From Huffington Post, with corrections:
According to letters released by the White House, Seidenberg Kissinger then wrote to Jarrett Brezhnev agreeing to “refine” the roundtable’s Soviet Union’s list of regulations subjects for the summit to “those that have the greatest potential to affect adversely economic growth.” those that have the most likely outcome in mutual assured destruction.
The next paragraph is boilerplate, but it bears highlighting. Diplomatese has many editors:
Jarrett, in turn, wrote to Seidenberg: “While we may disagree on some issues, we have an open door and are always willing to consider input and ideas from everyone, including the business community, as we continue to provide rules of the road to protect the American people , while fostering an environment that will stimulate growth and job creation.”
Of course, Huffington Post airs the firebagger’s narrative as well, suggesting the President’s every move is calculated to win him campaign contributions for 2012. It’s nonsense, of course. He’s separating wheat from chaff again:
The exchange was much friendlier than the recent volleys between the White House and the increasingly radical-right Chamber of Commerce, which on Wednesday sent the White House its own four-page list of priorities, which included deregulation of business, tax cuts for the wealthy, free trade agreements, a reduced corporate income tax, expanded offshore drilling and logging in national forests and the privatization of waterways and roads.
The Chamber’s positions, compounded by its rejection of Jarret’s request for a speaking slot at a job-promotion conference earned it a tough letter signed by Jarret and Emanuel.
That letter?
“We will not… accept the lax regulation of the financial industry that led to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression,” they wrote. “And we will not stand by while oil and gas companies continue to fight needed changes to outdated regulations that are partially responsible for one of the worst environmental crises in American history.”
Up next: firebaggers tell us none of this matters! It’s all just talk! Which is kind of the point. So far, the only “promises” the White House has made are to talk with lobbies that don’t actively undermine reform.
Is it having an effect? You be the judge:
It appears as though Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, in whose coal mine 29 people died earlier this year in an entirely preventable disaster, has been booted from the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce.
As recently as June 29, Massey was listed as a member of the Chamber’s Board. But now, his name doesn’t appear on the list of current board members, and his specific profile page has been deleted from the website.
Obama’s politics have more in common with Martin Luther King and Dwight D. Eisenhower than anyone else. He’s a Niebuhrian realist who also reads Ghandi. An empirical centrist. He never claimed to be anything else.
