthy. When you see the righteous gleam in Issa’s eye, recall other zealous congressional investigators who claimed to be doing the public’s business but ended up pursuing vendettas. I think of Robert F. Kennedy’s ruthless pursuit of labor “racketeering” when he was chief counsel of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. And, more chilling, I think of ...

Is Darrell Issa the new Joe McCarthy?
Michele Bachmann for president. Seriously?! To the victors in the congressional Elections goes the power of Subpoena, as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has been so eager to remind the Democrats. But as the new Congress is seated, Issa and his GOP colleagues should note the difference between investigation and witch-hunt. Too often in our political history, the former has turned into the latter. It was scary, frankly, to hear Issa describe the Executive Branch under President Obama as "one of the ...

Today America Is Restored (Got Rid Of the Vagina Speaker)
Newly unearthed documents show the ACLU was founded by CommunistS in 1919. This fact is truly shocking because why would anyone want to overthrow Capitalism during the golden age of Child Labor? [The Daily Caller] Muslims are slated to show up in the next Narnia movie, where thanks to the PC police, they will capture the lion-Jesus and slaughter him Halal-style in some CGI fantasy-mosk to serve at KFC with tzatziki sauce and pita. [Big Hollywood] Amazingly, KFC’s haute-cuisine MAY be hal...