Obama's latest dumb idea: A 'secretary of business'
E. Thomas McClanahanIn an interview yesterday on MSNBC, President Barack Obama said that if re-elected, he would push for a new Cabinet-level department headed by a “secretary of business.” This person would oversee federal agencies such as the Small Business Administration.
Obama: “We should have one Secretary of Business, instead of nine different departments that are dealing with things like giving loans to SBA or helping companies with exports. There should be a one-stop shop.”
This is so lame it boggles the mind. Obama speaks as if he’s unaware we already have a Department of Commerce. Its mission: boosting the economy and encouraging more job creation. What would a Department of Business do, other than serve as yet another federal favor factory?
Obama’s latest big idea is just one more sign that intellectually, he is a spent force.
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months, 3 weeks agoYou have to understand ET that since the big 0 has ZERO business experience and ZERO business sense, to him adding another layer of overpaid and underworked bureaucrats makes perfect sense. After all, “you didn’t grow your business”, the government did!! He actually thinks this….
Lame doesn’t begin to describe this idea IMO.. stupid, idiotic, insane, yes…. jimmy II marches onward!!!!
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months, 3 weeks agoThe true libs are coming-out now…. what a tolerant bunch of people…. LOL
http://www.nationalreview.com/media/video/332035
Mark Hastert
6 months, 3 weeks agoHmmmm consolidating nine agencies into one to provide better services to small business. Sounds efficient to me. I thought Republicans were about shrinking government. They would be if Romney proposed it. I wonder, what’s different?
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months, 3 weeks agoNo mention of consolidation, but one of our resident libs jumps to the conclusion of course…
Brandt Hardin
6 months, 3 weeks agoIf Obama loses this election, you can blame/thank the Right for bamboozling him. How is it ethical that an entire news network questions the President’s citizenship for four years to create doubt in voters while a fringe element of the far right demonizes and degrades him? Most of this is financed by the rich who want to keep their stranglehold on the flow of wealth in our country. Watch the white hands apply the Blackface to our first African-American President at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/bamboozling-obama.html
Brandt Hardin
6 months, 3 weeks agoIf Obama loses this election, you can blame/thank the Right for bamboozling him. How is it ethical that an entire news network questions the President’s citizenship for four years to create doubt in voters while a fringe element of the far right demonizes and degrades him? Most of this is financed by the rich who want to keep their stranglehold on the flow of wealth in our country. Watch the white hands apply the Blackface to our first African-American President at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/bamboozling-obama.html
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months, 3 weeks agoNot IF Brandt, but WHEN…. he has not performed, and you “have to let him go”…
Charles Purvis
6 months, 3 weeks agoIt isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that he IS unaware of the existence of the Department of Commerce.
He has no time to learn about the government. Too busy with golf, basketball, JayZ, The View, Letterman, etc.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 3 weeks agoIt’s really gonna kill you guys if you lose. Even more it’s gonna kill you if Romney wins and turns out to be the Democrat he was in MA. (remember “more liberal that Ted Kennedy”) For me I win/win. Either way there’s gonna be a Democrat in the White House.
You right wingers are being abandoned.
Richard Heckler
6 months, 3 weeks agoIf Romney happens to tell the truth somewhere sometime would someone please call me before that moment is erased with another mammoth lie?
The Green Party candidate for president, whose name appears on 85 percent of the ballots across the country, was taken into custody along with her running mate Cheri Honkala outside of Hofstra University for daring to attempt to participate in the second debate — what law enforcement disingenuously termed “disorderly conduct.”
As President Obama and Governor Romney argued about women’s rights, the only female presidential candidate was in jail. The real “binders of women” were the Commission of Presidential Debates and the Hempstead, N.Y, police.
If this doesn’t disgust you, it should. Not because Jill Stein has a snowball’s chance of winning the election — even if she somehow managed to win the popular vote, the Electoral College would shut her down, as it was designed to do — but because she possesses the “fresh ideas” and “new vision for America” that both major parties accuse the other of lacking. Here, for example, is the section on Financial Reform in Stein’s “Green New Deal”:
Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.
Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
Break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”
End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.
Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.
Those are eight bold economic proposals vastly superior to anything Obama or Romney have come up with.
Green Party on the Issues http://www.jillstein.org/issue
Progressive Democrats of America http://www.pdamerica.org/
Reginald Thornton
6 months, 3 weeks agoThat’s a tough act to follow (Richard’s 8 proposals that are just different shades of government control), but I’ll try by getting back on topic….
Maybe Obama’s next idea is to create a “Secretary of being President”. Same thing as a secretary of business, in two ways: There is little evidence that its mandate is already covered.
I nominate Romney for the job. Both of them.
George Harris
Kansas City
6 months, 2 weeks agoI initially thought having a Department of Homeland Security was a redundancy. Isn’t that the Defense Department? But in retrospect, it may have had some advantages in coordinating activities. Hard to tell.
Reginald Thornton
6 months, 2 weeks agoThank you, George! Now, THAT’S a legitimate argument. There can be two sincere sides to the debate of whether Homeland Security is redundant, or a necessary comptroller. It’s redundant, by the way, and unnecessary. But anyway, a valid discussion topic!
Reginald Thornton
6 months, 2 weeks agoThe Star already IS writing about Obama being booted out. It’s called hurrican coverage. There preparing to lay blame at Sandy’s “feet”. They supressed information the dirty tricks he pulled in his first Chicago and Illinois wins (disqualifying one opponent that made ex-Panther Bobby Rush think less of Obama, then having a court unseal divorce records of his senate race opponent so he would withdraw). So people that don’t know Obama’s electoral roots won’t understand that what goes around comes around. They won’t appreciate the social justice, or the delicious irony of high waters doing in the man that claimed 4 years ago his election made the waters start receding.
Steven Fetter
66223
6 months, 2 weeks agoI would love to attend the meeting where the Czars, Cabinet Secretaries, and their minions of bureaucrats from the Commerce Department, Business Department, Consumer Financial Protection, SBA, and Labor Department all weigh in on the business initiative proposal.
And then have the EPA nix the whole thing.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 2 weeks ago“How many “czars” did Obama appoint nearly four years ago”
Actually none. Obama doesn’t use the term. It was you conservatives that referred to every appointment and department head as a “czar” so as to make a dog ‘n pony show.
To get back on point;consolidating nine business related programs into one would likely reduce the number of “czars”, streamline the process and make it more efficient. I thought you guys were all for that…. unless it’s Obama’s idea. You’d oppose ice cream at a church social if he proposed it.
Phil Cardarella
6 months, 2 weeks agoWhat a crazy idea! If you had a department that was created to HELP small businesses get done what large corporations can afford a herd of lawyers and lobbyists to do, that might make small businesses more able to compete with their giant corporate competitors…..
Goddam Commie!
Reginald Thornton
6 months, 2 weeks agoHastert, whatever they’re called and whoever named them- czars, unelected bureaucrats, whatevs- they are a shadow government that is making decisions without congressional oversight, democratic rapproach or voter awareness. They are a big factor in the increase size in government personnel, payrolls, and their margin ABOVE private sector pay.
All the foregoing is accurate, as you know it is, yet you unilaterally and unaccountably infer from Obama’s on-the-fly idea for a mythical Secretary of Business that the position would make other agencies more efficient.
Would you mind very much in your next posting to connect the dots between your reality and ours? Thank you so.
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months, 2 weeks agoGood luck getting that Reginald…. it happens rarely
Reginald Thornton
6 months, 2 weeks agoReally? It happens?
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months, 2 weeks agoRomney shows his experience AGAIN vs. the big 0 who thinks govt. creates jobs….
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/01/romney-blasts-obama-secretary-business/
Barron Tide
6 months, 2 weeks ago@Mark Hastert
Please tell me you are kidding. Another department is just another level of bureaucracy. Bush accomplished the same thing with Homeland Security. More bureaucracy doesn’t fix anything. All it does is set up one more level of people who won’t have to take responsibiility for their actions. The fact that their are 9 other entities doing the same thing is a call for their elimination and consolidation into an existing department. Perhaps the Commerce department…
Marc Taylor
6 months, 2 weeks agoIf you first take off your “I hate everything Obama” blinders, and pretend this came from an economist, a governmental reduction supporter, or, heaven forbid, yourself, you would see that this was a fairly intelligent assessment that deserves consideration. He DID NOT say “add” a layer. He DID NOT say how to effect the idea. All he said is that we have 9 different departments going in 9 possibly different directions… and that it might make sense to have one direction.
But Mr. McC will always shot before he aims on anything Obama…
David Graham
6 months, 2 weeks agoObama knows there is a Department of Commerce. He just doesn’t know that “commerce” means business.