Tag: President Bush

Is It Bush’s Fault?

From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.

He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent — and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards.

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown”with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal. And the regulator Mr. Bush chose to oversee them — an old prep school buddy — pronounced the companies sound even as they headed toward insolvency.

As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Mr. Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn; as recently as February, for example, Mr. Bush was still calling it a “rough patch.”

The result was a series of piecemeal policy prescriptions that lagged behind the escalating crisis.

There are those who blame everybody remotely connected to the government for the meltdown, especially Barney Franks.  Some of the blame is deserved but the crux of the blame should fall on the person at the wheel when it all came to call.

The Legacy He Wants?

President George W. Bush is leaving with one of the lowest approval ratings in the history of numbers. During his final months on the job, the controversial commander-in-chief has given several interviews that have revealed how he views his legacy. Here are some highlights…

Soul not for sale
One of the president’s most interesting sound bites came during his interview with FOX News. He said: “I didn’t compromise my soul to be a popular guy.” The quote is an acknowledgment that the president is well aware that he’s about as popular as taxes and chicken pox. Bush went on to say that he would have liked to have been more popular, but he’s proud that he didn’t sacrifice his integrity.

What Bush regrets
During a rather candid interview several weeks ago, folks heard something truly surprising from the president—an admission that he was wrong. Bush said that his “biggest regret” was that he and his team got the intelligence wrong in Iraq. As the Washington Post puts it, “The self-criticism is notable for a president who has long resisted looking back at his time in the White House and once was unable to provide an example of a mistake he had made in office.”

GW is pushing hard to rewrite some parts of history under his adminstration.  Right now he is not doing so well, telling half truths about his days in the WH.  Maybe history when it is written wuill be kind, remember the diasterous days of Carter and Ford?  They are not seemed as that bad now….so maybe there is hope for the GW.

New “Conscience” Rule

An 11th-hour ruling from the Bush administration gives health care workers, hospitals, and insurers more leeway to refuse health services for moral or religious reasons.

The rule, issued today, becomes effective in 30 days. Its main provisions widen the number of health workers and institutions that may refuse, based on “sincere religious belief or moral conviction,” to provide care or referrals to patients.

“This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience,” says Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt in a statement.

Previous rules allow health care workers to refuse to provide abortion or sterilization services to which they are morally opposed. The new rulings give individuals and institutions much greater leeway in refusing to provide services to which they are morally opposed.

The ruling, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, covers an estimated 571,947 “entities” including doctors’ offices, pharmacies, hospitals, insurers, medical and nursing schools, diagnostic labs, nursing homes, and state governments.

Each of these entities is required to certify in writing that they will comply with the ruling. Failure to comply may be punished with loss of federal funding.

A pathetic plan from a pathetic president.  So you can be denied service if one of these self-righteous a/holes objects.  Is stupidity a medical condition?  Since I find stupid people objectionable, I do not have to deal with them any longer?

An “Orderly” Bankruptcy

JUst what in hell is an “orderly” bankruptcy?

The Bush administration is looking at “orderly” bankruptcy as a possible way to deal with the desperately ailing U.S. auto industry, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday as carmakers readied more plant closings and a half million new jobless claims underscored the deteriorating national economy.

With General Motors, Chrysler and the rest of Detroit anxiously awaiting a White House decision on billions of dollars in emergency federal loans, Paulson said bankruptcy for Detroit automakers should be avoided if possible but that an orderly reorganization may be the best option to keep them from collapsing.

Bush, like Paulson, spoke of the idea of bankruptcies orchestrated by the federal government as a possible way to go — without committing to it.

“Under normal circumstances, no question bankruptcy court is the best way to work through credit and debt and restructuring,” he said during a speech and question-and-answer session at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. “These aren’t normal circumstances. That’s the problem.”

All along the Repubs in Congress have wanted the Big 3 to file for bankruptcy, but Bush and Paulson decided that the government may have to step in to protect millions of American jobs.  But now it seems that all they will do is to make sure that the bankruptcies are not “disorderly”.  Good plan guys!