Free Republic

President Barack Obama says he won't take "no" as an answer from Republicans, so he's going around them to appoint the head of a new consumer protection agency. Obama says Republicans would just keep holding Richard Cordray's nomination hostage—and the president says that's inexcusable and wrong. He says Cordray must be in place in order for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to start helping consumers deal with unscrupulous mortgage companies, dishonest payday lenders, and others. Obama announced the appointment of Cordray during a stop Wednesday in Ohio, where Cordray once served as attorney general. Republicans are outraged but Obama says...

At a time when economists say U.S. manufacturing policy is in "disarray," the Obama administration on Monday said it has created a new Office of Manufacturing Policy to be co-chaired by the Commerce Department Secretary and the director of the White House National Economic Council. "At this make or break time for the middle class and our economy, we need a strong manufacturing sector that will put Americans back to work making products stamped with three proud words: Made in America," President Barack Obama said in a statement. Wisconsin leads the nation with the highest share of its workforce employed...

NEW YORK (AP) — Cable companies said Wednesday that they will offer Internet service for $9.95 per month to homes with children that are eligible for free school lunches. The offer will start next summer and is part of an initiative the Federal Communications Commission cobbled together to get more U.S. homes connected to broadband. One third, or about 35 million homes, don't have broadband. That affects people's ability to educate themselves and find and apply for jobs, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said.

Smoking Gun? "And then there's Van Jones, who recently joined the Obama administration, a special adviser to the president on green jobs. Van started out as a grassroots organizer and became an advocate and a creator of ‘green collar’ jobs –- jobs that are not only good for the environment, but also provide good wages and career advancement for both skilled and unskilled workers,” she said. Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett echoed that praise to a cheering crowd at the Netroots Nation convention this summer. “Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House,...

In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.” In his role as President Barack Obama’s top science and technology adviser, Holdren deals with issues ranging from global warming to health care. “A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren wrote along with Paul and Anne H. Ehrlich in the...

Jobs Czar Moves US Jobs to China By Mark Wachtler, Independent Examiner July 27, 2011. Beijing. In an attempt to capture a larger share of the booming Chinese market, General Electric announced that it was moving its X-Ray technology headquarters from Wisconsin to China. While GE is one of the largest military suppliers in the world, it is also the parent of the NBC broadcasting group of companies. Ironically enough, GE’s CEO is Jeff Immelt, the same man President Obama anointed as America’s Jobs Czar.

On July 6, I told you about all the well-heeled spinners in the White House Office of Public Engagement. Their ranks keep on swelling. My column today introduces you to the newly-designed “America’s Champions of Change for the Arts.” Yes, it’s as creepy as it sounds.

In what could be a repeat of the easy-lending cycle that led to the housing crisis, the Justice Department has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination, according to court documents reviewed by IBD. [snip] Another Reno protege, Perez has compared bankers to Klansmen. Only difference is, he said, bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print." He said this kind of racism, though more subtle, is "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood." Perez has put...

President Obama's regulatory czar told a Capitol Hill gathering Tuesday that the administration has produced fewer burdensome rules for industry than did the administration of President George W. Bush. "There is no tsunami" of regulations, said Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, at a symposium on innovation on Capitol Hill, rejecting complaints from the business community and congressional Republicans that the administration's regulatory policies had harmed the economy and cost U.S. jobs. Industry leaders have complained about the growth of costly regulations under Mr. Obama. It was U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue who...

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama’s regulatory czar retreated from a 2003 academic report he wrote advocating that government assign a higher monetary value to the lives of young people than to senior citizens during testimony to Congress on Friday. Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the Obama administration’s plans for reviewing and reducing federal regulations. “I’m a lot older now than the author with my name was, and I’m not sure what I think about what that young man wrote,”...

Just saw this on Twitter... Is it true? bccohan Brittany Cohan by cnsnews_com Yup. RT @diggrbiii: Wait. Wait. The WH's new propaganda czar is married to the person behind the Moveon.org General "Betrayus" ads? Really?

As the days wind down to the scheduled weeklong congressional recess to mark Memorial Day, Republicans have a choice to make. Will they merely grumble about President Obama using the break to appoint more radical nominees without Senate confirmation, or will they actually stop him? To date, Obama has made 28 recess appointments. One of them, Donald Berwick, was put in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, even though he was never scheduled for a Senate confirmation hearing. If Republicans don't act, history could repeat itself next week. Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/05/gop-should-block-memorial-day-recess-appointments#ixzz1NGwYo4pq

HHS this month sent a letter to 83-year-old Forest Labs CEO Howard Solomon, announcing it would henceforth refuse to do business with him. What earned Mr. Solomon the blackball? Well, nothing that he did—as admitted even by HHS. In any case, the federal complaint contained no suggestion that Mr. Solomon was involved with, or even aware of, misconduct. And the question of his continued leadership was never part of the plea deal. Only after a federal court ratified the deal in March did HHS drop its intent-to-ban bomb. Mrs. Sebelius unearthed a dusty provision in the Social Security Act that...

The consumer finance czar answers to no one and sets her own budget.A House subcommittee will hold an "oversight" hearing today on the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the über-regulator that will soon have jurisdiction over most of the country's credit-making institutions. We put "oversight" in quotes because Congress has little say over either the new bureau or its unofficial czar, Elizabeth Warren.This unprecedented lack of accountability is by Ms. Warren's design. The bureau was the Harvard professor's idea, and she lobbied the Obama Administration and Congress to make it part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform.

The U.S. has “raced” to control space exploration, nuclear arms and electronics. Since taking office, President Obama has introduced the idea that the U.S. is now battling China — the world’s largest polluter — in new race for world domination. A clean energy race. “The nation that leads in the creation of a clean-energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy,” the president has said. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has repeated the message several times, creating a frenzy to “go green,” before China does. If America really is in such a race, the Energy and Commerce...

What happens when someone with no executive experience takes over the toughest executive job in the world? Since we’ve not seen that situation in most of our lifetimes — even John Kennedy, the last President elected with no executive experience in government or the private sector, had some command experience in the Navy — we had little hard evidence to predict failure to manage the executive branch of the US government, but it was rather easy to presume that on-the-job training at that level would be problematic, to say the least. Today, the Washington Post reports that even Barack Obama’s...

Why does the CIA along with the FBI, our premier law enforcement agency, stand by and allow Marxist employment and involvement within our Executive Branch of government? Background checks are supposed to screen and block such Socialist/ Communist people from serving in any capacity within the federal government. Could corruption, fear of being fired and political payoffs be going on within the FBI and CIA? Why can't these federal agencies, which have served America well in past decades, just do their fiduciary duty for our children and grandchildren?

Senate Democrats Abandon Obama Rationing Czar Donald Berwick Washington, DC -- Senate Democrats have officially given up their fight to confirm Donald Berwick, the rationing advocate President Barack Obama nominated to become the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the chief of implementation of the Obamacare law. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/03/05/senate-democrats-abandon-obama-rationing-czar-donald-berwick/

The House voted Thursday to dethrone nine White House “czars.” Republicans successfully added an amendment to the continuing resolution that would leave President Barack Obama’s senior advisers on policy issues including health care, energy and others out of a job.

Obama health IT guru leaving his post2.4.11 | Chris Seper Health IT change in Washington. Dr. David Blumenthal, who has overseen President’s Obama’s health IT around the adoption of electronic medical records, is leaving to return to Harvard. “He’s helped bring the industry back to life when it seemed to be failing, and he gave the industry a jolt of energy it lacked,” Betty Otter-Nickerson, president of Sage Health, told Kaiser Health News. Some are concerned about the impact of changing leaders in the midst of the national EMR adoption.