Can we end the purportedly progressive war against Rahm Emanuel?

The Huffington Post has been engaged in rear-guard actions against Rahm Emanuel, ever since he was quoted as telling the left-wing to "Shut Up". Putting aside the wisdom of that remark, how does this war help the President reach his goals?

I used to think the incessant sniping from liberals, would help to make the President appear more centrist to independent voters; today's election results in VA have changed my mind. Congress has been slow-walking legislative requests from the President and this lack of success has destroyed the enthusiasm of the under-40 voters who pushed Obama over the top and we saw the effects of that in VA today.

That is the macro-level analysis. At the micro-level, the most recent assault on Rahm relates to a carve out of exemptions to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX); here are some of my thoughts on that:



Not that I seek out parades, just to rain in them, but this story is pointless.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/03/obama-administration-help_n_344042.html



This key, "post-Enron" reform - has never been enforced!

Not once has any of the companies being permanently exempted by this bill, ever done what they will no longer be "required" to do.

Hard for me to see how central this provision is, when we saw last year bankruptcies that dwarfed Enron by huge orders of magnitude, bankruptcies on a scale that threatened the very foundations of worldwide economic activity - and not a single advocate has ever said: "Thank God we had Sarbanes-Oxley, or this would have been much worse".

In 2001, at the dawn of the Bush administration, Enron was the largest bankruptcy in the hisory of recorded economic history; by 2008, at the close of the Bush, it was no longer in the top five. The five who now lead Enron, were all larger than Enron and so all were subject to SOX-compliance; didn't mean a thing.

Who cares about SOX-compliance, when leveraged financial firms are creating assets of such toxicity that the wealth of nations are threatened?

Wake up, there is a real threat out there and these repetitive and silly attacks do naught but preclude the very outcome you profess to desire.

Rahm Emanuel was selected by Barack Obama; presumeably, you voted for Barack Obama to be the president for four years: how about you give him mire than ten-months to rectify all of the damage done by eight years of Bush the Lesser?


And you know what the worst part of this story was? The closing paragraph, the nineteenth and last paragraph of this assault on Rahm and, by extension, our new President was this:





"While this issue is small potatoes compared to other issues currently under debate, such as reforming the derivatives markets or overseeing financial institutions that are 'too big to fail,' it tells us a lot about what we can expect. Their message that regulation is just too burdensome and too costly should send a chill down the spine of anyone who still held out hope that this Administration is serious about regulatory reform."



Excuse me? While this issue is "small potatoes"? Every previous sentence decried this move as an act so traitorous, Benedict Arnold would foreswear ever being so vile - and at the end of it all, they mention it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

I don't know the purpose of this attack on Rahm; I do not know the reason why: but in light of today's election results, can I be the only one questioning it?





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