Change We Can Believe In

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy."

The specific changes said to be under consideration include lifting limits on embryonic stem cell research, lifting the ban on international family planning groups counseling women on abortion, "the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles", and "declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries."

These are wonderful changes. After the last eight years, the very idea that they might occur not as the result of a long drawn-out battle, but just like that, is amazing.

Comments

[hilzoy]

By the way: I was off at a department retreat for the past few days, talking about truth and objectivity and such. So sorry for not posting.

[Gary Farber]

Cough.

There's also this and this.

[Gary Farber]

I'll give the Bush team credit, as well, that they seem to have been doing a good job working on the transition.

[Gary Farber]

Oh, and unsurprisingly, I'd like for one priority to be health care for all.

That whole "go to the ER" thing doesn't really work too well.

[now_what]

These are wonderful changes. After the last eight years, the very idea that they might occur not as the result of a long drawn-out battle, but just like that, is amazing.

How is it that our employee doing the things we hired him to do is somehow amazing?

I expect no less. I expect a lot more, in addition.

Get to work!

[Jesurgislac]

Yesterday I went to a demo organised by kids from my old school. (Their headteacher was at the demo: it wasn't like that in my young day... *creak creak*.)

The topic of the demo was a message to Barack Obama: Close Guantanamo Bay.

I've seen a lot of wishlists from non-Americans over the last few days. Closing down the US gulags is always right at the top of the list.

For those kids running the demo I went to yesterday, the US has been a nation that runs torture camps probably for as long as they've had any political awareness - they were 16-18, they couldn't have been more than 12 when Bagram Airbase received the first kidnap victims for extra-judicial imprisonment and torture, and the first cages began to be built at Guantanamo Bay. For them, that's always been America. And they want that to change.

[Jesurgislac]

(You won't see anything about this demo on Google News: the oldest kid running the demo said they'd invited reporters, but had been told that Guantanamo Bay and related US atrocities is "not news".)

[Gary Farber]

And speaking of health care, this effing parting gift from the Bush Administration:

In the first of an expected avalanche of post-election regulations, the Bush administration on Friday narrowed the scope of services that can be provided to poor people under Medicaid’s outpatient hospital benefit.

I really couldn't possibly comment further without violating the posting rules with nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

[Suzii]

Any word on unstating the signing statement that canceled the law against torture?

[Gary Farber]

In another change, Bill Ayers now has spoken.

[wonkie]

I am very appreciative of Obama's smarts and thoroughness. I think that I am correct in assuming that unpon taking office he will get rid off a very large number of people in high and low positions who were appointed for purely partisan reasons.

And I hope he will get busy putting back some of the regulations which were removed.

[Ben Alpers]

These are wonderful changes. After the last eight years, the very idea that they might occur not as the result of a long drawn-out battle, but just like that, is amazing.

I don't know how you'd describe the two-year-long presidential campaign that just ended, but "long drawn-out battle" seems about right to me.

[EnglishForDirtyForeigners]

Whilst not entirely related to the thread, let me tell you of the only place on the internets that will lie to you about English language, traditions, customs and stuffs.

Oh yes, we have many stuffs:
http://www.EnglishForDirtyForeigners.com

Come for the comedy, stay for the hilarity.

[Brett Bellmore]

"unpon taking office he will get rid off a very large number of people in high and low positions who were appointed for purely partisan reasons."

LOL! And replace them with a very large number of people in high and low positions who will be equally appointed for purely partisan reasons. (Where 'partisan reasons' includes ideology.) Nothing new about that. Presidents are supposed to run the executive branch, they're entitled to have people under them who are trying to execute their policies, not frustrate them.

I fully expect Obama to issue a lot of executive orders on taking office, some of them I'll really dislike. But may I make one serious request for a change?

None of them should be secret.

[Ed Marshall]

Presidents are supposed to run the executive branch, they're entitled to have people under them who are trying to execute their policies, not frustrate them.

Like Dennis Schornack? Of all the sorry shit during the Bush years that was the most bizzare and petty authoritarian bullshit I've ever seen in my life.

If you don't know this story Bush appointed a guy to run the International Boundary Commission. The job consists of enforcing a treaty with Canada that goes back to the 20's.

Some dimbulb built a fence in Washington where they weren't supposed to and when Schornack told them to move it Bush filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit to try and fire him when he couldn't. That's idiocy.

[hilzoy]

We can't fire the people in civil service jobs, however unqualified, unless they do something pretty seriously awful, like taking bribes or being convicted of felonies. The political appointees, however, are another matter.

[wj]

Closing Gitmo mightbe desirable, but I can't see that it is a priority. Once the torture is stopped, you can take a couple of months to figure out which prisoners get sent where. But the priority is to get the torture stopped, whether at Gitmo or anywhere else.

Let me suggest the following: At the Inauguration, immediately after taking the Oath of Office (before anything else, including the Inaugural Address), sign an Executive Order stopping torture (including under any of the euphemisms) and dispatch it to the Duty Officers at the Pentagon and at the CIA.

The other things that need to be reversed can wait a day or two. But that one needs to get done as close to instantly as possible. And doing it that way will make the point to everyone, at home and abroad, that America is back in the civilized world again.

[KCinDC]

The issue of prisoners is going to be a huge problem. I agree with Jes that it's a top priority, but the Bush administration has made such a mess that's it's going to be hard to solve, even ignoring the politics of it. As we saw with the Uighurs, figuring out where to send people we've labeled as terrorists is not easy -- and some of the prisoners are actually dangerous. I don't think Obama's going to be able to take all of them into the US.

[Dean Monikers]

"Presidents are supposed to run the executive branch, they're entitled to have people under them who are trying to execute their policies, not frustrate them."

I think the phrase "purely partisan" was another way to say "and also completely incompetent".

Surely, you'd agree that while the President is entitled to appoint ideologically compatible folks, they should also be somewhat competent at what they do.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, I agree, they should also be competent. An area where Bush, who was more interested in toadies than competence, really fell down.

But really what I'm saying is, I expect Obama to replace a lot of people Bush put in place, (Presumably with more dispatch than Bush showed, he had Clinonistas making policy years into his adminstration.. Norm Minetta, for instance.) and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. It doesn't HAVE to be justified on the basis of redressing some wrong Bush committed, it's what every incoming administration does.

Have at it, folks, you won the election, to the victors go the spoils.

[Ken Houghton]

"After the last eight years, the very idea that they might occur not as the result of a long drawn-out battle, but just like that, is amazing."

Uh, no, actually it's exactly the opposite: that there was not a "long drawn-out battle" to implement these policies in the first place is amazing.

And that the policies were implemented and maintained without once attempting to put them through that "battle"—a.k.a. the legislative process—tells you exactly how much support they had.

So why did they last so long?

[R]

ok peeps u wanted change u got it. Now expect to pay more in gas again after it has come down. expect to take $$ from the rich and middle class and give to the people that dont pay any taxes.
ANd socialized medicin. It didnt work in Hawaii so why do u think it would work for the entire U.S ??

[gwangung]

ANd socialized medicin. It didnt work in Hawaii so why do u think it would work for the entire U.S ??

Works around the rest of world. Including those socialized paradises Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

Please. Do better.

[Gary Farber]

"The political appointees, however, are another matter."

The Plum Book.

By the way, Peter Hitchens waxes mildly hysterical here, he's so unimpressed.

[...] They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

It's doom, I tell you! DOOM!

[Phil]

expect to take $$ from the rich and middle class and give to the people that dont pay any taxes.

So, wait, if I'm poor, and I go shopping, they'll exempt me from sales taxes? And when my paycheck shows up, they don't take out any FICA?

SWEEEEEEEEEEET!!!

[Dan S.]

"expect [our government] to take $$ from the rich and middle class and give to the people that dont pay any taxes.

Well, according to this analysis of Obama's campaign tax plan, everybody with a family income of up to $226,981 gets a tax cut, while the next bunch, the $226,982 - $603,402, sees their taxes stay the same (they get a teeny cut, but so small to be effectively 0%). It's not until you get to the top 1% that you start seeing tax hikes, with special attention the the top 0.1%. So in this case, what you mean to say is:

"expect [our government] to take a comparatively small $$ from the super-rich - the top 1% and beyond (who have been receiving a major windfall these last years in tax cuts and similar policies, and doing so ridiculously well that even the merely mega-rich have been complaining) and give [it] to the middle and working classes (as well as the downright poor) - who are the core of our economy and the heart of our society, and who have been having a rougher and rougher time of it - both in terms of a lessening of their tax burden, and helping fund valuable and essential services. "

To which I say, capital idea!

[Nell]

Brett Bellmore: I fully expect Obama to issue a lot of executive orders on taking office, some of them I'll really dislike. But may I make one serious request for a change?

None of them should be secret.

Agreed. But how many of the executive orders issued by any previous president were secret? I'm seriously asking here. Did LBJ do that? Nixon? Clinton?

[Nell]

Okay, back from reading up. Plain old executive orders are not classified, and even those issued by our current dim bulb are public. It's the national security directives, aka presidential directives, that are usually secret. These have been issed from Kennedy on.

That gives a fair amount of substance to the idea that we haven't really been living in a democracy for a long time, but in a permanent "state of exception", which Dick Cheney and his copresident and operatives have simply made more extreme.

[Gary Farber]

"It's the national security directives, aka presidential directives, that are usually secret. These have been issed from Kennedy on."

Truman. Since the formation of the National Security Council, under the National Security Act of 1947, which is the foundation of our entire modern military-intelligence-industrial complex and national security government.

As for the memoranda, I could paraphrase from memory, but might as well just quote from my link above:

The documents from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations are National Security Council (NSC) policy papers, which generally combined a study of a particular subject with policy recommendations. These papers were often accepted in their original form to become the basis for policy, or were sent back by the NSC for revision.

Kennedy and Johnson

A less formal system was introduced in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, which instituted the National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) series of documents. NSAMs included instructions to government departments or requests for studies, and the subject matter covered a range of topics from the Cuban missile crisis to the construction of an embassy in Dublin.

Nixon and Ford

The Nixon and Ford administrations established two parallel and interacting series of documents. Study directives (National Security Decision Memoranda, NSDM) commissioned either the NSC or government agencies to perform studies to serve as aids to decision making. Decision directives (National Security Decision Study Memoranda, NSSM) announced policy decisions, but might also ask for studies and reports.

Carter to Clinton

The system put in place during the Nixon administration has served as the model for all subsequent presidencies.

The stuff that was secret was because it was dealing with the stuff the government, for better or worse, was keeping secret: foreign policy decisions, covert action, intelligence, military strategy, and so forth.

"That gives a fair amount of substance to the idea that we haven't really been living in a democracy for a long time, but in a permanent "state of exception", which Dick Cheney and his copresident and operatives have simply made more extreme."

Sure. Although one can trace the roots of post-1947 to the construction of the WWII apparatus, and the literal construction of the Pentagon, the creation of the OSS, etc.

[Original Lee]

Given that in May, the White House was saying this:

http://www.ombwatch.org/regs/PDFs/BoltenMemo050908.pdf

but in July the rest of the government was saying this:

http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/boltens-memo-on-midnight-regs-ignore-it/

I think it's prudent and farsighted of Obama to have put together this team essentially around the time the Bolten memo went out. There's been a LOT of fishy stuff floating over the transom at OMB lately.

[Denny]

Abiding by the treaties America has entered into is one way that Obama can improve international relations. He can start with our border treaty with Canada.