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sheshe2

sheshe2's Journal
sheshe2's Journal
July 23, 2013

The Obama administration is tackling some of the most insidious civil rights issues of our time

A decade before Trayvon Martin, Obama the state senator led a fight against racial profiling

WASHINGTON — In 1999, a fresh-faced state senator on Chicago's South Side heard constituents complain that police were free to pull over drivers because they were black. So Barack Obama proposed a bill to tackle racial profiling. When it failed, he revised it and proposed it again and again.

"Race and ethnicity is not an indicator of criminal activity," Obama said when his bill finally passed the Senate four years later. He said targeting individuals based on race was humiliating and fostered contempt in black communities.

More than a decade later, Obama's efforts to pass groundbreaking racial profiling legislation in Illinois offer some of the clearest clues as to how America's first black president feels about an issue that's polarizing a nation roiled by the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin.


More here
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/215948821.html

But perhaps the President's critics will suggest that somehow he has been corrupted since he got to the White House. Let's remind ourselves that the President's primary responsibility is administering laws. And so often we forget to look at what he has done in that capacity as opposed to simply focusing on the legislative arena.

When it comes to civil rights, the most powerful thing the President did was nominate the first African American Attorney General - Eric Holder. And then they nominated Thomas Perez to head up the DOJ's Civil Rights Division - the one that had been decimated by the Bush administration. What we saw immediately was that the Division started actually hiring lawyers with a background in enforcing civil rights. Just take a look at some of the people they brought on board.


As those who read here regularly know, I'm very interested in what Attorney General Eric Holder is doing to reform the Department of Justice after the havoc wreaked by the Bush administration. And in particular, the excellent work of Tom Perez in running the Civil Rights Division. The poutragers are so busy vilifying Holder for not prosecuting Bush and Cheney for torture, they are completely missing a HUGE story for progressives on this front.

snip

Chiraag Bains

Meanwhile, as an undergraduate, he interned at the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he co-wrote a guide to assist convicted felons in gaining the right to vote. He also worked with the SEIU local chapter, and was an active member of Amnesty International. Little wonder that he won a Soros Fellowship for New Americans, upon which he described his dream of pursuing a career in “human rights and distributive justice.”

snip

Fara Gold

During her undergraduate days, she worked as a counselor at a rape crisis center in Georgia and vowed thereafter to spend her life helping victims. She writes that she contemplated going into social work but ultimately felt that she could assist victims more effectively as a prosecutor.


More here.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-right-wing-gets-story-left-missed.html

These folks got to work pretty quickly bringing an unprecedented 17 investigations of police brutality to departments in some of the countries largest urban areas like New Orleans, Seattle, and Newark. Of course the most noted story along these lines was the suit DOJ brought against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio for civil rights abuses.


More here
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/

***************This is Posted in The Barack Obama Group**************
July 21, 2013

I'm Yours~

President Obama doesn't want to lead a conversation about race

I think this is one of the things that pisses off the President's African American critics on the left. He didn't seek this job to be a civil rights movement leader. He sought it to be POTUS - and to be the best damn POTUS he could possibly be.

If you want to know what is absolutely driving the white male patriarchy nuts about our first African American president - its that he's succeeding in doing that. Their freak-out is all about the fact that their game of dismissing this black man as a "boy" who is out of his league is up.

That's the role Barack Obama chose to play in this struggle. It doesn't mean that its the only one that is needed in this country for us to continue on the path to a more perfect union - that requires an "all hands on deck" approach. But the integrity and competence he's bought to the office is an important piece of the puzzle.


And beyond that, there's this...

I'm Yours~



http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2013/07/president-obama-doesnt-want-to-lead.html

To my friends at the BOG~

Yes~ This is posted in the Barack Obama Group~
July 9, 2013

They Can't Take Away my Dignity



******************************************

Photo of the Day: Immigration is about families




In a protest, Renata Teodoro, right, and her mother, Gorete Borges Teodoro, who was deported in 2007, met at a Mexican border fence.

The young adults are part of the movement of immigrants who grew up in this country without legal status who call themselves Dreamers. Their parents traveled to the Mexican side of the fence from Brazil, Colombia and Guadalajara, Mexico, seeing their children in person for the first time in many years.

The meeting, under a searing borderlands sun, was a new piece of the highly personal political theater that young immigrants have used to dramatize their support for a bill in the Senate to overhaul the immigration system. Hours before the encounter here, President Obama spoke at the White House to urge Congress to move quickly to pass the bill. Suggesting the growing influence of the youth movement in the debate, the president framed his remarks — both literally and politically — with Dreamers.

snip

“This is not an abstract debate,” Mr. Obama said. “This is about incredible young people who understand themselves to be Americans, who have done everything right but have still been hampered in achieving their American dream.”




What's the agenda?

Boy, there sure is a lot of political noise out there these days! But beyond all that President Obama has an agenda he's working on. Anyone paying attention?


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More~
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2013/07/whats-agenda.html
July 9, 2013

obamacare: a fact or two

********************This is Posted in the Barack Obama Group****************************






http://theobamadiary.com/2013/07/08/obamacare-a-fact-or-two/




The mission of the Barack Obama Group is to discuss information and news about the life, career, accomplishments, and presidency of Barack Obama; to provide a haven for those members of Democratic Underground who support the president and his policies; to discuss President Obama's policy positions, speeches, interviews, and other public appearances; to discuss President Obama's political campaigns; and to discuss the causes which President Obama has championed, including health care reform and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those who have a generally negative view of President Obama and his administration, support his defeat in the 2012 presidential election (in primaries or the general election), or who are generally supportive of those who do, are not welcome in the Barack Obama Group.

July 3, 2013

the good that is obamacare

By utaustinliberal

Information is power. ObamaCare works and is here to stay, so go out into the world and educate people. 2014 is around the corner and we have to be our own news and become even more proactive. Don’t let the media, so called progressive experts or the GOP demoralize you. Even if you only inform one person about the fantastic awesomeness that is ObamaCare, you have created a ripple effect because that person will tell another and another and another. Nobody said implementation of ObamaCare would be easy; Medicare and Social Security had a rough ride initially, but now? Try to mess with them negatively and watch the backlash explode. I will keep on providing tools that will help you disseminate facts and stop the lies.



Nerdy Wonka @NerdyWonka

Thanks to #ObamaCare, 3.1M young adults saved $147M in high medical bills in 2011 alone. http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/31/2083071/obamacare-147-million-savings/



The White House Blog: The Medicare Trustees reported some good news for seniors and taxpayers: The Medicare program will be solvent through 2026, nearly a decade longer than projected at the time of passage of the Affordable Care Act. This is 2 years longer than projected last year. Their annual report also shows that the long run actuarial deficit in the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund – a measure of its long-term fiscal health – has been cut by more than 70 percent since enactment of the health care law. The long-run Medicare deficit has fallen from 3.88 percent of taxable payroll in the 2009 Trustees Report to 1.11 percent in this report.

These long-run gains are matched by short-term relief: the Trustees also project that the Part B premium will not increase between 2013 and 2014, keeping out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries down. Medicare cost growth has remained at historically low levels over the past three years even as new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs have helped tens of millions of beneficiaries access care at lower cost. The law reduces prescription drug costs by closing the donut hole, a policy that has already saved more than 6 million seniors more than $700 each. And more than 32 million seniors have accessed a free preventive service under the law, helping them stay healthy and avoid future illness.

More here
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/31/medicare-trustees-medicare-growing-stronger-help-affordable-care-act

The law works.
10:32 AM - 1 Jun 2013
Thanks To Obamacare, Young Adults And Hospitals Saved $147 Million In...
An estimated 3.1 million young Americans who would have lacked health coverage gained access to it thanks to an Obamacare provision that allows adults up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ health...

ThinkProgress @thinkprogress

Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas: In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that a medium-level “silver” plan — which covers 70 percent of a beneficiary’s expected health costs — on the California health exchange would cost $5,200 annually. More recently, a report from the consulting firm Milliman predicted it would carry a $450 monthly premium. Yesterday, we got the real numbers. And they’re lower than anyone thought.

The way this competition can drive down rates is already evident in Oregon. There, one insurer came in with monthly premium costs in the $169 range, while other insurers asked to charge more than $400. But then, seeing what their competitors were charging, two insurers came back to the state’s regulators and asked if they could refile at lower rates. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be competitive in the exchange. The Obama administration was ecstatic to see this: It’s exactly what they’re hoping will happen across the country.

More Here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/24/wonkbook-some-very-good-news-for-obamacare/



More Here

http://theobamadiary.com/2013/07/03/the-good-that-is-obamacare/

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