Friday, June 1, 2012

What I’d like to see Obama do


The Fact that Obama is only a little better than Romney demonstrates Obama's tragic shortcomings


I’m planning on voting for Obama because I believe he will will continue our slide towards fascism begun with the Bush presidency SLOWER than would Romney.

Here’s what I would like to see Obama do to immediately fix our government and enhance everyone’s quality of life and bring all Americans closer together as a community with similar interests in democracy, fairness, accountability, health, and success.

Appoint the Right People
  • Fire Holder for NOT upholding the constitution and then hire an Attorney General who will.  Holder has not prosecuted any Wall Street or war criminals even thought their crimes are well documented.
  • Fire Tim Geithner who enabled a lot of Wall Street’s fraud BEFORE Obama hired him as Treasury Secretary. He’s the one who fought against holding any of his colleagues accountable. Hire an independent person aggressively committed to accountability for criminal and ethical breaches and for strictly enforcing civil rights protections.
  • Appoint Elizabeth Warren, who is committed to aggressively protect consumers rights, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until she hopefully wins her Mass. Senate seat. If Republicans oppose her, force them to publicly state their objections.
  • Fire Jeffrey Immelt as  chair of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. While CEO of GE for 10 years, GE’s stock dropped nearly 60%, GE closed more than 31 plants let go of more than 19,000 employees.
Accountability
  • Prosecute all war criminals including those who lied us lied us into an unjust war in Iraq, those who gave false justification for the war and for torture, and those who committed torture (there is no legal justification for torture such as “I was only following orders”)
  • Prosecute all financial fraud criminals who brought about the collapse of the US economy and who are continuing their mortgage fraud.
  • Strictly enforce all regulations protecting the environment, worker safety, labor unions, individual civil liberties, voting rights, women’s rights
  • Strictly enforce ethical violations of public officials
  • Add strong ethical regulations forbidding conflicts of interest by government officials – including judges
  • Close, or tighten, the revolving door between lobbyists and politicians – they now just switch roles
  • Close, or tighten, the revolving door  between businessmen and those who regulate them – they now just switch roles
  • Impeach supreme court judges who engage in flagrant breaches of judicial ethics as well as for perjury committed during their confirmation process – remember impeachment is just a trial to examine the veracity of charges
Protect Civil Liberties
  • Protect the right to vote for all people including the poor, minorities, and those accused unjustly of being unqualified to vote.
  • Pass strong legislation upholding civil liberties such as
    • the right for gays to marry and
    • the right of any woman to get an abortion free of harrassment
  • STOP all government actions that violate the constitutionally guaranteed rights of all persons such as
    • incarcerating people without any trial (much less a fair trial) for eternity
    • rendering terror suspects to other countries who may torture them and/or confine them without a fair trial.
  • Insure that justice is done
    • Many people are prosecuted for crimes prosecutors know they didn’t commit – hold prosecutors accountable
    • Lower or eliminate unreasonable mandatory sentences
    • Accelerate the release of inmates who are found to be innocent
    • Eliminate abuse of inmates – rape is common and is a form of torture and should not be tolerated.
Open Government as Promised
  • Open up his government to public scrutiny according to his campaign promise.
  • Reveal all secret military operations that would not endanger our troops – especially the ones everyone already knows about (like the drone program which he finally confessed to)
  • Explain all his legal reasoning for his actions.
  • STOP his war against whistle blowers.
  • NEVER prosecute someone for revealing a crime. But if you insist on doing that – NEVER prosecute for revealing a crime WITHOUT prosecuting those who committed that crime
The Military
  • Implement the draft
    • All Americans should share the burden of securing our country
    • Americans whose businesses would benefit from a war would not be as quick to vote for war if their sons would be drafted
    • This would reduce the division in our nation between those who whose stake in war is personal from those whose stake is business
    • The military should not be seen as a jobs program – the economy should be seen as such. This will shift more effort into creating viable jobs and training for those whose only previous recourse was placing their lives in danger in order to get these
  • Raise taxes to cover the cost of current wars and past wars that were not covered by taxes such as Iraq
  • End the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Columbia, Iran, and Waziristan and save billions of dollars and many soldiers’ lives and health http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmgtDJphWm4
  • Reduce defense spending so it’s no longer the size of the rest of the world’s nations combined
  • Stop the drone wars which kill many civilians and create more terrorists than are killed – it’s an unsustainable strategy
The economy
  • End the war on drugs
    • Make marijuana legal
    • Decriminalize, tax, and regulate many currently illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine
    • Spend money saved and income gained for drug dependence treatment and education
  • Raise the top marginal tax rate which applies only to the very wealthy
  • Stimulate the economy in real ways by
    • Building up our infrastructure
    • Preventing layoffs
    • Investing seed money in promising businesses and technologies
    • Strategic tax cuts to stimulate business and encourage creating and keeping jobs in America
  • Health Care
    • Medicare for all
      • this would hurt the private health insurance industry but would same American immense amounts of money as well as enhancing their health
      • this would make American businesses much more competitive with those in other nations who subsidize their companies’ health care costs
    • Allow Medicare to negotiate with other countries about drug prices – saving billions of dollars for consumers
  • Education
    • Subsidize public colleges
    • Subsidize student loans
    • Increase scholarships
    • Experiment with different models of public education based on best practices here and in other countries
  • Foreign Aid
    • Continually re-examine the effectiveness of each nation’s aid – for example, Pakistan’s and Egypt’s
    • Encourage commerce through strategic aid in American products in addition to cash
    • Increase aid to Israel who is on the front lines of our war against terrorism. Make an example that any country denying the right of a democratic nation to exist will be opposed strenuously by the U.S.
Our broken political process
  • Eliminate the filibuster in the Senate – it was ended in the House of Representatives in 1842.
  • Limit the power of billionaire bullies to have more influence than any other single voter
    • Pass legislation for public financing of elections
    • Correct the horrendous Citizens United Supreme Court decision with a law mandating limits on corporate spending in elections and publicly revealed sources of all campaign contributions
  • Make it easier to register and to vote and prosecute those who illegally conspire to make it harder or impossible
  • Eliminate  incumbent  insurance
    • Set reasonable limits on gerrymandering - arbitrarily manipulating the shapes of election districts limiting opponents’ voters
    • Enforce voting rights violations like
      • Voter suppression by
        • Making highly inaccurate lists of those accused of being ineligible to vote
        • Requiring arduous processes to vote like
          • Having to wait in lines for many hours
          • Having to present documentation that they are unlikely to have
          • Preventing early voting
        • Lying to voters about the dates of votes
  • Obama should use his considerable influence to encourage the formation of a private fund dedicated to restoring democracy to the individual voter. The fund would contribute matching funds to the opponent of any politician accepting a private donation of greater some specified limit, let’s say, one million dollars.
Final Words

This is what I would hope Obama to do – not what I expect.

If he had done some of this in his first two years we would have a completely different country – one that was promised by Obama who asked us to believe in change.  He squandered that rare opportunity when he had a majority of the Senate, the House, American people rooting for him to keep his campaign promises of an open government, protection of civil liberties, an end to senseless wars, and the value of accountability.

Obama apparently made the political calculation that he could afford to stab liberals in the back because they have no where else to go; the GOP has no limits on how it is willing to violate the rights of anyone different from them.  It may turn out that Obama is right and that he will win; however, at what a great price to our country!

He could have protected civil liberties, prevented soldiers’ lives being shattered, enhanced the economy, reduced the inequality of wealth,  helped many Americans receive the proper health care, and united our country as a community.  By trying to placate his foes he only empowered them!  Once the American people had seen the beneficial effects of true accountability, economic stimulus, health care and financial reform, strict enforcement of regulations; they would have compelled the Republicans to acquiesce to Obama’s successful policies or be driven out of office. And Obama would have won re-election, but with a thriving country. Obama decided the more sure path to re-election was by stomping on the effing retards as his chief-of-staff called the liberals.

So, this is why I have some lingering negative feelings towards an eloquent man who knows intimately the very Constitution that he is willfully ignoring.  But I also have some negative feelings towards those of Obama’s supporters who criticized Bush’s repressive and regressive policies but not the same ones of Obama. If they had strongly objected when Obama started using them, he would likely have been much more reluctant to continue down that dark road. But, with hardly a peep from the establishment Democrats who were looking for political crumbs from Obama’s table,  the strongest complaints Obama received were from Republicans who said he wasn’t dictatorial enough!

But Romney, as hard to imagine as it is, is worse.

So I’m going to vote for Obama.

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