What are the White House’s Priorities?

After reading a Denver Post article that detailed some of the efforts that the Obama White House went to in order to ensure appointed Senator Michael Bennet won his Democratic Primary a couple of days ago, I’m left with that question.

And here’s why: Americans are frustrated with the D.C. culture of doing as little as possible.  Americans voted for Obama in record numbers in 2008 mostly because they wanted to see progress made on a suite of issues that had been left to languish or purposefully decimated in the previous 8 years of the Bush Regime.  Instead of getting things done, as was promised in the 2008 campaigns across America, the White House chose instead to waste months of time in order to get one or two Republicans to vote for bills that were being continually watered down.

The nation’s biggest banks got taxpayer dollars which they used to buy smaller banks and reduce competition.  They’re not lending much of those billions of dollars to small businesses or the people who would spend it and finally get this economy back on track.

Healthcare legislation became a health industry giveaway.  The system remains broken, as Americans will continue to affirm for themselves over the next few years.

No climate legislation will be passed any time soon – and I mean any time in the next few years.  Or at least until climate-related disasters affect more Americans personally.

Guantanamo remains open; we’re still occupying Iraq; we’re still occupying Afghanistan.

Unemployment officially remains near 10%, though the more realistic number hovers nearer 18%.

Real take-home income still hasn’t increased measurably since 1974.

Despite all of the things that weren’t done at all , or were done partway, Obama’s machine has decided to back every incumbent Democrat this year, whether they worked to pass any part of his agenda or not.  A number of those candidates have already failed to win their primaries or are behind enough in the polls that Republican wins are all but guaranteed in 3 short months.

That machine wouldn’t be necessary if the President’s team had decided that America’s agenda needed some attention in 2009 and earlier this year.

I’m not at all sure what Obama expects will get done in 2011-2012 with fewer Democrats in the House, which did a monumental job getting good legislation passed, or the Senate, which is broken.  But if he feels better about himself because his machine helped get a couple incumbents through their primaries, more power to him.

CO Democratic Party Power Struggles

News this week that CO Gov. Bill Ritter would not run for re-election in 2010 has, of course, sent the two major parties scrambling.  The announcement was given with no notice to other officials or the party members themselves.  After the announcement, the way in which potential Democratic replacements have been offered up and discussed by the “Serious People” nagged at me.  I want to explore these developments with the removal of a state Representative from a committee vice-chairmanship and trends emanating from the Obama White House.

Joe Lieberman, Ken Salazar and CO’s Next Secretary of State

Turncoat Joe Lieberman played his Senate Democratic colleagues like a freaking fiddle.  Despite campaigning against them since he lost his Connecticut primary in 2006, Senate Democrats voted today to allow him to retain his Homeland Security Committee Chair position.  Despite not initiating one investigation while holding that position the past two years (not the Katrina response, not war profiteering, nothing), Democrats voted to permit Lieberman to continue to stab them in the back the next two years.

Sen. Salazar (“D”-CO) talked his fellow Democrats into keeping Lieberman in the Chair he had, and to give up his Environment and Public Works subcommittee position.  Since Lieberman voted for the Iraq invasion and to continue the occupation every time it came up; since Lieberman voted to condone torture and rendition; since Lieberman voted to trash the writ of habeus corpus; since Lieberman voted to expand illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens without justification; since Lieberman voted for retroactive immunity for that illegal wiretapping, he gets to keep his Chairmanship.  He voted the opposite way than his Democratic colleagues on most of those issues.  He voted the same way with his Democratic colleagues on Envrionment and Public Works issues.  But he lost the latter and kept the former, with the assistance of Sen. Salazar, who Lieberman “mentored” when he first arrived in the Senate four years ago.

A number of diaries exploring these two have been written at SquareState, including this one, this one and this most recent one.  I expect much more to be written in the next couple of years, if Salazar remains a Senator (rumors of an Interior Secretary post abound).  Neither Joe Lieberman nor Ken Salazar have voted in Americans’ best interests (since when did torture become a “left vs. right” question?!).  Neither deserve to represent their constituents.  Will anyone successfully challenge Salazar in 2010 or Lieberman in 2012?  I certainly hope so.

More changes in who holds what office continues with Colorado’s Secretary of State.  The most recent SoS, Mike Coffman, won the CO-06 race to replace the xenophobic, racist Tom Tancredo.  Courtesy of ProgressNow’s Daily News Digest, I learned that seven applicants are interested in being Colorado’s next Secretary of State:

* Former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff.
* State Rep. Bernie Buescher.
* Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon.
* Rosemary Rodriguez, chairwoman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
* Gilpin County Clerk Jessica Lovingier.
* TV show host Aaron Harber.
* Dan Willis, secretary for the Democratic Party in Denver.

Decent Bill Name

The best example I’ve seen thus far in the CO legislative session of naming a bill well: The B.E.S.T. (Building Excellent Schools Today) plan – House Bill 1335 (authored by Rep. Andrew Romanoff)– will address health and safety issues by providing funds to rebuild, repair or replace our most dangerous and most needy K-12 facilities. The BEST plan calls for a statewide needs assessment, an expert-guided process for the selection of schools and projects, and leveraging up to $1 billion in funds without raising taxes or fees.

Now, it’s not immediately clear from the bill’s acronym what BEST is all about, but it’s a much better title than most others I’ve seen this year.