Boztopia.com

….same as the old boss:

I just received confirmation from a congressional aide that Senate Banking Chair Chris Dodd will notto provide increased conditions, transparency and oversight on the second $350 billion of the Wall Street bailout money (otherwise known as TARP). introduce legislation in the Senate to mirror House Finance Chair Barney Frank’s bill, HR 384,

As such, the funds will be released without any further conditions attached to them. Given that incoming Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been closely involved with the disbursement TARP funds so far, virtually nothing will change about the program whatsoever. We still won’t know which firms are receiving the money. We still won’t know how that money is being spent.

TARP money will be released, without any new conditions, oversight or transparency attached to it. At this point HOPE has moved from a campaign slogan to a system of governance.

I can’t necessarily blame Obama for this, since he said from the beginning he wanted the same type of universal authority to control the TARP funds that Bush did. But Dodd absolutely should know better. Here he had a golden opportunity to redraw the lines between the three branches of Congress and remind Obama that the executive and legislative are not supposed to be a hive mind. Instead, he seems content to defer to the executive and Obama’s economic advisor team.

Because, of course, we haven’t lived through eight years of an all-powerful zealous demagogue of a President who did whatever the hell he wanted without the slightest bit of oversight.

Hope is not a plan, nor is it a system of governance, and if it means no accountability to the American people, it certainly doesn’t make for change I can believe in.