Obama's NSC will get sweeping new powers

[jakeXT]

Result of directive expands security body's role far beyond traditional range

By Karen DeYoung

updated 9:48 a.m. ET Feb. 8, 2009

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.

The result will be a "dramatically different" NSC from that of the Bush administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after World War II to advise the president on diplomatic and military matters, according to national security adviser James L. Jones, who described the changes in an interview. "The world that we live in has changed so dramatically in this decade that organizations that were created to meet a certain set of criteria no longer are terribly useful," he said.

Jones, a retired Marine general, made it clear that he will run the process and be the primary conduit of national security advice to Obama, eliminating the "back channels" that at times in the Bush administration allowed Cabinet secretaries and the vice president's office to unilaterally influence and make policy out of view of the others.


more at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29078957/




It's not called the NSC state for nothing, I guess

[pleah]

1. This isn't good.

Although Jones said he strongly supports increased resources for the State Department, which is increasingly dwarfed by the size and expanding missions of the Defense Department, he has long been an outspoken proponent of a "pro-active military" in noncombat regions. He has advocated military collaboration with the oil and gas industry and with nongovernmental organizations abroad.

[4 t 4]

2. He's also forming an independent

financial committee headed up by Paul Volker one of the beast in his field. I have faith in this man no matter how hard they try and distroy him.

[jakeXT]

4. Volcker?

The guy who got rid of usury laws ?

Worse than the high interest rates is the sheer shortage of mortgage money. Usury laws in two dozen states limit interest rates to below 13%. Thus many banks and savings institutions have stopped making loans because it is impossible for them to earn any profit.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,948800,00.html


In 1980, when the prime lending rate reached 20% (it currently stands at 5%), it became clear that even stronger medicine was needed to protect consumers' access to credit. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker (a Democrat), with bipartisan support, championed the passage of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA), which pre-empted state usury limitations on many home mortgage loans. Volcker recognized that, when "the whole level of market rates moves above a state's usury ceiling, that state is going to be in trouble." In words that ring especially true today, President Jimmy Carter emphasized in signing DIDMCA that pre-empting state usury limitations would "ensure steadier flow of credit for productive uses, especially housing."

Usury laws limit credit supply

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202424471519

[MisterP]

5. yeah, like United Fruit and the Niger Delta! n/t

[originalpckelly]

3. "Article 2 specifically states the NSC is only supposed to have the old powers."

"What, the NSC isn't in the US Constitution? I find that hard to believe! We wouldn't have something in our government making important decisions without it being in the constitution, now would we?"

[bigtree]

6. I don't see any 'new powers' here

. . . new responsibilities, perhaps.

[DCKit]

7. Outsourcing, food safety and foreign oil (among others) are national security issues...

so I see no reason not to expand the scope to become inclusive of all the things that actually put U.S. at risk. These issues have been ignored for too long and it looks as if the new Administration intends to take a comprehensive look.