The unspeakable and the unelectable, joined... The Magazine - The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama. March/ April 2012The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama He’s gotten more done in three years than any president in decades. Too bad the American public still thinks he hasn’t accomplished anything. By Paul Glastris In mid-January, pollsters for the Washington Post and ABC News asked a representative sampling of Americans the following question: “Obama has been president for about three years.
Would you say he has accomplished a great deal during that time, a good amount, not very much, or little or nothing?” When the poll’s results were released on January 18, even the most seasoned White House staffers, who know the president faces a tough battle for reelection, must have spit up their coffee: more than half the respondents—52 percent—said the president has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing.” Measured in sheer legislative tonnage, what Obama got done in his first two years is stunning. Listen. Occupy Together | Home.
New NDAA's Loopholes Make Its Military Detention Provisions Almost Pointless. The version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that emerged from a House-Senate conference meeting Tuesday morning contains many of the same provisions that administration officials and national security experts have warned would harm national security. But while earlier incarnations of the detention provisions were confusing and harmful, now they're confusing and largely symbolic. "Those who were big supporters of this provision, well, this doesn't accomplish what they wanted.
Their enthusiasm is misplaced," said Robert Chesney, a national security law expert who teaches at the University of Texas School of Law. "Those who are decrying this as the militarization of domestic law enforcement, it doesn't have to be that either. " The new bill still mandates military detention without trial for any non-citizen terrorism suspect apprehended in the US who is determined to be a member of al Qaeda or an "affiliated group. " NDAA FAQ: A Guide for the Perplexed. The volume of sheer, unadulterated nonsense zipping around the internet about the NDAA boggles the mind.
There was a time–only a few months ago–when the NDAA detention provisions were the obscure province of a small group of national security law nerds. Now, however, this bill has rocketed to international notoriety. The added attention to it is a good thing. It’s an important subject and warrants genuine debate and discussion. The trouble is that much of the discussion is the intellectual equivalent of the “death panel” objections to the health care bill. Here then, as a public service, is an NDAA FAQ–a simple attempt to lay out the key questions people are asking about the NDAA and answer them as simply and neutrally as we can. The NDAA is a spending authorization bill for the military for fiscal year 2012. Nope. They are almost verbatim the same.
No, though it does not foreclose the possibility either. During the administration of George W. Who is covered? Yes. Yes and no. Taking the Initiative in a Struggle Against Excessive Rate Increases. The biggest applause line Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) got at a gathering of Democratic Party activists last week came when she endorsed a ballot initiative to give the California Insurance Commissioner power to reject excessive health insurance rate increases. Consumer advocates there decided to go the ballot initiative route after the insurance industry’s friends in the legislature blocked a bill last year that would do the same thing.
Feinstein became the first Californian to sign a petition. Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones became the second. To get the measure before voters in November, the advocates, led by Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, must collect half a million more signatures. In her San Diego speech before the party faithful, Feinstein pointed out that in the first quarter of this year, the five largest health insurers — UnitedHealth, WellPoint, Aetna, CIGNA and Humana — posted profits of $3.6 billion, 16 percent more than the same period a year earlier. The Definition of Insanity: Deregulating Over and Over and Expecting Different Results. A cynic might argue that business leaders and their friends in Congress weren't expecting different results. In either case, we've become a bipolar nation, 1% manic and 99% depressive. Our affliction is caused by a 30-year experiment in the dismal economics of delusion. Deregulation for corporations and tax cuts for the wealthy have defined conservative policy since the 1970s, when University of Chicago economist Arthur Laffer convinced Dick Cheney and other Republican officials that lowering taxes on the rich would generate more revenue.
Ronald Reagan complied in the 1980s by dramatically reducing the top marginal tax rate. And while declaring government "the problem" he eased a half-century of protective regulations on mortgage lending. In the Clinton years, Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan and Phil Gramm and others lobbied against regulations on the derivatives that evolved into toxic assets a decade later. So what's the result of all this? How to Put People Back in Charge. Most Americans know we’ve got problems with corporate power. Eighty-six percent say Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington, D.C., and 80 percent oppose Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates to corporate campaign contributions. But how do we change that when corporations have so much wealth with which to protect their privileges? The YES! Editorial team set out to answer that question by searching out the best strategies for rebuilding our tattered democracy and putting We the People in charge.
This is an especially critical question at a time when corporate power is at the root of so many of the crises our world is facing. Among them: The result of having government cater to big corporations? Meanwhile solutions—like a World War II-scale response to climate change (which could create millions of jobs)—are blocked by the powerful fossil fuel lobby. There are plenty of caring, compassionate people working for corporations.
Petition to Break up Bank of America Pushes Forward. David Koch Admits Big Spending to Help Scott Walker Bust ‘Union Power’ Billionaire campaign donor David Koch, heir to a fortune and a political legacy created by one of the driving forces behind the John Birch Society, makes no secret of his enthusiasm for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. “What Scott Walker is doing with the public unions in Wisconsin is critically important. He’s an impressive guy and he’s very courageous,” Koch explained in a recent conversation reported by the Palm Beach Post. “If the unions win the recall, there will be no stopping union power.” That’s no surprise. Like their father before them, David Koch and his brother Charles are longtime champions of extreme right-wing causes.
The governor has already spent a fortune trying to block the recall drive, with millions of dollars in television advertising, as well as expensive legal efforts to block a new vote. Coordination between candidates and their campaigns and “independent” groups operating under the Internal Revenue Service code as 501(c)3 operations. Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics. ReFund California Coalition. New Study Reveals That Stupidity Can Make You Conservative And Racist.
Science has already established that people with right leaning political ideology are more apt to be prejudiced and that people with low education tend to be prejudiced, but now they’ve also shown that low IQs and conservative beliefs are linked to prejudice. Cue the screaming poutrage of the Right. Stephanie Pappas reported for Yahoo: There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults.
These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. And you wondered why conservatives don’t believe in science. As other scientists note later in the article, the challenge is how to get through to people whose intellect can’t handle being challenged with alternative realities. About Sarah Jones (2,399 Posts)