Yeah baby!

Bush's abuses cut both ways. He expanded the power of the Executive branch by trampling on the Constitution -- which means Barack Obama can do pretty much the same thing, until he decides to close those loopholes at a later date with the help of a Democratic Congress.

Sweet.....

The Bizarro Bush-world confounds itself!

Hardly surprising!

Can't wait.

I just wish he could also negate any potential gw pardons...

One must contemplate not only the possibilities of an Obama administration, but the abject terror that those possibilities inflict upon the final, crippling days of Bushylvanianism. Policy reversals and pardons are but meager things as the desperation to rape the Treasury one, final time is couples with the sinister acts of removing from existence and potential discovery those physical items that, once found, would put the GOP demons in prison forever.

Reversing the overtly-political is one thing---but what about the truckloads of files, hard-drives, and back-up systems that will be leaving in an exodus of near-biblical proportions?

Elections have consequences.

".......as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy."
Can anyone get these people some sanity......fast?
No legacy anyone?
Or erase what's already decomplished.

Remember kids, elections have consequences!

I completely agree with these remedies. I would like to see him challenge some of Bush's obvious abuses. Pardoning Scooter Libby was illegal because it was a conflict of interests. I would like to see that action negated and Scooter sent back to jail. We need to ensure that no future President can act unlawfully through subordinates and later pardon them. This should have been done after Gerry Ford.

The decision to leave CO2 emissions issues to the federal government was a decision made by environmental groups, in a suit they files to force the federal government's hand. A big mistake which will cost us dearly as individuals and smaller governments continue to waste CO2 emissions capacity, while waiting for the feds.

Sanity returns to America! I'm crying tears of joy and relief.

Sparko, as far as I can tell, Presidential pardons and commutations can't be undone. If you can make the case that the President's use of this power consitituted a criminal abuse of power, you might be able to prosecute the President, but the bar to be able to do so would be very high. You would not be able to send Scooter Libby back to jail without completely new charges.

On the other hand, reversing hundreds of Bush executive orders, signing statements and other arbitrary actions sounds like a good down payment on the change Obama has promised us. This is one of the things he specifically promised during the campaign to make a priority and it is gratifying to learn that he has had people working on the necessary review even before the election.

Putting things in perspective.

The change in stem cell research will cause about 50 labs to alter their hiring and research by about $50 million.

The decisions made by bama as senator and aprty leader in the last 2 months has shifted current consumption to an additional $10 billion dollar interest payment due in about four weeks.

In other words, consumers in the world had a change of course that swamps the federal government and its guarantees by a thousand fold. The wishing that symbolic changes are sufficient is woefully inadequate.

Very few people in the world care about your symbolic victories, they care about whether you can make the half a trillion dollars each year to cover debt service. The world has changed because the greater opinion is that you cannot make the payment, and given the amount of time spent on symbolic changes the greater opinion is likely right.

This post is to say goodbye. My work is now done - I have worked under this pseudonym for over two years, commenting and blogging all over the Internets. I plan to take a hiatus from politics for a while and let what has been so painstakingly woven play out. You will not be hearing from The Conservative Deflator again...

God bless the efforts of our new president and our new Congress and let us all work hard to create the tomorrow we dreamed about.

I hope Obama also puts the nation on notice that any executive orders issued between now and Jan 20, end on Jan 20. It would not be fair, for example, for mining companies to think they can dump coal scree into our rivers without fear of a law suit, and then be surprised by a reversal. It would be even more unfair to give them that immunity,

"...an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries."

If Bush wanted to protect the auto industries he would have implented universal health care, rather than sustaining the comparative disadvantage to American auto makers in them having to provide it.

A Presidential pardon is final. There is no ability of later presidents to revoke or change.

There are also rules about the ability to change federal regulations. If the federal regulations are enacted lawfully and under the standard rules about setting regulation, there is a time limit. If the time limit is exceeded, the regulations are hard to revoke.

They can be revoked by congressional act. If we can roll that act into the budget bill (not filibusterable), then they could be repealed in a single bill.

That would be SO SSSSWWWWEEEEEEETTTT.

MattYoung @ 7:34,

The world has changed because the greater opinion is that you cannot make the payment, and given the amount of time spent on symbolic changes the greater opinion is likely right.

Wow, this makes no sense, doesn't it? Setting aside the dubious provenance of The Greater Pumpkin Sententia, this assumes that economies of scale apply to policymaking. Surely assigning every member of the transition team to beat the bushes, so to speak, for cash to make The Payment would not be a terribly productive use of their time. Would it.

When I saw the phrase "quickly delivering on campaign promises", I thought of Bill Clinton and gays in the military. That blew up in his face without warning.

Hope it goes better for Obama. The media doesn't hate him like it did Clinton.

The Obama administration is using crisis management principles to date. I'll use a house on fire analogy to illustrate the principles into action:

Remove fuel sources from the fire:

No more executive signing statements to circumvent or subvert law
Identify and remove poisonous political appointees
Identify poisonous rules which subvert science, law, human rights

Then, use RACE - rescue, alarm, contain and extinguish - to complete the crisis intervention:

Rescue:

Constitution
Human Rights
Rule of Law
Government agency competence and oversight
Constituent rights
International law (treaties, Geneva Conventions)
Economy
Policy based on science

Alarm:

Identify and prioritize policies and legislation at risk of constitutional congruence

Contain:

Identify route of reparation and remediation
Congress
Executive branch
DOJ
SCOTUS
Government Agency
Private/Public partnership
Other

Extinguish:

Reverse the above with action via legislation, executive decision, court decisions, agency rules, etc.

Concurrent executive administration and management:

Prioritize Agenda:

Economy
Defense and military
International relations
Domestic:
Employment rate
Housing
Health
Education
Transportation
Transportation infrastructure
Healthcare infrastructure
Education/schools infrastructure
Agriculture
Food and drug safety. affordability, access
National debt
Tax structure

Short and long range goal identification

What is missing:

Attention to lower class (Obama speaks specifically about addressing the middle class. The lower class accounts for fully one third of the country's citizens.)

Overall, the Obama administration appears to be administratively competent, on task and operating from sound leadership and management principles. For those who are interested, read Jim Collins' From Good to Great. I would suggest that the OA (Obama Administration) is currently exhibiting the behaviors and traits of a great organization - one that has long term growth, sustainability, satisfaction (internal and external) and success on tangible and intangible measures and benchmarks.

"..this assumes that economies of scale apply to policymaking.."

Talk about making no sense. What we do with the federal government is make economies of scale changes, changing promises that involve $2.5 trillion in payment streams each year.

Again, to make sense to this poor fool, let me again point out, we just shifted some one trillion in payments due by the private sector this month into a trillion dollars in payments due by the public sector in about three months.

This decision was huge, and it directly impacts all of you to the largest degree, short of the housing collapse. For example, California will operate with 1.5% less output for the next ten years as a result of this decision, according to the decision of our assembly and guvernator.

Our collective decision to have California operate under near recessions conditions was made in about three weeks of shear panic on the part of progressives, like Obama and Pelosi. Remember, Dems were all on board for this program of wealth shift, it was the conservative congresscritters who held back.

What we see here is a problem, people making trillion dollar decisions at the emotion of the moment, only to bear 1-2 percent reductions in standards of living that was not thought through. We are operating the government just like a bubble market, and it will behave just like the housing market behaved.

"After the last eight years, the very idea that they might occur not as the result of a long drawn-out battle, but just like that, is amazing."

A few of us in Chicago recently recorded our musical farewell to those last eight years. It's called "Crawl Back To Crawford."

CRAWL BACK TO CRAWFORD
(Matt Farmer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I9-BJtvQzE

VERSE
Well, for eight long years we've been payin' your rent
But now your lease done run
And all our money's been spent
So pack up your bags
And take a last look around
At how you drove a great nation straight into the ground

CHORUS
And don't let the door
Hit you in the ass on the way out
Don't bother with the goodbyes
Just make sure that you stay out
There ain't no need to call
No need to write
We don't even need you to turn out the light
Just crawl back to Crawford, brother
Promise that you'll leave us alone

VERSE
Every step of the way, your story's been the same
Just cruisin' through the world
On your daddy's name
You had the oilmen friends
You had the Skull and Bones
But it never would have happened if your name was Jones

REPEAT CHORUS

BRIDGE
Slam dunk, privatize, deregulate
Tax cuts, trickle down
The politics of hate
Flag pin, waterboard
Intelligent design
You were handed your throne by just five of the nine

REPEAT CHORUS X2

Phantom wrote:

> Bush's abuses cut both ways. He expanded the power of the Executive branch
> by trampling on the Constitution -- which means Barack Obama can do pretty much
> the same thing, until he decides to close those loopholes at a later date with
> the help of a Democratic Congress.

I believe you're thinking of Bush's clearly extra-legal "signing statements" to allow his administration to ignore pretty much any part of legislation he chooses to. What this article is talking about is different -- it's overturning regulations and policies that are routinely generated by the Executive Branch (i.e., in its many constituent agencies), that do not require input/approval from Congress. This is not a prospective case of abusing-presidential-power-for-good; it's an entirely legitimate (and badly-needed) exercise in overturning policies that are transparently political, written to cater to specific Bush interest groups and counter to the best available science and analysis.

In other words, it's getting back to good government.

Wow, this is just the fifth day since election! Just reversing all of Bush's vetoes is amazing. President=elect Obama has a team!

I am sure Bush had a very effective team, too. But their agenda was mostly hidden, and we found out about a lot of it, after the fact.

Let them scream, they can't get much nastier than they did in the election....and that didn't work.

ACLU has a nice list of Bush executive orders that could be killed on Day 1.

http://www.aclu.org/transition/

That list is probably a subset of what is being talked about here.

Missing from the article is the VERY FIRST executive order Obama should overturn, EO 13233 which basically put the documents of the executive office in a vault from which they would never emerge. Bush did this at a time when 68000 documents from the Reagan administration were about to be released. He stalled, then issued 13233. Obama should rescind it immediately (at issue a separate EO explicitly stating the the Vice President is part of the executive branch) to serve notice that those who hold executive power have to answer to history and should comport themselves appropriately.

Eight wasted years, so sad...

The 8 years of Bush have constructed a Gordian knot of bullshit.

Obama is Alexander the Great's sword.

Andy: Most of those regulations and policies issued on a routine basis by the various agencies that make up the executive branch are implemented after lengthy procedures of review, deliberation, publishing, public comment and more review. Those regulations can generally not be changed or canceled without going through a similar process, or by an act of Congress.

However, many regulations and policies are implemented by Presidential fiat, namely executive orders. Theoretically, executive orders can only be issued to clarify or further the enforcement of laws passed by Congress. However, Presidents have frequently taken a rather expansive view of this power and it is extremely difficult for either Congress or the Courts to undo such orders.

President Bush has dramatically expanded the use and particularly scope of executive orders. In particular, EO 13233 mentioned by TLM seems to rather directly contradict the clear language and intent of the existing law on public access to presidential papers.

On the other hand, executive orders can generally be undone as easily as they were implemented in the first place. Undoing as many of the most egregious of the orders implemented by Bush is a good starting place, finding a way short of amending the constitution to pre-emptively prevent such abuses in the future is an important but longer-term project.

As soon as the inaugural ceremony concludes, before the parade and parties, Obama should go to a desk in the Capitol, sit down and sign executive orders rescinding the worst of Bush's executive orders. They should be gone by the time Bush's plane lands in Texas. Probably won't happen -- bipartisanship and all that -- but it's nice to imagine.

Goodness! What will it feel like, to have ethics and integrity back in the White House?

I can't wait!