Saw this on twitter and it made me laugh.
Archives for 2009
One Step At a Time
Yet another positive development:
Policy wonks and deficit hawks weren’t the only ones paying attention when President Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act last week. HIV activists, public health experts and communities of drug users celebrated–not for what’s in the appropriations bill, but for what’s not in it: a ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs, which has appeared in the federal budget every year since 1988.
After two decades, this change is a historic achievement. Obama had already missed one opportunity to lift the ban, neglecting to pull it out of his budget in May. Still, that same month former Seattle chief of police Gil Kerlikowske was sworn in as the director of national drug control policy, calling for a new common-sense approach to drug addiction. When the drug czar calls for an end to the war on drugs, it’s clearly the start of a new era.
Unlike during the Clinton administration, when there was only mixed support for needle exchange–in 1998, drug czar Barry McCaffrey convinced Bill Clinton to renege on his stated intention to lift the ban–all of the top brass in the Obama administration are on record in favor.
It really is a sign of how dysfunctional our national dialogue is that something as common sense as needle exchanges is politically off limits. And that isn’t even getting into the rest of our insane drug laws.
BTW- I was mocking them earlier, but is it just me, or is the Nation pretty good reading lately?
Open Thread
The Chris Matthews and Darcy Burner (who is really charming and I wish had won last year) discussion about Joe Lieberman on Hardball is going to be one for the ages, and really highlights the unreality of this notion that somehow we could have gotten a radically different bill out of the Senate.
If anyone has the video, let me know.
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The Party of Ideas
Great piece by Jonathon Chait in TNR.
What Am I Missing?
True, if Republicans had played ball, they would have been in a position to eliminate the public option, demand deficit neutrality, and so forth … but they had Democratic centrists to do that work for them, and they won all those battles, to some extent at least, without having to vote for the final bill. Whereas winning the larger war, over the design of the legislation, was probably beyond their capabilities whatever negotiating strategy they took.
According to the CBO, the Senate bill saves 130 billion over the first decade. Isn’t that BETTER than deficit neutral? Or are we just aiming to meet the soft bigotry of low expectations we’ve come to expect from the GOP?
Two More Obama Failures
New airplane regulations:
The federal government will impose big fines starting this spring on airlines that keep passengers waiting on runways too long without feeding them or letting them off the plane.
Airlines that let a plane sit on the tarmac for more than two hours without giving passengers food or water, or more than three hours without offering them the option of getting off, will face fines of $27,500 a passenger, the secretary of transportation announced on Monday.
“This is President Obama’s Passenger Bill of Rights,” said the secretary, Ray LaHood. Various proposals by that title have been introduced in Congress in recent years, but none has passed.
Sounds good, but I’ve been told if Obama used his bully pulpit and really got in front of the issue, he could have gotten rid of airline delays completely. In other news:
The White House Press Office sent out a statement today announcing that President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 into law on Saturday.
That bill contained Franken’s anti-rape amendment. Funny how that works- the House and Senate send him good bills, and he signs them.
The arrogance meme
Kaplan “economics columnist” Robert Samuelson has a bizarre, content-free, anti-Obama screed today. I’m not going to link, but here’s a sample:
Barack Obama’s quest for historic health-care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially unpopular, serve America’s long-term interests. Obama has reversed this. He’s championing increasingly unpopular legislation that threatens the country’s long-term interests. “This isn’t about me,” he likes to say, “I have great health insurance.” But of course, it is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved “universal” health insurance. He’ll be disappointed.
[….]What it’s become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama’s self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of “universal coverage.” What it’s not is leadership.
There is very little substantive criticism of the plan and a lot of citations of poll numbers.
I’ve had a hard time figuring out where the media’s arrogance meme comes from. I don’t think Obama strikes many voters as arrogant, whatever their problems with him might be. I tend to think it comes from the obvious contempt he has for media elites.
There’s something rich about such a self-absorbed group accusing of Obama (or anyone else) of thinking it’s all about him.