Word: beltways
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...allows citizens to sling their concerns onto the E.U. agenda. The principle is simple: if campaigners muster 1 million signatures for a proposal, they can ask the European Commission, the E.U.'s executive branch, to write new legislation. "This is all about taking the E.U. outside of the Brussels beltway and giving it full democratic expression," said Maros Sefcovic, the E.U. commissioner in charge of putting the proposal into place. "The E.U. often stands accused of complexity and detachment from its citizens. Fostering a lively cross-border debate about what we are doing in Brussels will lead to better rule...
...funny how fast the Beltway consensus can change. A few months ago, health care reform was dead. Then it got undead. Financial regulatory reform was supposedly dead too, but now that Republicans have supposedly learned that pure obstructionism is a losing play, it's being treated as a done deal. Democrats like Obama's economic adviser Larry Summers and Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd are saying it's going to pass, perhaps as early as next month. So are key Republicans like Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who recently put the odds of passage...
...months you see Gregg shaking his head sadly: If only the Democrats weren't so intransigent about proprietary trading, or 15-1 leverage restrictions or something else you've never thought about, we could've had a deal. And don't be surprised if the Beltway consensus then concludes that failure was inevitable...
...latest obsession with a heretofore irrelevant and obscure White House staff position—the White House social secretary—is simply product of another vice: the delusion harbored by Washington media types that the trifling goings-on of their city matter to those who live beyond the Beltway. This media elite is easily distracted by bright, shiny objects, and the fact that anyone outside the White House has ever heard of Desiree Rogers is an indictment of the media’s skewed priorities...
...Senior Democratic Senators whisper that the Administration is clueless about how to get things done. Liberal bloggers openly express contempt for what they say is incompetence compounded by misguided priorities. The respected Washington wise man Les Gelb, former head of the Council of Foreign Relations, channeled the Beltway's conventional wisdom when he wrote that a full-scale personnel shake-up is the only way Obama can save his presidency. The media has largely shaken off its febrile Obamamania and adopted a "can't this gang shoot straight?" posture toward nearly every Administration action, reverting to the standard reflexive skepticism...