Saturday, September 3, 2011

A Spineless Citation for Obama

Click here to read the article:
Obama backs off tough clean air regulation

I did not care so much about the scrapping over the date for the joint address session, regarding employment, other than to think this is a rookie move. It's the 21st century. Coordinate dates without it being a public display.
Neither the president or the speaker of the house have staff that handles scheduling?
Did that need to be headline news?
Things are so bad, they have to have a partisan showdown just to schedule a joint session address date?

But backing off on clean air regulations, Obama can just go ahead & join the GOP in their stampede to trash the planet.
I heard the question posed last night on PBS
"What is it that Obama stands for?"

On every topic of importance, he seems to not have a bottom line. On health care, on the Debt discussion, on eternal wars, and now on the environment. Obama is constantly willing to abandon ship,  cave, and not really having any topic where he draws the line. He comes across as ineffectual. Unable to lead. There seems to be a lack of ethics on these topics. The longer he is president, the more it is clear he is either floundering, or simply stuck in this mode of pandering to the GOP.
Progressive he is not.
Leading, he is not.

I don't blame the economy on him, but the continuation of war, and lackluster delivery on promises made, are his to own.  Even the fact that FEMA is running out of money fast, and the fact we dump billions down the toilet of wars, much of it still under the direction of G. W. Bush's war staff. The hurricane season is not over, besides the fact we've had super tornadoes, California is again immersed in wildfires, and the clean up from Hurricane Irene will easily take up the remaining FEMA funding.
To me, the decision between funding endless wars in the Middle East, or providing full funding for disaster relief on the homefront, is a clear & easy choice.

 I am painfully aware that the change I had hoped for in electing Obama, is not going to arrive.

This latest announcement about backing down regarding clean air regulations, is starting to feel like the straw that broke the camel's back. Obama caves on yet another thing.  So now it is both literally & figuratively that I am not breathing easier with Obama as president.


"The White House is siding with corporate polluters over the American people," Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. "Our public officials, including in the White House, serve to protect us from harm. They need to get on with doing their jobs."

The administration's "final decision not to enact a more protective ozone health standard is jeopardizing the health of millions of American, which is inexcusable," Charles Connor, head of the American Lung Association, said in a statement.
Ground-level ozone, similar to smog, is created by the burring of fossil fuels. The compound is linked to respiratory disease and thousands of premature deaths each year.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, increasing the standard would save 4,300 lives per year, prevent 7,000 hospital visits and avoid 2.6 million missed days of work or school."

The agency predicts that a higher standard would cost $25 billion per year, but yield $37 billion in benefits, like eliminating those missed work days.
As part of a law passed late last year, the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest Americans were extended for two years. The estimated cost to the government of that portion of the tax deal is $42 billion this fiscal year.



4 comments:

Fran said...

Andre Sullivan wrote this:
This week has the feel of one that might become retrospectively pivotal. If indeed we are standing there watching as President Perry is sworn in two Januarys from now, and we’re forced to ponder the what ifs, space will be reserved on that list for a week in which the administration made a boneheaded political mistake, presided over a jobs announcement with zero growth, and turned on a key constituency group.

Believe me, I’d rather be writing positive columns. But if I were a sports columnist at The Washington Post and the Redskins had lost five in a row, I could hardly write, “Hey, gang, everything’s going according to plan.” It ain’t. I have little expectation that they’ll listen to me. I can only hope someone they will listen to breaks through soon, before it becomes too late to turn things around."

Read the whole article here:

A president adrift

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/02/barack-obama-a-president-adrift-after-jobs-report-and-epa-decision.html

Christopher said...

Conventional wisdom goes like this:

Liberals have nowhere to go but to vote for Obama in 2012, barring a primary challenger.

I will not be voting for Obama. If he is the nominee, I'm staying home Nov. 7th, 2012. I'm through.

The EPA flip flop was the point at which I can't reward this Nitwit with my vote.

I keep thinking, if I'm feeling this way, image if 25 million voters are feeling similarly?

nonnie9999 said...

i don't know what he's thinking, but it's time for dems to start bombarding their reps, senators, and the white house with demands. the tea party makes demands, and they seem to get most of what they want. they are few and far between, but they're loud, and they have a megaphone on faux news and rightwing radio. time for us to make a lot of noise and make the dems pay attention instead of taking us for granted.

Fran said...

Obama seems to be going from "adrift" to Titanic.
He seems to have decided he does not need to make good choices, but what is safe & makes him re-electable.
Can't have the clean air bill because the GOP might give him a hard time about it.
Forget about clean air.... jobs trump clean air!
Now we'd like to see the next act where Obama creates jobs out of thin air.
The freaking wealthy who have had a decade of tax cuts, who loathe government intervention will now beg & moan for some Federal & State money to subsidize their businesses, so they can be "job creators".
And around we go.
Pathetic really. Enough though.