I just stopped by the White House website to look for the education reform speech that President Obama delivered to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this morning.
Unfortunately, what I discovered is that since his Inauguration nearly two months ago, the text of only three of his speeches are posted on the White House website: his Inaugural Address, his first Address to Congress (in English and en Espanol) and a speech about Iraq.
Where are the others? We know they have the text, since he won’t stray from the teleprompter and excerpts of his speeches are posted on the White House blog.
Just wondering, since I recall hearing something about transparency once or twice during the campaign last year.
UPDATE 1:25 p.m. – Bill Allison at the Sunlight Foundation has pointed out that the White House has posted most of President Obama’s speeches not on the “Speeches” page, but instead on a separate page under a heading labeled “Official Remarks.” My bad, and my apologies. Although they could make it less confusing by posting them all on the same page.
Filed under: Government Spending, Obama | Tags: broken promises, change, earmarks, Government Spending, Obama, omnibus, pork
As I write this, the U.S. Senate is poised to pass an omnibus spending bill that would significantly increase government spending for the remainder of the fiscal year and, more importantly from a political standpoint, fund more than 8,000 pork-barrel earmarks totalling nearly $8 billion dollars.
Of course, this is a problem for Obama, who campaigned as a reformer who was going to end runaway earmarks. It also represents a massive blown political opportunity for the new President, who I think would’ve been much better served if he’d have come out a couple of weeks ago and boldly told the Democratic leadership on the Hill to get those earmarks out and send him a clean bill.
Instead, Team Obama has lamely claimed that this is “last year’s business” and signaled that he’ll just sign pretty much whatever bill Pelosi and Reid send him. That’s a copout, and a huge missed opportunity.
Most political pros suspected all along that Obama’s “Centrist / Change” mantra was mostly, if not completely, hollow campaign rhetoric. But the blazing speed with which he’s abandoned any pretense of following through on his promises of change is surprising even to many grizzled DC insiders, and it’s going to significantly (and unnecessarily) hasten the inevitable drop in his approval ratings among the electorate at large.
Not that I have a problem with that, of course. I’m just sayin’…
Of course, with so much Obama stimulus money going to expand public transportation, now Congress is going to have to provide more money to hire additional police officers to protect us from all the new bus drivers…
Bus Driver Collared After Crime Dog Socked on Corner
By Theola Labbé-DeBose
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; B04D.C. police said a Metro bus driver was charged with assault Saturday after a bizarre incident in which he allegedly punched a patrol officer who was dressed as McGruff the Crime Dog, the popular mascot who educates children about crime prevention.
The driver, Shawn Brim, 39, got out of the bus he was driving at Spring Road and 14th Street NW early Saturday afternoon and punched Officer Tyrone Hardy in the head, police said.
Hardy was wearing his McGruff costume head at the time.
The incident, first reported yesterday by the Washington Examiner, occurred in front of a group of children. Police said Brim was charged with simple assault.
Filed under: Shameless Self Promotion
The first-ever Frank Strategies newsletter is now online! You can check it out here.
And if I don’t actually know you personally, just disregard that opening item – the e-mail that carried the newsletter only went to my professional contacts.
In any case, take a look, and be sure to print it out and hide it away in your scrapbook – since it’s a first edition, it’s sure to become a collectors item…
From this morning’s Washington Post:
“Nothing about this crisis is really a surprise. People have been warning about it for more than a decade… Our smartest financiers, Warren Buffett and George Soros, saw it coming as clear as a bell.”
- Columnist David Ignatius, “When the Gurus Flinched,” page A17, The Washington Post, Sunday, March 1, 2009.
Then there’s this… three pages prior…
“The widely followed investor Warren E. Buffett… yesterday (accepted) blame for for Berkshire Hathaway’s worst showing in his 44 years as chairman and chief executive.
“During 2008 I did some dumb things in investments,” Buffett wrote, adding later, “I made some errors of omission, sucking my thumb when new facts came in that should have caused me to re-examine my thinking and promptly take action.”
- “Buffett Takes Blame for Firm’s Ugly Year,” page A14, The Washington Post, Sunday, March 1, 2009.
So which is it, Washington Post editors? Did Warren Buffett see the financial crisis “coming clear as a bell,” or was he, per his own admission, a thumb-sucking dummy like the rest of us? (Excepting, of course, David Ignatius and President Obama’s financial brain trust, who are now pushing essentially the same “solutions” that put the “Great” in the Great Depression…)
