Obama Accomplishments?

by Dick Mac

Oh! How I wish I had written the article Quell the Naysayers! President Obama Has Accomplished a LOT! Here's a List... at the Please Cut The Crap Blog.

It is popular opinion, one that I generally share, that President Obama has been ineffective and done very little for his country.

You hear it said by pundits in the right-wing mainstream media: NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, CNBC, and hear it implied by so-called "progressive" pundits on MSNBC.

It is easy to focus on a president who does nothing for his people. We just finished sixteen years of George W Bush and Bill Clinton re-engineering our government to focus on corporations and the citizens living at the top of the economic food chain.

We are correct to be cynical about the effectiveness of an American president.

Clinton's major achievements were more right-wing than his predecessor: NAFTA, DOMA, and DADT were amazing milestones in the history of American government; and they were all brought to us by an allegedly "liberal" president.

Bush's major achievements were somewhat less effective than his predecessor's: the Iraq War, War in Afghanistan, and major tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, are not as impressive as Clinton's; but Bush also presided over the most dramatic collapse of the American economy in 80 years. That collapse was very much assisted by his previously-mentioned wars and tax-cuts.

After 16 years of shitty leadership from Clinton and Bush, it's easy to conclude that our presidents are lousy administrators, terrible leaders. Those who were born in the 1980s have known only the current president and his two predecessors. They have also grown-up in the only era where mass communication and the public dialog was driven, controlled and formed by a politically driven organization willing to fabricate stories every day, sometimes all day, to further a right-wing agenda.

Because the right-wing media (NBC, CBS, Fox, et al.) object to any administrative decisions that veer away from a complete and total corporate take-over of our nation, they must minimize anyone who gets in the way.

Come now, Barack Obama.

I don't like Barack Obama because he is economically conservative. He does not waver from his complete support of economic theory and government structure that furthers the thinking of the Chicago School. That is: he completely supports supply-side economics, Reaganomics, as have all four of his immediate predecessors.

It is my belief that whatever good Obama can do will always be tainted by his support of an economic system that has destroyed our once-great nation. Within that framework, however, he has accomplished dramatically more than Bush or Clinton before him.

Over at the PCTC Blog, Milt Shook has published Quell the Naysayers! President Obama Has Accomplished a LOT! Here's a List, which outlines the accomplishments of the Obama Administration. Some of the entries include:

Congressional Quarterly reports that Obama has won congressional approval for his efforts more than 96% of the time, the highest percentage of any modern-day President, including LBJ (93%) who was considered out nation's greatest arm-twister.

He froze White House salaries.

He pushed through "the stimulus package" and launched recovery.gov, so that taxpayers could track spending from the Act.

He oversaw the creation of more jobs in 2010 alone than Bush did in eight years.

Demanded that scores of CEOs who took bailout money cut their own pay until they paid back all bailout money - and they did.

He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, restoring basic protections against pay discrimination for women and other workers. This was after the GOP blocked the bill in 2007.

He found a $20 billion increase for Food Stamps that help feed millions of formerly middle-class citizens whose jobs were lost and lives destroyed by Bush-era policies.

He ordered the closure of secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe and around the world.

He developed the first and only strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan designed to defeat alQaeda.

Oh, and he killed Osama bin Laden, too.

He provided our troops with better body armor, something his predecessor failed to consider, and then explained it was too expensive.

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he invested heavily in elementary, secondary and post-secondary education.

Under Obama, tax rates for average working families are the lowest they since 1950.

He increased funding for National Parks and Forests by 10%.

He eliminated federal funding for abstinence-only education, and he rescinded the global gag rule.

And this is just a smattering of Obama's accomplishments. Go to the original article to see the full list.

Thank you Mr. Shook for the article, and thank you President Obama for your hard work.



Dead Enz
Kyle G. Brixton