The new meme: It's Obama's fault, don't blame Republican obstruction.

[ProSense]

79. Look,

"blue links"

President Obama is one of the best Presidents this country has seen, and he operates like all President's in the scope of a vast bureaucracy, and in this current climate, massive obstruction.

I can understand holding the President accountable and pushing for change. I don't understand the notion of focusing on the negatives to justify withdrawing support from a President who has done a lot of good and just recently won re-election by a decisive margin.

The fact that the President is advancing some policies that someone disagrees with, doesn't mean he has changed. For example, most people agree that chained-CPI is not good. Not everyone agrees with the claim about why it was offered. It still hasn't passed. It likely will not. Why wouldn't that outcome be seen as a success in getting a bad policy rejected? The Guantanamo policy has faced obstruction from within the Democratic Party. Not everything is black and white, and trying to get things done counts.

For every disappointing claim, I can cite extremely positive achievements to counter the negatives. Some the achievements are not extremely positive, they may not go far enough, but they are still steps in the right direction.

The Stimulus.

Obama’s stimulus package aids people with disabilities

By Mike Ervin,

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The first is a one-time additional payment of $250 to people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and other selected Social Security benefits. Many SSI recipients live on less than $10,000 a year, and so this additional income will make a significant difference.

Second, the stimulus package also allocates $500 million to help the Social Security Administration reduce the processing time for claims and appeals decisions. During the Bush years, the number of people awaiting final determination on their Social Security disability claims more than doubled to 755,000. Many were waiting two years or more for determination, without income. Obama’s allocation should help end this disgrace.

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More creatively, Obama provided $140 million to support centers for independent living. These nonresidential centers are run by people with disabilities and are focal points for services and advocacy. There are hundreds of these centers throughout the United States, providing thousands of good jobs for people with disabilities and others in their communities.

The stimulus package will also invest in the future by providing $540 million for vocational rehabilitation programs, which assist people with disabilities in obtaining higher education and jobs.

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http://progressive.org/mag/mpervin030509.html

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included a number of provisions of particular concern to people with disabilities.

•The Act included $500 million to help the Social Security Administration reduce its backlog in processing disability applications;
•The Act supplied $12.2 billion in funding to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA);
•The Act also provided $87 billion to states to bolster their Medicaid programs during the downturn; and,
•The Act provided over $500 million in funding for vocational rehabilitation services to help with job training, education and placement.
•The Act provided over $140 million in funding for independent living centers across the country.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/disabilities

Before the health care law, the President signed the expansion of CHIP.

Obama Signs Children’s Health Insurance Bill

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — The House gave final approval on Wednesday to a bill extending health insurance to millions of low-income children, and President Obama signed it this afternoon, in the first of what he hopes will be many steps to guarantee coverage for all Americans.

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The roll call ended a two-year odyssey for the child health legislation, which President George W. Bush adamantly opposed on the ground it would lead to “government-run health care for every American.”

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In a major change, the bill allows states to cover certain legal immigrants — namely, children under 21 and pregnant women — as well as citizens.

Until now, legal immigrants have generally been barred from Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program for five years after they enter the United States. States will now be able to cover those immigrants without the five-year delay.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/politics/05health.html

The health care law.

Who Benefits from the ACA Medicaid Expansion?

A key element of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the expansion of Medicaid to nearly all individuals with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) ($15,415 for an individual; $26,344 for a family of three in 2012) in 2014. Medicaid currently provides health coverage for over 60 million individuals, including 1 in 4 children, but low parent eligibility levels and restrictions in eligibility for other adults mean that many low income individuals remain uninsured. The ACA expands coverage by setting a national Medicaid eligibility floor for nearly all groups. By 2016, Medicaid, along with the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), will cover an additional 17 million individuals, mostly low-income adults, leading to a significant reduction in the number of uninsured people.

Medicaid does not cover many low-income adults today. To qualify for Medicaid prior to health reform, individuals had to meet financial eligibility criteria and belong to one of the following specific groups: children, parents, pregnant women, people with severe disability, and seniors. Non-disabled adults without dependent children were generally excluded from Medicaid unless the state obtained a waiver to cover them. The federal government sets minimum eligibility levels for each category, which are up to 133% FPL for pregnant women and children but are much lower for parents (under 50% FPL in most states). States have the option to expand coverage to higher incomes, but Medicaid eligibility levels for adults remain very limited (Figure 1). Seventeen states limit Medicaid coverage to parents earning less than 50 percent of poverty ($9,545 for a family of 3), and only eight states provide full Medicaid coverage to other low-income adults. State-by state Medicaid eligibility levels for parents and other adults are available here.



The ACA expands Medicaid to a national floor of 138% of poverty ($15,415 for an individual; $26,344 for a family of three). The threshold is 133% FPL, but 5% of an individual’s income is disregarded, effectively raising the limit to 138% FPL. The expansion of coverage will make many low-income adults newly eligible for Medicaid and reduce the current variation in eligibility levels across states. To preserve the current base of coverage, states must also maintain minimum eligibility levels in place as of March 2010, when the law was signed. This requirement remains in effect until 2014 for adults and 2019 for children. Under the ACA, states also have the option to expand coverage early to low-income adults prior to 2014. To date, eight states (CA, CT, CO, DC, MN, MO, NJ and WA) have taken up this option to extend Medicaid to adults. Nearly all of these states previously provided solely state- or county-funded coverage to some low-income adults. By moving these adults to Medicaid and obtaining federal financing, these states were able to maintain and, in some cases, expand coverage. Together these early expansions covered over half a million adults as of April 2012.

Eligibility requirements for the elderly and persons with disabilities do not change under reform although some individuals with disabilities may become newly eligible under the adult expansion. Lawfully residing immigrants will be eligible for the Medicaid expansion, although many will continue to be subject to a five-year waiting period before they may enroll in coverage. States have the option to eliminate this five-year waiting period for children and pregnant women but not for other adults. Undocumented immigrants will remain ineligible for Medicaid.

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http://www.kff.org/medicaid/quicktake_aca_medicaid.cfm

Arizona Gov. Brewer Opts For ‘Obamacare’ Medicaid Expansion

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) on Monday said the state will join the Medicaid expansion under the new federal health care law, the Associated Press reported.

Her announcement came as a surprise to many observers, and it distinguishes Brewer from other Republican governors. The Supreme Court's ruling last summer on the Affordable Care Act, widely known as "Obamacare," made the Medicaid expansion under the federal law optional and state leaders such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) have already opted out.

But in her State of the State address on Monday, Brewer rejected the notion that a rejection of the expansion would reduce the federal government's deficit.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/arizona-gov-brewer-opts-for-obamacare-medicaid-expansion

HHS Ruling Helps Workers But Spells Trouble for Employer Mandate
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023207327

LGBT rights.

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/05/09/481147/obama-marriage-2/

Pres.Obama urging state lawmakers to legalize gay marriage in Illinois
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2012/12/obama_urging_state_lawmakers_t.html


The End of the Iraq War: A Timeline



http://www.whitehouse.gov/iraq


Osama bin Laden brought to justice




Rescuing the auto industry.

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Before the domestic auto rescue, President Obama made$5 billion in Federal loans available to small auto parts suppliers:

The Treasury Department announced a $5 billion program to aid struggling auto-parts suppliers, raising the likelihood the government will extend more aid to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

What a lot of folks, including politicians, don't seem to realize is that GM and Chrysler merely ASSEMBLE cars. They don't make the parts.

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Obama rescued the Domestic Auto Industry.

But BEFORE that. BEFORE that. BEFORE he sent the domestic auto industry into structuered bankruptcy, he made sure the LITTLE GUYS....the SMALL manufacturing companies that make SPRINGS or BOLTS or LATCHES or TINY WIDGETS were able to stay afloat so that when GM got back on its feet again it didn't have to look to CHINA or MEXICO to make those parts because the previous suppliers had gone belly up.

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/29/1069618/-What-Happened-Before-the-Rescue-of-the-Domestic-Auto-Industry

Report: Wall Street’s Opposition to Dodd-Frank Reforms Echoes Its Resistance to New Deal Financial Safeguards

Bedrock Consumer Protections Once Were Flogged as ‘Exceedingly Dangerous,’ ‘Monstrous Systems’ That Would ‘Cripple’ the Economy

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the nation approaches the first anniversary of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, opponents are claiming that the new measure is extraordinarily damaging, especially to Main Street. But industry’s alarmist rhetoric bears striking resemblance to the last time it faced sweeping new safeguards: during the New Deal reforms. The parallels between the language used both then and now are detailed in a report released today by Public Citizen and the Cry Wolf Project.

In the decades since the Great Depression, Americans acknowledged the necessity of having safeguards in place to prevent another crash of the financial markets, including the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and laws requiring public companies to accurately disclose their financial affairs. Although these are now seen as bedrock protections when they were first introduced, Wall Street cried foul, the new report, “Industry Repeats Itself: The Financial Reform Fight,” found.

“The business community’s wildly inaccurate forecasts about the New Deal reforms devalue the credibility of the ominous predictions they are making today,” said Taylor Lincoln, research director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and author of the report. “If history comes close to repeating itself, industry is going to look very silly for its hand-wringing over Dodd-Frank when people look back.”

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In fact, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is designed to prevent another Wall Street crash, which really made it tough on everyone by causing massive job loss and severely hurting corner butchers and bakers, as well as retirees, families with mortgages and others. The Dodd-Frank law increases transparency (particularly in derivatives markets); creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ensure that consumers receive straightforward information about financial products and to police abusive practices; improves corporate governance; increases capital requirements for banks; deters particularly large financial institutions from providing incentives for employees to take undue risks; and gives the government the ability to take failed investment institutions into receivership, similar to the FDIC’s authority regarding commercial banks. Much of it has yet to be implemented.

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http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/07/12-0

Lisa Jackson to Leave EPA: Earthjustice Statement

Statement from Earthjustice Vice President of Litigation Patti Goldman:

“America owes Lisa Jackson a debt of gratitude for her work to protect the public's health from polluters and their allies in Congress. For her efforts to clean up pollution and better protect the environment and public health, she faced a steady barrage from members of Congress and the industrial polluters who back them. Her detractors are the same people who told us taking lead out of gasoline in the 1970's would break the economy and that taking acid out of acid rain in the 1990's would ruin the country. In both cases, the environment and economy were strengthened and this is the approach Lisa Jackson took. There is a lot of unfinished business started by Jackson that the next EPA director will need to attend to. Whoever it is, they'll need the support of the President and they'll need to be ready for a non-stop barrage of attacks from the chemical, industrial and fossil fuel industries and their allies in Congress.

“After 17 years of Earthjustice litigation it was Lisa Jackson who finally regulated mercury and other toxic pollutants coming from power plants. After a decade of litigation from Earthjustice and others, it was Lisa Jackson who supported and implemented regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gases. After more than a decade of Earthjustice litigation it was Lisa Jackson who finally implemented the first regulation of mercury from cement kilns all over the country.”

http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2012/lisa-jackson-to-leave-epa-earthjustice-statement

Justice Is Served

By Laura W. Murphy

June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.

Today is an exciting day for the ACLU and criminal justice advocates around the country. Following much thought and careful deliberation, the United States Sentencing Commission took another step toward creating fairness in federal sentencing by retroactively applying the new Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) guidelines to individuals sentenced before the law was enacted. This decision will help ensure that over 12,000 people — 85 percent of whom are African-Americans — will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced.

This decision is particularly important to me because, as director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, I have advocated for Congress and the sentencing commission to reform federal crack cocaine laws for almost 20 years. In 1993, the ACLU lead the coalition that convened the first national symposium highlighting the crack cocaine disparity entitled "The 100 to 1 Ratio: Racial Bias in Cocaine Laws." Now, 25 years after the first crack cocaine law was enacted in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the sentencing commission has taken another step toward ending the racial and sentencing disparities that continue to exist in our criminal justice system.

By voting in favor of retroactivity, I am pleased that the commission chose justice over demagoguery and concluded that retroactivity was necessary to ensuring that the goals of the FSA were fully realized. It is important to remember that even with today's commission vote not every crack cocaine offender will have his or her sentence reduced. Judges are still required to determine whether a person qualifies for a retroactive reduction so, contrary to what some have said, this is not a "get out of jail free card."

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http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/justice-served

Chance at Freedom: Retroactive Crack Sentence Reductions For Up to 12,000 May Begin Today
http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/chance-freedom-retroactive-crack-sentence-reductions-12000-may-begin-today


Here's a great clip from December 2010: Rachel Maddow on securing loose nuclear materials
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/40859004

The START Treaty.

MADDOW: If the Senate ratifies the START Treaty tomorrow, it caps an astonishing period in American political history.

For the last two years, Democrats have held the White House as well as big majorities in both the House and the Senate. Their record of achievement in that time, even in the face of unified, at times totally random Republican opposition, Republican opposition even do things Republicans had proposed in the first place, unified Republican opposition even to their own ideas—their track record even in the face of that is historic.

Whether you agree or disagree with what Democrats have done in the first two years of President Obama‘s presidency, they have freaking done it. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women, expanding children‘s health insurance, new hate crimes legislation that they said could not be done, tobacco regulation, credit card reform, student loan reform, the stimulus - which in addition to helping pull this country back from the brink of a Great Depression was also the largest tax cut ever, the largest investment in clean energy ever, the single largest investment in education in our country ever.

There was also a little thing you may have heard of called health reform. Also, Wall Street reform, the improvements to the new G.I. bill, the most expansive food safety bill since the 1930s.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/40898769/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/

Trade:

In case you missed it: Good moves by the Obama administration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002540300

Transparency, Declassification, and the Obama Presidency

By Lee White

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Steven Aftergood (Director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and the publisher of the blog Secrecy News)

In retrospect, the Administration erred in making its early public statements promising unprecedented transparency. The President raised expectations so high that the ensuing disappointment was inevitable. The smarter move would have been to demonstrate openness in actions, not in words, and to exceed public expectations.

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Thomas Blanton (Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.)

There are obviously some differences of opinion on this subject. My own is that too often we conflate "the Obama administration" with actions of specific agencies or specific bureaucrats, when in fact the policy decision at the top has been pretty good, just stymied by ongoing bureaucratic obfuscation in the middle and the bottom. Or even worse, continuity by federal career employees of Bush policies that the White House has not succeeded in changing.

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Anne Weismann (Chief Counsel for Citizen's for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington-CREW)

In my assessment, the administration's record on transparency is mixed. Without question, President Obama put strong, pro-transparency policies in place that really set the benchmark for a more open government. The problem has been in implementing those policies at the agency level. Agencies have been encouraged to make proactive disclosures, but they have shown little regard for the quality of and public interest in the information they are posting. And the administration has not provided them much guidance on this front.

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Patrice McDermott (Executive Director of OpenTheGovernment.Org)

I think it is a very mixed bag. There are strong indications that the initiatives and efforts of the Obama Administration have begun to institutionalize changes in the attitudes of components of the Executive Branch, mostly in the area of domestic right-to-know. While the effectiveness of FOIA as a disclosure and accountability tool for the public continues to lag behind the promises the President and the Attorney General made, much more attention is being directed by agencies to improving the process, and agencies are putting more information out proactively (without requiring or waiting for a FOIA request)—and not just the usual stuff they want you to know. The greatest frustration on the domestic policy front has been the ongoing changes in policy personnel in the White House, creating problems of follow-through and consistency.

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http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2012/1209/Transparency-Declassification-and-Obama-Presidency.cfm

Obama offers GOP an ambitious, progressive debt-reduction plan
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021905787

Obama First POTUS in History to Publicly Support Divestment Movement
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023144219

New State Dept. Envoy Begins Work Of Closing Guantánamo

The new State Department special envoy for closing the United States military's detention center located at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba began the effort to shut down the polarizing prison camp, McClatchy reported Thursday.

Clifford Sloan, a former publisher of Slate magazine and a Washington attorney who’s worked in all three branches of government, embarked on a one-day tour of the prison facility, where he had discussions with military and medical personnel.

In a major national security speech in May, President Barack Obama vowed to close Gitmo, which he said has "become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law." Obama has drawn criticism, mostly from the left, for failing to close the detention center during his first term in office, despite his 2008 campaign pledge to do so.

“President Obama has been very clear as he laid out the goal,and the objective is to close Guantánamo," Sloan told McClatchy. “Our marching orders are clear.”

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/new-state-dept-envoy-begins-work-of-closing

ACLU Comment on Appointment of Envoy to Close Guantánamo
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023036083