Articles tagged with: obama
Articles by Carl Bloice, Randy Shaw. Ivan Eland, Shamus Cooke, Carl Bloice, Ivan Eland, Rev. Irene Monroe, Robert Reich, Randy Shaw, Tracy Emblem, Michael Sigman:, Georgianne Nienaber, Tom Hayden, Sharon Kyle, Joseph Palermo, Berry Craig
Denis Campbell: When someone has to choose between health coverage and paying their home mortgage, what kind of a moral choice is that? How can any nation that pays nearly 18% of its GDP for healthcare not have the best coverage in the world covering everyone?
Georgianne Nienaber: Relief efforts are limping along. There are thousands of foreign NGOs on the ground, but no overall organized effort to distribute aid. Compounding the problem is the fact that IDP camps are springing up overnight, and rural areas face a different set of problems than those faced in the city of Port-au-Prince.
Shamus Cooke: The anti-teacher hysteria looks diverse on the surface, but underneath, this public controversy seeks to dislodge teachers unions: the right-wing trashes teachers’ unions outright, while the “liberal” media takes a more subtle, sophisticated approach, blaming the state of public education on “bad teachers” who must be fired and replaced.
Ivan Eland: Although closing Guantánamo would be important symbolically, the law-free sanctuary that the Bush administration had achieved there has already been eroded by the Supreme Court’s demand that detainees have some legal rights. And even if the Obama administration closes Gitmo, some of Bush’s unconstitutional policies would continue in prisons around the United States—for example, the use of military tribunals for some detainees and the detention of some former Guantánamo detainees indefinitely without trial.
Robert Reich: In politics as in economics and love, timing is everything. Obama can’t wait much longer if he wants to convince waivering and worried conservative Dems to join him in a last ditch 51-vote reconciliation measure to get health care through the Senate. We’re already in the gravititational pull of November’s mid-term elections. But the economy is taking a longer time to turn around than anyone expected, and telling Americans the jobs numbers are getting worse more slowly isn’t exactly reassuring.
Georgianne Nienaber: After six years, “The Imaginative Storm” has morphed into an improvisational party populated with wordsv–va chaotic captivation designed to stimulate the writer’s imagination. Writers really have no chance for a passive absorption of technique if they brave Huston and Nave’s workshop.
Shamus Cooke: The ability for millions of people to see through the muddle in Washington points to a larger distrust of the two-party system. Even as “progressive Democrats” and other liberal pundits bow before the health care industry by urging passage of “an imperfect” health care bill, workers, the poor and the elderly aren’t taking the bait.
Robert Reich: Regardless of what happens at the White House’s health care meeting , we’ve got to make sure health insurers compete for every one of our dollars. The Federal Trade Commission should launch an investigation immediately, and end the health care trusts.
Shamus Cooke: The nonchalance which Friedman calls for cutting Social Security is indicative of the climate in Washington, where the last remnants of liberalism have been suffocated under the heavy demands of profit-hungry corporations, especially financial institutions and big banks.
Paul Hogarth: Polling in key states where hot Senate seats are in play (Illinois, Colorado and Harry Reid’s own Nevada) shows the public option is still popular, and putting it back in the health care bill would improve things. Only 34% of Nevadans liked the Senate bill that passed in December, but 56% like the public option. The gap grows to 31 points in Illinois and 37 points in Minnesota, so why not use it?
Robert Letcher: Conflicting interests aren’t the only obstacle, either. Ambiguities run through and through the whole matter. I myself benefit from technological breakthroughs that have elevated me from only a bit better than existing into really living. I tell people that I know how Lou Gehrig felt.
Joseph Palermo: With the hoopla at the CPAC convention and the hyperventilating on FOX News you’d think the Republicans are worried about something. With Citizens United and the Supreme Court in their pocket, and with the billionaires’ club and corporate America backing them, they’ll be back in power faster than you can say the words “President Marco Rubio.” That’s why the Democrats can’t afford to fail now.
Adnrea Nill: During his own deposition testimony, Arpaio admitted to not reading his own book and blamed the references to the wingnut reconquista conspiracy theories contained in it on his co-author.
Joseph Palermo: Unless the Congress moves some progressive legislation quickly there’s going to be trouble this fall because any political party that is stupid enough to allow a couple of shmucks like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, or the outcome of a special election in New England, to unravel its governing coalition doesn’t deserve to be in power.
Sharon Kyle: When asked if the movement was broad enough to attract conservative democrats, Palin said, “they’re already peeking in — it’s pretty cool to see some of the Blue Dog Democrats peeking under the tent and finding out what is this movement all about and, holy geez, I’m scared if I’m not a part of this.”
Ivan Eland: The Cold War is long over, and the concomitant rationale (dubious even then) for using an interventionist U.S. foreign policy to attempt to run the world is now obsolete and even dangerous in an era of blowback terrorism. Many empires throughout history have collapsed or withered away because their aspirations were too big for their wallets; the U.S. is in that perilous position now. Therefore, the United States should dramatically retract its defense perimeter, thus cutting the U.S. security budget by half and saving more than $500 billion a year.
Emily Spence: You cannot leave critical matters for future administrations to sort out in a meaningful manner. Despite vicious backlash for your stance, you must vigorously work to change our collective course now rather than continue the same old policies that your predecessors in office had and that, obviously, do not work.
Carl Bloice: President Obama told the country. “Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations – they’re not standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.”
I about fell off my chair when I heard that. He was speaking the truth, telling us all something that we should wrap our collective brains around.
Rev. Irene Monroe: Within the African- American LGBTQ community, Black History Month has always come under criticism. And rightly so! The absence of LGBTQ people of African descent in the month-long celebration is evidence of how race, gender and sexual politics of the dominant culture are reinscribed in black culture as well.
Andrea Christina Nill: According to Gibbs, the question isn’t whether President Obama still supports passing comprehensive immigration reform, but rather, whether the White House can be convinced that there is enough bipartisan support to get it passed. A recent affirmative statement from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) indicates that at least one key GOP member is reaching out to his colleagues and encouraging them to embrace the immigration issue. Meanwhile, themajority of Republican and Independent voters already support comprehensive immigration reform.
Sherwood Ross: Although much of Latin America is in the vanguard of the “anti-corporate and anti-militarist global democracy movement,” Grandin writes, the Obama administration is “disappointing potential regional allies by continuing to promote a volatile mix of militarism and free-trade orthodoxy in a corridor running from Mexico to Colombia.” Grandin’s article in The Nation’sFebruary 8th issue is titled, “Muscling Latin America.”
Randy Shaw: Consider the Democrats top concerns. Health care? “We’ll get to it sometime.” Comprehensive immigration reform? “It’s still a priority.” EFCA? Off the political radar screen. Climate Change? “We don’t have the votes.” The Budget? Freeze all domestic spending but education and research but protect defense.
Dr. Margaret Flowers: I was overjoyed to hear you say in your State of the Union address on Wednesday night: “But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.” My colleagues, fellow health advocates and I have been trying to meet with you for over a year now because we have an approach which will meet all of your goals and more.
Robert Reich: President Obama today offered a set of proposals for helping America’s troubled middle class. All are sensible and worthwhile. But none will bring jobs back. And Americans could be forgiven for wondering how the President plans to enact any of these ideas anyway, when he can no longer muster 60 votes in the Senate.
Andrea Nill: Brown’s voters also support comprehensive immigration reform by a wide margin and overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) — an avid champion of immigrant rights — year after year. If anything, Scott’s win represents a frustration with partisan-driven inaction. It also encompasses a collective sense of impatience with the lack of economic recovery. Immigration reform could speak to both.
John Delloro: With a rise in right-wing populism, I am worried. Our history tells us that immigration will become the key hot button issue these next coming elections and, in the past, hate crimes against AAPIs and Latina/os have consistently risen with increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, especially during low economic periods.
Sherwood Ross: Panetta also failed to tell readers that, if not for such CIA actions as the violent overthrow of the government of Iran in 1953 to get that country’s oil, and the 2003 U.S. aggression against Iraq to get that country’s oil, the Middle East might not be quite so violent today. Those aren’t Boy Scout camps President Obama is reinforcing in Afghanistan.
Robert Illes: The very best and the very simplest way of giving I have seen is the Red Cross cell phone text system: text Haiti to 90999. It’s a $10 donation, added to your phone bill. How painless is that? Verizon has already reported $3 million have been donated
Lou Dobbs: Despite his new proclaimed emphasis on border security and legalization, during the beginning of the segment a supposedly “wiser” Dobbs told O’Reilly that a recent bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) is nothing but a “a list of what the open-borders amnesty crowd wants.”
Robert Reich: Bottom line: Obama will be going into an election year with a higher total level of unemployment than before the Great Recession. He will have to argue that, were it not for his policies, things would be even worse. Counter-factuals like this do not sit well on bumper stickers.
Fridays the LA Progressive features a comment that was particularly noteworthy. This week we are featuring a comment submitted by Robert Illes responding to comments on his article, Obama, Never Mind FDR, How about JKP?, …
Gene Rothman: we progressives need to follow King’s advice and not merely listen to, but to learn from others in the world. “Compassion and non-violence help us see the enemies point of view . . . . We may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own . . . [and] may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of our brothers who are called the opposition.” Most significantly, he noted that it is the U.S. that is the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
Peter Dreier: It is incredibly irresponsible for some radicals and progressives to call for killing the health care bill. It is important to push for changes that would improve the Senate version of the bill. For example, the House funding plan (a tax on families with incomes over $1 million) is much better than the Senate version (a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance plans). That’s what the labor movement, liberal and progressive Democrats in Congress, pro-choice advocates, and others will be doing in hopes of putting a better bill on President Obama’s desk, as Harold Meyerson discusses in his latest Washington Post column.
At the present rate, historians will be speaking of the dozen years of the OBushma administrations. It’s getting very fast to look as if the only thing that MIGHT save the Obama presidency for a second term is the Gop death wish to nominate Ms Death Panel – i.e. Ms Death Palin – herself.
Something, anything, has to be done at some point to show that the Obama Administration is not just the latest group of good people with good ideas that are absorbed into a system that makes Hamid Karzai look like a clean government activist. The corporate money so clogs the arteries of our body political the whole damn thing is sclerotic, choked off from the life-giving oxygen of democracy.
It’s time we demand investing our taxpayer dollars in our own communities at home and in American jobs, America’s crumbling infrastructure, and new technology. Its time to ask our representatives and federal government critical questions about who benefits from the development in Afghanistan.
Pardon me if I can’t join in the fawning praise for President Obama’s Nobel address. “It was, as ever, a bravura performance,” one newspaper said editorially. That it was, but I can’t agree with those, …
If Washington is the place where “good ideas go to die,” as candidate Obama liked to say, then the Senate is the slaughterhouse. This white millionaires’ club where the biggest egos on Earth tell us how goddamn important they are has just screwed the middle class in this country — a middle class that is reeling after years of being beaten down by these Senators’ masters in private industry.
Lofty rationales easily tell us that warfare is striving for the noble goal of peace. But the rationales scarcely intersect with actual war. The oratory sugarcoats the poisons, helping to kill hope in the name of it.
I can’t say I was “disappointed” in the jobs summit, because I didn’t expect it to be more than window dressing, but every day I wake up with the hope that President Obama will read one of the articles by people like Paul Krugman or Bob Herbert in the NY Times and a light will finally click on in that sharp brain of his.
Why didn’t Obama deliver this speech when he spoke to bankers on Wall Street a few months ago? Better late than never, I suppose, and bankers are slightly more likely to pay attention to Volcker than to Obama as evidenced by the fact that several major US bank CEOs turned down the invitation to hear the president speak.
Denying what most leading scientists think is nothing new in U.S. history. It was dramatically illustrated already in the famous Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925.
I’m sure this is something President Obama will be mindful of from here on out. Was it truly a “mistake” or the beginning of another conspiracy?
Now President Obama tells us that the oil wars have cost us $10 trillion. If we believe the most strident Republican critics, just $1 trillion would pay for a decade of real health reform and care for everyone.
Old habits die hard, especially imperialist ones. Imperial imperatives, whether economic, geopolitical, or ideological, persist because the ruling elites are dependent on them. In order to conceal imperialist objectives, presidents and other leaders of the …
America is a mess. Unemployment is over 10 percent, while the effective unemployment rate—which also includes the underemployed—is more like 19.2 percent.
Although Darfur has been a priority issue for both the Bush and Obama administrations and their European counterparts, Western efforts have not yielded a payoff in peace and well-being for the people of Darfur.
It’s reported that, as part of Obama’s surge, one brigade of the 82nd Airborne will be deployed to serve as trainers.. But the 82nd Airborne is a regular Army brigade trained hard and tough to fight; unit members are not trained to train. What a farce.
The next days and weeks will bring an avalanche of hype about insisting on measurable progress and shifting burdens onto the Afghan army — while the U.S. military expands the war.
Although Obama may enjoy a brief up-tick in poll numbers after his talk, as soon as larger numbers of American bodies come home in flag-draped coffins, and Walter Reed fills up again with the damaged bodies and minds of soldiers whose lives have been ruined, the country will turn against what it thought, in November, 2009, was a good idea.
Though Winograd expresses disappointment in the President, she acknowledges Congress’s responsibility in the matter, pointing out that her opponent, Jane Harman, voted last spring to spend another 100-billion dollars to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
Medicare in Crisis: The Devastating Impacts of a Corporate Health Care Bill. But now the dust is starting to settle, and the Congressional vision for health care in the U.S. is emerging. Instead of being …
But now the dust is starting to settle, and the Congressional vision for health care in the U.S. is emerging. Instead of being “progressive,” it will amount to a massive, corporate-inspired attack on American workers, the elderly, and the poor.
Obama’s central concern is to be re-elected in 2012, and he appears convinced that to do so he must play ball with the forces for maintaining the status quo in domestic and foreign policies. Thus his key appointments are from the old guard of the Bush and Clinton administrations. He, he thinks, will carry out his “change we can believe in” during his second term.
Thus, the main benefit of Obama’s move is partially restoring a constitutional justice system after years of Bush administration abuse. Yet at least five other Guantanamo prisoners, and likely many more, will be denied a civilian trial.
The dirty little secret on both sides of the Pacific is that both America and China are capable of producing far more than their own consumers are capable of buying. In the U.S., the root of the problem is a growing share of total income going to the richest Americans, leaving the middle class with relatively less purchasing power unless they go deep into debt.
Washington DC is so stuck in its traditions it is literally the land that time and technology forgot. Press galleries off the House and Senate floors are musty old museum chambers lined with musty leather couches, antiquated black wall telephones and 1940s era phone booths. One could envision reporters of that age bursting from the floor vote to call or Telex in their copy to the National desk then retire to a local tavern.
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