By the way, Obama's lameness on this issue actually preceded what the Times's piece described. It was originally in the stimulus package, but Obama had it removed.

It appears that President Obama has asked House Dem leaders to jettison another provision sought by liberals from the stimulus bill as a way of placating Republicans.

As I noted below, anonymous House Dem staffers told Politico that Nancy Pelosi and the House Dem leadership were dropping from the bill the so-called "cram downs," which give judges the power to renegotiate mortgages on terms that are better suited to homeowners who are in trouble. House liberals wanted this, and it was unclear why the leadership had done this.

I've just confirmed from a senior House Dem aide that the House leadership did this at the behest of Obama aides, who asked the leadership to chuck the provision. This is the second such move: It comes after the news this morning that Obama had personally appealed to Pelosi to drop family planning funds for low-income people from stim package -- also to placate Republicans.

Right now (and the maps are only a snapshot of right now), it appears a ballot headed by Barack Obama will have a positive affect on more important down ticket races than a ballot topped with Hillary Clinton. Or, as EK puts it:

[T]here's little doubt, at this point, that [Obama] provides a bigger boost to downticket Democrats running in moderate and even conservative states. And that matters. You want a real theory of change? Have the votes to pass your legislation.

Personally I think people are better off just jingle-mailing their loan servicers. Stop looking to the useless Obama admin for help. Just stop paying the mortgage and you can live in your house for free for several months, and then walk away (yeah, you should have your stuff packed up and a place picked out to live in -- but you can easily afford to pay first and security for a rental with the money you're not sending the bank). And tell the morality police to bl** themselves. Businesses walk away from bad investments all the time, why shouldn't individuals?

Until the housing market is stabilized, there's no hope of an economic recovery. Every new wave of foreclosures just adds to our economic deflation.

When you become president you got to rule with an iron hand and ram rod your agenda and threaten those  of your own party and cabinet  who are not on your side and point out that not being faithful has consequences for them.

The ripples of this fiasco are going to haunt us for years to come. This was to be the safety net for the aged. This was their retirement. As Democrats now ponder cuts to Social Security, this is even more critical.

That leaves Republicans and the special interests, and my money - the little I have - is on special interests.  The kow-towing to Republicans is part and parcel of making sure the special interests stay happy - Republicans are just happily reaping the benefit.  Sad to say, Obama has been quite active in courting those interests, intervening with critical pieces of legislation, twisting arms to make sure things didn't get too uncomfortable for the savvy businessmen, paving the way for an exceedingly lucrative post-presidential life - which may come sooner than most people believe- and so, here we are.

Getting the corporate money out of the election process, it seems to a lot of us, is the only way to make sure the people are truly represented; what I didn't know and hadn't heard anything about - that I recall - was the Fair Elections Now Act.  Looking at the Google results, I see that Ezra has written about it a little, and there was something at HuffPo over a year ago - but I don't see much else in over a year.

From an op-ed in Tuesday's Baltimore Sun, by Michael Barnes and Connie Morella, two former members of Congress:

The time has come for Congress to take bold and decisive action to eliminate the pernicious and potentially corrupting influence that special interest money has on our political system. And there is legislation making its way through Congress right now that could make this happen.

Supported by more than 180 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, the Fair Elections Now Act would replace money from special interests with small donations from constituents matched by federal funds.

These matching funds, paid for by a fee on large-scale government contracts, would go to serious, hardworking candidates who demonstrate a broad base of public support and who say no to large donations from special interests. Because the system is voluntary, it is consistent with the First Amendment and is constitutional.

Enactment of the Fair Elections Now Act could drastically change the status quo in Washington. Americans could run for federal office even if they are not independently wealthy or do not have access to massive amounts of campaign cash. Once in office, they could devote virtually all of their time to doing the work that we elected them to do. Most important, they would be free to represent their constituents, not large corporations or unions seeking influence over the congressional agenda.

A summary of the bill can be found here.

Does it have a chance?  Seems like if it did, it wouldn't be languishing in the Congress, and there would be more talk about it; I'm way too cynical about all of this to be particularly hopeful.  

Dems and Republicans have become little more than self-interested yes-men/women for the entities that make sure they have the money to keep winning elections.  Sure, we have the power at the ballot box to reject them, but the alternatives are just more of the same; the "replacements" we have to choose from are as interchangeable and indistinguishable as parts coming off an assembly line - which means they are no choice at all.

There are two other dirty secrets/bomb shells sitting on the horizon.  I commented on the Commercial RE issue last week.  The other is the huge Home Equity Loans and Home Equity Lines of Credit debts.  A $30B dirty secret.

Lenders wrote off as uncollectible $11.1 billion in home equity loans and $19.9 billion in home equity lines of credit in 2009, more than they wrote off on primary mortgages, government data shows. So far this year, the trend is the same, with combined write-offs of $7.88 billion in the first quarter.

Johnson found himself sitting real pretty with the electorate immediately following his sudden ascension to power, then again following the massive 1964 Dem landslide.  In both instances, he had a considerable gale-force wind at his back in getting what he wanted.  But not such a powerful and effective president once the public turned against him starting in 1966, and things only got worse as his presidency finished out in the last 2 yrs.  So, half his presidency, he was on the defensive with the public and couldn't get the Dem Congress to snap to attention, the way he once could.

Obama had his time, immediately in the months after taking office, to insist upon bolder progressive legislation given his historic electoral victory premised clearly on bold Change.  But as we know, he chose the soft easy route of pre-compromise and lovey-dovey bipartisanship with a GOP that didn't want any major reform.