Continuing "W's" policies?

I just saw this headline, online:

US sticks with Bush-era polar bear rule

And Anytime I see a note where President Obama is continuing a George W. Bush policy, it gives me pause, at least.

The way I see it, continuing virtually anything that came out of that administration is likely a bad idea, with the exception of leaving Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his position. He does seem to both know what he's doing and is going in a new direction, with this new administration.

While President Bush's environmental policies were dismal for the environment, at best, they aren't the bigger issue here, for me. With this headline, it seems a good time to briefly discuss what we're doing as a country.

First, let's get the article out of the way.

The first paragraph tells the following: "The Obama administration on Friday let stand a Bush-era regulation that limits protection of the polar bear from global warming, saying that a U.S. law protecting endangered species should not be used to take on the much broader issue of climate change."

See? Right there it makes me think that following the Bush Administration's policies on this smaller issue is not a good idea and shouldn't be continued.

The bigger question for me here is, is the Obama Administration getting in bed with corporate America too much?

I fear the answer is likely yes and don't like it. They didn't vote him in and we don't want Corporate America screwing up the country and the world any further than they already have. We don't want them in charge. That's not the change we voted for.

The second, much larger concern for me that seems to be a continuation of W's policies is the whole stimulus package/spending bills President Obama is pursuing.

Sure, we have to "save the economy" and do what we can and have to, to make sure we don't go to heck but the question keeps coming up--do we REALLY need to spend all this money?

And isn't a lot of it going to be wasted anyway?

Timothy Geithner came from the very industry he's supposed to be saving. That doesn't seem good.

And we're throwing all the money at the banks and investment houses?

Didn't we find out during the Clinton Administration that was a bad idea?

Besides seemingly throwing large amounts of money at the very wealthy, which is blatantly so wrong and quite likely wasteful, another bad outgrowth of this boondoggle solution is that Republicans and everyone else can and will paint President Obama as a "Liberal, tax-and-spend left-winger", who doesn't really have solutions after all.

Never mind that it was Republican George W. Bush's administration that came up with the idea of the $700 billion safety fund. They'll just ignore that and blame this new, Democratic administration as though it was fully the new guy's idea, period.

Blowing all this money may well be a bad idea to begin with since 1) we have to throw it at the banks and the wealthy 2) we have to borrow it 3) it will likely be wasted, at least in large parts 4) it gives people opposing the President "ammunition" to paint him as this "tax-and-spender" 4) we're putting huge debt on future generations and 5) there is a good chance--high likelihood--that all this debt will give us rampant inflation later.

I don't know what the solutions to our financial system are and neither do a lot of people but I would suggest listening to the likes of the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, for starters. He seems to have answers and information and above all, IT'S NOTHING GEORGE W. BUSH WOULD HAVE PROPOSED.


Link to orginal story:
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20090508/4a03ae40_3426_1335020090508356824549

Here's another one, too:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090505_taking_a_page_from_the_bush_playbook/?ln