Thanksgiving wishes to all you bloggers. As our editorial Wednesday noted, worries may seem to outnumber blessings in many Wichita-area homes over this holiday season. Still, there many reasons to be thankful. And struggles can sometimes focus the mind and heart on what really matters – such as our loved ones, faith and traditions.
Though it’s no deal-breaker, it turns out there is a constitutional problem with President-elect Barack Obama’s apparent choice of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., as secretary of state. “The Constitution forbids the appointment of members of Congress to administration jobs if the salary of the job they’d take was raised while they were in Congress,” reports MSNBC’s First Read blog. Not that past presidents have cared much about this roadblock, which, for example, Bill Clinton faced in nominating then-Sen. Lloyd Bentsen to be Treasury secretary. Usually, Congress just returns the salary of the Cabinet post in question to its level prior to the raise the nominee voted on, though some scholars say that maneuver still doesn’t clear the constitutional bar.
The Oracle of Omaha has made the reasonable suggestion that the Big Three automakers’ CEOs put their own money where they want taxpayers’ money to go, by investing a significant portion of their own net worths in the Detroit-based companies. Warren Buffett said last week that he would tell the executives, “We’ll give you more upside, but you’re going to lose if we lose.” Buffett, a member of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic transition team, also said that bankruptcy is the less preferable of two choices for the industry. “The other one is to have the president of the United States sit down and say, ‘Look, we’ve got $25 (billion) or $50 billion, if the outcome is going to be a successful American auto industry, and we need a business plan that will work. You can get it in bankruptcy, or you can get it from me.’”
Thanksgiving wishes to all you bloggers. As our editorial Wednesday noted, worries may seem to outnumber blessings in many Wichita-area homes over this holiday season. Still, there many reasons to be thankful. And struggles can sometimes focus the mind and heart on what really matters – such as our loved ones, faith and traditions.
