The Devil’s in the Lack of Details

When Schumer said the Americans don’t care about pork–he should have been specific.
Maybe Obama supporters don’t care about wasteful spending. Some of his rich friends won’t pay taxes–a good chunk of the others don’t have to pay taxes.
I think 57 million of us do care about pork.

Thanks for foregrounding this, Jake. The Obama administration can’t have it both ways– steamrolling the opposition to the stimulus plan because catastrophe is coming and then asking for an incomplete on the financial community rescue plan. Tell us SPECIFICALLY what you are going to do– as Obama said you were going to do. And now I see on the morning shows that the dems are spinning this that Geithner had a tough act to follow in the smooth, amazing President and that caused the problem— our expectations were just too high. No, the President told me that Geithner would explain it all too me, and the financial community was looking forward to getting some guidance from the administration on how this plan would work. Then, Geithner had no such specifics. This can’t be put just on Geithner’s lap– there has to be coordination within the administration, they have to know what he is and isn’t prepared to roll out and they have to be on the same page. This is just weird. I just finished posting on the train wreck of the roll-out in a post down the page, so I’ll paste it here:
It isn’t just those pesky Republican Senators who are going after Geithner for his performance yesterday. I clearly remember when he was nominated for Treasury– we kept being assured that he was the most superior candidate ever, that we HAD to have him despite his tax issues because he was simply the only person who could do the job. We were reminded that, as head of the NY Fed, he had been intimately involved with wall street and the big banks during the growing crisis and that he had helped Paulson craft the rescue plans. We were told he could hit the ground running because of his unique skill set.
So now he’s in charge of Treasury and we were promised a big plan from him this week. His rollout of the plan was pushed back to Tuesday from Monday in order not to step on the story of the stimulus debate. On Monday night, Obama hyped the presentation to come. ANd then, on Tuesday, Geithner gave us a campaign speech or something rather than a plan. He had no details, and admitted as much. Fine, but then don’t go building up expectations for a plan that does not yet exist.
Most annoyingly, he told the Senators, “I have only been on the job for two weeks.” WHAT? That’s your excuse? Forget it. The transition was the smoothest in memory, as everyone on both sides kept saying. The Bush Treasury welcomed Obama people in to work along with them and to see what was going on. Geithner was at work in NYC. So after two weeks of actually holding the title but after much longer as the person whose main assignment was to take control of this situation, he is not yet ready for prime time.
The administration dropped the ball by leading us to believe a fleshed-out plan was coming this week. They are, after all, the ones with their hair on fire, shouting that time is of the essence and we haven’t a moment to spare to stave off Armageddon (sorry, catastrophe, let’s not exaggerate. *G*) So we can’t even pause to read an 800 page bill before we pass it, because time’s a wastin’. But we can roll out an outline and a pledge rather than a plan, and that’s okay because it’s only been a few weeks.
Give me strength.

No Sally, the Republicant’s are quickly becoming the Whigs of the 21st century. Obama’s approval rating is still stratospheric. The Republican’s in Congress will be among the “unemployed” of 2010. But maybe then they will feel a little of the pain of real Americans.

Wake up people!!! It was not the Republicans who got us into this mess. It was the liberal, socialist Dems who insisted poor people get mortgages (so they would continue to vote for them). That was the beginning to this end. ACORN, Obama and Clinton(through Greenspan) started this housing crisis by intimidating bank etc into giving loans to poor people that couldn’t even pay their rent, the State paid it thru welfare. Now we have all these foreclosures, home prices skyrocketed because the poor people were needing these homes to buy that they couldn’t afford. Now people that did play by the rules are paying the price with their buying a home during those years paying twice as much for a home than its worth now. The people working two jobs to make sure they pay their mortgage should get the help and let the fools that bought a home knowing they couldn’t afford it move in the Whitehouse with Obama, maybe he can get ACORN to put them up somewhere.
If a fact-finding commission is set up to investigate what truly caused the downfall of our economy, it will all round up with Obama, Democratic Congress and Clinton(thru sigining of Greenspan) as the guilty parties. The Republican Congress are trying to adopt policies that succeeded during the Reagan years. Reagan, by the way, inherited a worse economy with double-digit unemplyment rate than what Obama has been claiming since the Great Depression. It’s very unprofessional of him to play blame game. Bush never did that with Clinton.
It’s the media’s fault and the voters’ fault that we put an unprofessional and incompetent President that we now have.

AsianGOP: That’s right – IT’S CLINTON’S FAULT! The poor Republicans in power for the last 8 years (6 with control of both branches of Congress and 2 with a record number of filibusters protecting everything they did the prior 6) bear NO responsibility. None. At all.
Remember the Republican motto: The Buck Stops Over There. With a Democrat. Probably Clinton.

People are being too hard on Mr. Geithner. Remember, this is a guy with a bad memory. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He most likely thought up the specifics, but because he didn’t write them down, he forgot them; much like he forgot to pay his taxes.

The Govenment is a FRAUD, and rather than holding someone, ANYONE accountable, half the country is rooting for them for the name on the back of their jersey. No wonder the push sports on the public so bad, placative entertainment AND tribalism indoctrination… Maybe THAT’S why the government is paying for your digital tv’s! Makes you wonder, doesn’t it???

Did Obama actually “promise” the Geithner plan soon? Promise can be an inaccurate word people, including journalists, like to summon up if they’re out to use pressure tactics or provoke contention. Sometimes its use amounts to a lie; that is, by those claiming its use by another person.
First of all, the stimulus bill just got passed in the midst of obstructionism and controversy. And now we’ve got calls for Geithner to immediately cough up a plan afterwards. The last bailout, hastily enacted, was a disaster. Myself, I would prefer that a large chunk of my taxes go towards a careful and thorough bailout with plenty of transparency , along with good chances of success. You’d think I was a voice in the wilderness amid the calls and demands for another quick fix.
Geeze, give the situation a modicum of breathing room and time. It’s painful enough that these self-collapsed financial giants require tens of thousands from individual tax payers, much less that they could be used again ineffectively and irresponsibly again. I want Geithner to have more time to fashion something that will contrast well with the Paulson incompetency — and that feat won’t happen overnight. It will come soon enough as Obama said, unlike the immediate promise that’s being pushed by Tapper.

Senate/Congress people are not revealing the true details of the
“Great Spending Bill” because most of them are not only PORK but are subjects of most of the 502 promises that Obama made in his campaign. He needs to put and hide them within this so-called Stimulus Bill so he can make good his promises without regard of the worst consequences when this gets implemented so he can run 2 terms and without blame at all. It’s his main political agenda.

Kathy, keep up. Just as Mr. Tapper said, the president did indeed promise there would be a plan– how else does one interpret this statement, taken directly from the press conference transcript, that “And so tomorrow my treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, will be announcing some very clear and specific plans for how we are going to start loosening up credit once again.” Obama said there would be very clearn and specific plans announced by Geithner on Tuesday. There were not.
You say you want Geithner to have time to work out a solid plan, unlike Paulson’s more hasty one. I would agree that we need a workable, thoughtful plan. However, Geithner was involved in working up the plan Paulson pushed. And he has had time to work out this new plan. We were told it was being rolled out. Then we got the general statement we got yesterday that caused the markets to tank and the chattering classes to flip out.
It’s not that I want undue haste. Trust me, I don’t. BUT when I am told there will be details, I want details. IF they are not to that point yet, then say so and don’t lead us on. Get it right, people.

Did Obama actually “promise” the Geithner plan soon? Promise can be an inaccurate word people, including journalists, like to summon up if they’re out to use pressure tactics or provoke contention. Sometimes its use amounts to a lie; that is, by those claiming its use by another person.
————————————
Kathy,
Did you listen to the press conference????
“And so tomorrow my treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, will be announcing some very clear and specific plans for how we are going to start loosening up credit once again.”
Obama set the bar of expectations! The markets were waiting for exactly that, then after Geithner fumbled through it, the markets dove!
So either Obama planed it that way, or we get back once again to his inexpereince in governing and understanding the dynamics in play here!
I suppose a 3rd alternative is he believed Geithner was ready to get specific, and Timmy screwed it up!

jpt quotes John Kerry:
“We have zombie banks … ”
Zombie BANKS?? We have zombie Senators, put in office by — and deeply invested in — the same toxic corporations about which they, suddenly, meekly opine.
How MANY non-existent trillions are these zombies going to throw to the banks, on the assumption that the “system” eventually will overflow with “credit”?
–> And WHAT is up with that medical-records info-grab, smack dab in the middle of the “stimulus”?
WHY is this discussed only from the right?
Can SOME brave soul ASK zombie-master Obama why the federal government, rather than … oh, just guessing … state medical boards should have access to ALL medical records?

Is this the man who is President Obama’s basketball buddy? If that’s so, it’s good enough for the President, who are we to get in their way.
Nobody is perfect, but if I was Obama, I wouldn’t let people who don’t pay their taxes be The Secretary of Treasury. And if you get Mr. Geithner to spill anything to you, please, please let the rest of us know.