On 1st Day, Obama Addresses Mideast Peace, Iraq Conflict, Economic Recovery & Strict Ethics Order
 Printer-friendly
|
 Email article |
Related subjects: Economic Recovery, Executive Orders, Executive Powers, In the Loop, Iraq, Middle East, Obama's 1st 100 days, Security & Surveillance, The Global Intercept, U.S. Law, U.S. news, U.S. Politics Comments (1)
Pres. Obama immediately began the hard work of governing, and perhaps the even harder work of fulfilling his highly ambitious and principled campaign promises. On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. Obama phoned four heads of state across the Middle East —Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan— to discuss his feeling that there is an urgent need to start a practical and viable process of sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
He also met with his top economic advisors, and established what will be a new process of a daily economic briefing which he will take in order to stay abreast of the latest indicators of the direction and the troubles of the American economy. He also began issuing executive orders, one of which established the strictest ethics guidelines of any White House to date, and capping White House staff pay at $100,000, in an effort to keep from over-stressing the already disatrously out of balance federal budget.
Obama’s ethics order requires that any lobbyist who comes to work for the administration must be barred from having any authority over or contact —in an official capacity— with entities or interests they had lobbied for, and anyone who enters the field of lobbying after leaving the White House will be barred from lobbying the administration for as long as Obama is president.
[ad#cafsen-intext]
Hillary Clinton was approved by a massive majority in the Senate, to serve as secretary of State, clearing the way for Obama’s wholseale overhaul of the nation’s foreign policy and the ushering in of a new era of “smart power”, in which Obama and Clinton aim to use the “prudent” exercise of military power alonside of aggressive development policy and strong diplomacy intended to achieve results that further the interests of American security and peace and prosperity abroad.
Obama also fulfilled his campaign promise of meeting with his military chiefs of staff in order to order and discuss the process for ending combat operations in Iraq and preparing for the long-term redeployment of the military forces concentrated there. Discussions will be ongoing over the course of several weeks while the best primary and contingency plans are worked out, for achieving the full withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the turnover of security operations to a responsible and effective Iraqi security apparatus.
Pres. Obama also took the oath of office for a second time, due to “an abundance of caution” and the concerns of some that Chief Justice Roberts’ misreading of the oath may have caused Obama to state the oath incorrectly and that this could pose some legal problem for his presidency. The oath was taken in the Oval Office and a pool photo was released, though some agencies said they would not accept the photo as they view the Oval Office as a “public space” to which the full press pool should have access for such ceremonies.
| Printer-friendly
|
Email article |
CafeSentido Partner Sites:
[...] 21 January 2009, Cafe Sentido reported: On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. [...]