Posts tagged with 'women’s media center'
Kicking the Wall Street Habit
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As Barack Obama readies himself to lead the United States through what appears to be a scathing recession, he faces a choice between feeding the political sphere’s Wall Street addiction and investing in economic progress. Two key former Clinton cabinet officials could determine which course he takes.
It was more than a little startling to hear a U.S. leader who sounded like (gasp!) an economist at the president-elect’s first press conference last week, after years of Bush speeches that treated economic policy as a realm defined exclusively by tax cuts and bailouts. But without policy specifics, we still do not know which voices of the many men and women flanking Obama at the event will impact the next administration’s economic platform. Mother Jones notes that several of the names included on the list of Obama’s economic advisers represent schools of thought that brought us directly to the current crisis. Two of the alleged experts, former Clinton Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, signed off on major financial deregulatory moves in the latter half of the Clinton years. The two sided often with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on policies that included a refusal to place government oversight on the credit derivatives market, which eventually ballooned into the $60 trillion quagmire that destroyed AIG in September (who got another $40 billion from taxpayers on Monday).
Summers has successfully sparked controversy on several occasions, and while some of the scandals haven’t received a fair hearing in the court of public opinion, others are of genuine concern. In 2005, Summers said he believed innate inferiorities were more responsible for the under-representation of women in science and engineering fields than either discrimination or socialization. Writing for the Women’s Media Center, Veronica Arreola demonstrates how advancing gender equality would improve the broader U.S. economy, and expresses well-founded doubts about Summers’ commitment to Obama’s campaign pledge to implement equal pay for equal work legislation. (more…)
McCain Newsladder: Toil and Trouble
This week finds our war hero, on Old Hallow’s Eve, having finished yet another very difficult stretch of his presidential campaign, as it draws to a close. As if it wasn’t tough enough to find himself having to defend his home state of Arizona from that one’s blithely effortless incursion onto desert turf — never mind the continuing parade of defectors and detractors among high-powered Republicans — G.O.P. presidential nominee Sen. John McCain learned, via the press, that his senior advisers think his vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a “diva” and “a wack job” who was bent not just on “going rogue,” but going even “more rogue” than her campaign has already gone. Which would be pretty far, since her remarks this week indicated that she may have already set her sights on 2012 presidential race, reportedly having written off the top-of-the-ticket’s chances in 2008.
Not just a river in Egypt
In a Halloween morning interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, McCain called his running mate, Sarah Palin, the new face of the G.O.P., adding, “She’s united the party.” Which left The Nation’s Ari Berman scratching his head:
Um, tell that to Colin Powell, Christopher Buckley or Ken Adelman, all lifelong Republicans who’ve cited the Palin pick as a chief reason they’ve endorsed Obama. Or to conservatives like David Brooks, David Frum, Kathleen Parker, Ross Douthat–all past or present McCain supporters–who’ve strongly criticized Palin.
Or, TAPPED’s Tim Fernholz reminds us, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who served under Bush 41, — or former Reagan chief of staff, Ken Duberstein. Not to mention that hard-core conservative, Stephen Colbert. (more…)