NYC Magazine » Barack Obama

Republicans Now Running On Platform Of Change

Igor Derysh — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:00:58 +0000

It wasn’t very long ago that President Barack Obama was Presidential candidate Barack Obama, a freshman Senator running on a platform of change after eight disastrous years of George Bush. Last night’s Republican win in Massachusetts by Scott Brown, who will now take over Ted Kennedy’s vacated seat, showed that Republicans are not only planning on running on a platform of change but winning because of it.

With the country restless and angry over the Democrats’ utter incompetence when it has come to pushing through their agenda despite a massive majority in both the House and the Senate, the voters are now looking towards the “new Republicans,” better known as the “conservative” or “Tea Party” movement which they blindly think is any different from what this country had before Obama.

The truth is, the Democrats didn’t deserve to win in Massachusetts because Attorney General Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign. The wealth of races that the Democrats are bound to lose in November will also be lost because those Democrats will run poor campaigns. Not because they are poor campaigners but because they have nothing to run on.

And so, exactly a year after Barack Obama took office, the winds of change have shifted and are now blowing against Obama, the new status quo.

One year in, the country has not closed Guantanamo, has not passed health care or climate change reform, has not stopped the economic bleeding, and has escalated the war in Afghanistan. Sound familiar?

PETA And Weatherproof Ads To Stay Up

Yelena Mandenberg — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:55:14 +0000

PETA's ad featuring Michelle Obama.. without her permission

Both PETA and Weatherproof recently put out ads featuring the first couple without their permission, and even though the White House was upset… the ads will most likely stay up.

PETA president Ingrid Newkirk told Robin Givhan of the Washington Post:

“We got a call from the White House counsel’s office,” Newkirk says. “We said to them, we’re not selling a coat, only an idea that glamorous beautiful women who you look up to don’t wear fur. . . . We’re honoring her. Lawyers are lawyers, but PETA is honoring her fashion sense.” So there.

“PETA is an advocacy organization and can claim to be making a political statement,” [Georgetown law professor Rebecca] Tushnet says. “Political speech, even in the form of an ad, gets greater protection under the First Amendment than standard ads.”

Weatherproof president Freddie Stollmack has a convenient excuse for leaving his billboard up.

Stollmack says he hasn’t yet spoken to anyone from the White House, although he has been contacted. Multiple times, he says. It’s a phone tag situation. Honest. And, of course, there has been an endless string of media interviews. “It’s turning into a dust storm. We never anticipated this kind of press coverage.”

Of course they didn’t. Because putting the president in an add for a jacket won’t get you noticed… He’s the president, who cares about him, right? Silly silly companies.

But the White House won’t likely do anything. Getting a complaint from the White House is different then getting a call from a lawyer, and the White House probably won’t want to draw anymore attention to this anyway, so they won’t do anything except sit back and let it blow over.

Economists Warn Of Tough Decade

Igor Derysh — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:30:22 +0000

The economists at the American Economic Association, or any economists for that matter, rarely come to a consensus on anything but had no problem doing just that as they concluded that the chances of the United States economy growing in 2010 aren’t good.

In fact, many of the economists who attended the group’s annual convention also believe that the next decade would not be particularly fruitful as the group suggested that the economy will grow less than two percent over the next 10 years.

Former chief of the National Bureau of Economic Research Martin Feldstein simply offered that “It will be difficult to have a robust recovery while housing and commercial real estate are depressed.”

This is not surprising when you consider that the average price of a home dropped 30 percent over the past five years and foreclosures have destroyed economies in states like California, Nevada, and Michigan.

Another problem that experts foresaw staggering the recovery process is the massive amount of debt that Americans are in. Although not as high as it was at the beginning of the economic crash, American families still owe a total of $2.5 trillion in consumer debt alone.

And the banks that created this whole mess? Economists largely agree that if the government should stop propping up the massive financial institutions with the programs that the Federal Reserve and Department of Treasury have going on, another collapse was likely to happen because the no-interest loans that the government gave the banks is the only thing that makes the banks look like they are bringing in a profit.

Democrats Grow Worried As Election Year Kicks Off

Igor Derysh — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:00:07 +0000

Dem Leader Harry Reid is on the bubble

It was a great day for the Democratic Party on November 4, 2008. A black, young Senator named Barack Obama had won his longshot bid for the presidency, the House of Representatives extended their large Democratic majority, and Senate Democrats were on the verge of sealing a “Super Majority.”

A little over a year later, with midterm elections nearly a year away, Democrats are becoming growingly concerned about how many of their party members, and even more so, party leaders, will stick around for another term.

In the past week, the Democrats saw one of their Congressmen switch party allegiance in hopes that it will save his re-election prospects while four more House Democrats announced that they will retire at the end of this term meaning that the Democrats in the House alone are already down 12 incumbent Representatives (11 retiring and Alabama’s Parker Griffith defecting).

In the Senate, the situation is even worse since Senators have to deal with the filibuster. At least four Senators are in trouble of losing their spots and numerous others will have to seriously work for it. Among the Senators on the bubble are Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and the Democrat that has been running the Democratic efforts on the economy and helping out on healthcare Chris Dodd. The Democrats are also expected to lose the Illinois seat that was previously occupied by Barack Obama (before it was embroiled in the Rod Blagojevich scandal) and expect a fight for the seat that Vice President Joe Biden vacated in Delaware.

Even here in New York, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is far from a sure thing to win.

This is to be expected, however. The president’s party almost always loses seats during midterm elections. What really has the Democrats worried is the prospect of things getting worse before they get better. With the economy still in the tank and the Congress being far from popular, the Democrats hope that this is as bad as it gets.

What is in the Senate Healthcare Bill?

Igor Derysh — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:00:18 +0000

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

With the Senate passing their own version of healthcare “reform” by a vote of 60-39, let’s take a look at what exactly is in the bill and what is going to happen when the bill is merged with the House bill for the President to sign.

-The official Congressional Budget Office estimate of the cost of the bill is $871 billion. The official cost of the bill that the House of Representatives passed is around $1 trillion. The bill’s costs would be offset by the new taxes and fees as well as the money that the Medicare program would save.

-The bill requires that almost every American have health insurance but helps Americans pay for it by adding 15 million people to the Medicaid program and offers government subsidies for Americans who cannot afford the full cost of insurance.

-According to the budget office, the bill will insure around just 31 million additional Americans but will leave 23 million Americans (including illegal immigrants) uninsured.

-Increase in the Medicare payroll tax for the wealthy.

-Creates a new excise tax on premium insurance policies (to control the costs, according to the Times).

-Puts new restrictions on healthcare providers that would prohibit them from denying coverage to people with “pre-existing conditions,” charging higher prices for people with health conditions, rescinding coverage because a person got sick or became disabled.

-Limits the profits of insurance companies by mandating that they spend 80-85 cents of every dollar they make on care.

-Mandates that healthcare benefits be described to consumers without fine print

-Plenty of earmarks to buy votes.

-A total of more than 4,100 combined pages between the House and Senate bill.

Obama’s Afghanistan Surge Consists of Mostly Contractors

Igor Derysh — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:00:25 +0000

Xe (Blackwater) Guards in Iraq

One of the least discussed things about the two wars that the United States is waging in the Middle East is the fact that more than half of the military force in both Iraq and Afghanistan consists of private contractors which have allowed the United States to send much fewer soldiers than estimates say are necessary. Similar is the case with Obama’s surge in Afghanistan which will consist of as much as 56,000 contractors sent to Afghanistan on top of the troops that he is sending there.

When people mention that the Department of Defense sent less soldiers than experts deem necessary, they are referring to combat soldiers. The Department of Defense has not sent the necessary amount of soldiers because they have sent a historic amount of defense contractors to take their place.

For the past two years, 62% of the United States force in Iraq and Afghanistan has consisted of defense contractors that do the jobs that military personnel have historically done.

To put it in perspective, there are currently more than 104,000 contractors in Afghanistan compared with less than 65,000 soldiers. In Iraq, there are around 114,000 contractors.

These contractors range from telecommunications companies and construction companies that do work that military technicians would usually do to security personnel from companies like Xe (formerly Blackwater) and Titan Corp. that do security missions and often find themselves in combat.

These contractors, which are not held to the same standards as the military have often found themselves on the wrong end of a grand jury subpoena.

Blackwater had been responsible for very questionable shootings while Titan Corp. had been providing security at Abu Ghraib when the scandal at that prison broke.

Obama will likely send nearly twice as many contractors to Afghanistan as he will soldiers, thus meeting the troop level requirements that Obama’s advisors recommended.

Obama, Wen Head to Copenhagen

Igor Derysh — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:00:48 +0000

The World We Are Creating

As the world begins to work on a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol, President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao are heading to Copenhagen to represent the two biggest world polluters.

Just a day after Barack Obama announced that he would be heading to Copenhagen to lobby for the passage of a treaty whose future has been in doubt, the Chinese State Council, their of a Presidential cabinet, announced plans to cut emission by 40% to 45% by 2020, a much more aggressive approach than the Chinese, or any other country, have taken in the past.

When the Kyoto Treaty was passed, China refused to enter into the pact while President Bill Clinton did sign the Treaty but never had it ratified by Congress (as necessary by the Constitution) because he knew that the Newt Gingrich-led Republican Congress would never pass it.

Twelve years later and with a Democrat-controlled Congress and White House, the Obama Administration hopes to enter into a world emissions treaty.

The Obama Administration, however, has started off in a compromised position as has become the case with any federal initiative. Obama seeks to lower the United States emissions by 17% over the same time frame as the Chinese expect to cut emissions by almost half.

The Copenhagen meetings are especially important because they will impact the emission rates in growing countries like India and set the theme of carbon emissions around the world as we move forward.

Majority of GOP Doesn’t Think Obama Really Won

Igor Derysh — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:56:22 +0000

Who Needs Facts Anyway?

All too often, partisanship in the United States grows to inexplicable proportions. A recent poll done by Public Policy Polling revealed that more than 50% of Republican voters believe that liberal non-profit group ACORN stole the election for Obama despite the fact that the President received more votes than any candidate in history and no voting irregularities involving ACORN registered voters have ever been reported.

While ACORN has been caught up in a scandal about what their group really does and employees registering fake voters because they are paid for every voter that they sign up, none of these fake registrations have ever been used, despite years of digging by Republicans around the United States.

Still, led by blatant lies of right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh, only a meager 27% of Republican voters told PPP that they believe Obama won the election legitimately.

The results are said to be a response to eight-years of Democrats and independents arguing that Bush stole the 2000 and 2004 elections. The difference in the cases is that there is ample legal proof to show that the “voting irregularities” in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 were hardly accidental and favored George Bush.

Despite the obvious illegal actions by some ACORN employees, they have never purged tens of thousands of voters illegitimately and cost anyone the election. Even if they wanted to, Obama won the election with nearly twice as many electoral votes than McCain.