BP Member princess5677058

BP Member princess5677058 summarizes the current AIG bonus uproar “It is a rather curious spectacle to see congressional Republicans express outrage at the exorbitant bonuses being handed out by bailed-out companies and blame the Obama administration for failing to curb the practice with AIG.”

Check the rest of the story and comments in the BP news article she shared titled Flashback: It Was Bush/GOP That Opposed Executive Compensation Caps. Let us know how you feel about the corporate welfare doled out during this global “recession”.

CHICAGO — When President-elect Barack Obama heads home for a break from the White House, he won’t go to a sprawling ranch or private seaside compound.

Obama will come back to a crowded city neighborhood, creating different security challenges for the Secret Service and perhaps headaches for his neighbors.

No other recent first family has lived in a city neighborhood like the Obamas. The $1.6 million mansion he and his wife, Michelle, share with their two young daughters sits just off a busy street – a stretch of which has been closed to traffic – and his closest neighbors are just a few feet away.

“My Kennebunkport is on the South Side of Chicago,” Obama said in a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune. “Our friends are here. Our family is here. We are going to try to come back here as often as possible … at least once every six weeks or couple months.”

His busy South Side neighborhood affords none of the privacy of President George W. Bush’s 1,600-acre Texas spread or President George H.W. Bush’s seaside summer retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine. President Ronald Reagan’s White House in the West was his mountaintop Rancho del Cielo in California. President Bill Clinton moved to the White House from the governor’s mansion in Arkansas.

But Obama is a Chicago transplant whose campaign was rooted in the notion that he’s not like the other guys, and living in an urban neighborhood near the University of Chicago is a symbol of that, said Paul Light, a presidential historian at New York University.

Obama, who owns only the one home, was even able to paint his Republican opponent, John McCain, as out of touch with voters when the Arizona senator apparently didn’t know how many homes he and his multimillionaire wife owned.

Maintaining strong ties to Chicago is one way Obama can stay in touch with the people who helped him get elected, Light said. “I don’t think the public will take kindly toward any sort of signal that he is somehow losing touch with the outside world, that he’s trapped on island Washington,” Light said.

Like other presidents, Obama is sure to spend some of his down time at Camp David, the presidential retreat on a remote Maryland mountaintop, and in Hawaii, a regular vacation spot for him and where he spent much of his childhood.

For security reasons, the Obamas’ urban oasis already has changed. Their large red brick house doesn’t have the benefit of being surrounded by acres of land like other presidential retreats, so the city streets near it look like a military zone with blocks-long metal and concrete barriers. Secret Service agents and police patrol the area.

But the Obamas are hardly prisoners in their home, although the family is under the constant protection of the Secret Service.

Obama visits a nearby gym nearly every morning and then travels downtown to work at his transition office or to hold news conferences. His motorcade sometimes shuttles his daughters, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha, to school, and he and Michelle dine out at popular Chicago eateries.

Protecting a city Western White House poses some new situations for the Secret Service, as does any venue around the world where the president and his family need to be protected.

“We would not consider it more difficult,” said Agent Malcolm Wiley, a Secret Service spokesman.

And the attention to security isn’t something that will end when Obama leaves office. Before former President Bill Clinton left the White House, local officials in suburban Westchester County, N.Y., approved requests from the Clintons for security additions at their new home in Chappaqua, including an 8-foot tall fence.

The tight security near Obama’s home is something KAM Isaiah Israel, a landmark Chicago temple across the street, is taking in stride.

On its Web site, the temple tells visitors what to expect when coming, including ID checks on the street and possible searches of vehicles and bags.

“We have lived with and will continue to live with the security, and people have gotten used to it,” said congregation president Lawrence Bloom. He said the temple continues to run a full schedule of religious services, classes and programs.

When temple officials have met with the Secret Service, agents have told them that Obama is concerned about the imposing on the neighborhood because of his tight security, Bloom said.

Bloom wonders whether Obama’s street will go back to being a bit more normal when Obama is ensconced in Washington.

“We can’t be sure of that,” he said.

This week, all eyes are on Obama. What will his policy be toward Detroit — meaning the huge auto industry that provides a living for hundreds of thousands of Americans; and, also, the troubled Black metropolis that has always been tied to the health of that industry?

Some important reading…

From the mainstream Associated Press: AXELROD WARNS AUTOMAKERS TO RETOOL

From the Black newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle: OBAMA MUST ACT SWIFTLY TO SAVE JOBS, FAMILIES.

Full story below:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama wants the new Congress to approve massive spending and fresh tax cuts in January, “a big number” probably far distancing a $175 billion campaign proposal, so he can sign it after taking office, top aides said Sunday.

Obama over the weekend outlined the framework of a plan to save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 and prepared to introduce leaders of his economic team Monday. Aides said they soon would fill in the details and Democratic lawmakers, already working with transition officials, pledged to act quickly when Congress convenes Jan. 6, two weeks before the inauguration.

“We don’t have time to waste here, ” Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said. “We want to hit the ground running on January 20th.” Echoing that, the second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said, `We expect to have during the first couple of weeks of January a package for the president’s consideration when he takes office.”

Axelrod also warned automakers, seeking billions in government help to stave off collapse, to devise a plan to retool and restructure. Otherwise, he said, “there is very little taxpayers can do to help them.”

During the campaign Obama had proposed a $175 billion economic recovery package. The new one will be significantly larger and would incorporate his campaign ideas for new jobs in environmentally friendly technologies – the “green economy.” It also would include his proposals for tax relief for middle- and lower-income workers.

But aides said the plan would not offer an immediate tax increase on wealthy taxpayers. During the campaign, Obama said he would pay for increased tax relief by raising taxes on people making more than $250,000.

“There won’t be any tax increases in the January package,” said one Obama aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the Obama package have not been fleshed out.

Obama could delay any tax increase to 2011, when current Bush administration tax cuts expire.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio urged Obama to make that explicit. “Why wouldn’t we have the president-elect say, `I am not going to raise taxes on any American in my first two years in office?’”

Advisers would not discuss a specific size of the new plan, though some economists have endorsed spending up to $600 billion to revive the economy. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested $500 billion to $700 billion.

“I don’t know what the number is going to be, but it’s going to be a big number,” Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said. “It has to be. The point is to, kind of, get people back on track and startle the thing into submission.”

While Obama in the weekend Democratic radio address said his plan “will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011,” aides said the figure was a net sum of jobs created and jobs saved that would otherwise disappear without government help.

Axelrod said the president-elect’s transition team was gratified by the stock market’s positive reaction to Obama’s choice of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary. The market soared almost 500 points on Friday with word Obama had settled on the 47-year-old Geithner (pronounced GITE-ner) to lead his new economic team.

“The response has been great, and it should be – Tim Geithner is uniquely qualified to do this job,” Axelrod said.

Among the most pressing economic issues is the fate of the auto industry. Congress last week rebuffed appeals for help from executives from GM, Chrysler and Ford. Congressional leaders urged them to return next month with a specific reorganization plan that spelled out how much money they need and how they intended to remain financially viable.

Axelrod said “the signal sent by Congress was the right one.”

The auto executives did not make a strong impression during congressional hearings last week – appearances that were further undermined upon news that they had flown to Washington in corporate jets.

Axelrod couldn’t resist taking a jab at the executives. “I hope that they will come back to Washington in early December – on commercial flights – with a plan,” he said.

While news of Obama’s probable treasury secretary rallied markets on Friday, the Dow had lost a staggering 873 points, more than 10 percent of its value, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index had sunk to its lowest level since 1997 in the previous two days.

In addition to Geithner, Obama planned to announce on Monday the selection of Larry Summers, as head of the National Economic Council. Geithner would have chief responsibility for tackling the economic slowdown and credit crunch. At the New York Fed, he has played a critical role in the government’s response to the financial crisis and has worked closely with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman.

Summers, 53, treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and one-time president of Harvard University, will advise Obama from the White House. Summers would help coordinate federal response.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is Obama’s pick to be commerce secretary, adding a prominent Hispanic and one-time rival for the Democratic nomination to his expanding Cabinet. Obama planned to announce the nomination after Thanksgiving, according to a Democratic official familiar with the discussions. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the negotiations and did so on condition of anonymity.

Richardson was U.N. ambassador under President Bill Clinton and later energy secretary. He also served in the House from 1983 to 1997.

Axelrod appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and ABC’s “This Week.” Schumer was on ABC, Hoyer and Boehner on Fox and Goolsbee was interviewed on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

“It’s 3 a.m. and Detroit is calling, not because there is a security emergency, but because there is an economic emergency. It is imperative that Washington picks up the phone.”

“And President-elect Barack Obama must remain steadfast in his quest to aid the auto industry and not be carried away by the noise that is being made about an assistance that would save millions of families from going hungry and losing homes in the Midwest.

“No call can be higher for a new president than one that is predicated on helping families whose hopes for survival have long been tied to the future of the auto industry in Detroit.”

Read the full post here…