Posts Tagged barack obama

The President Who Hates His Country

This is perhaps the best article I’ve seen written on Obama’s hatred for and desire to “fundamentally change” our country. It was published in May, 2009 at the Canada Free Press website by Joan Swirsky. Great work Joan! He hates America… He hates capitalism…. He hates individual ingenuity and success… He is a traitor and should be treated as such. Patriotic Americans must stand up against this domestic terrorist and his tyrannical government!

By Joan Swirsky Sunday, May 3, 2009
swirsky050209In the last century, the impassioned words and actions of patriots like Winston Churchill – along with America’s heroic help and sacrifice – saved Europe. The eloquence and actions of “I’ve been to the mountaintop” Martin Luther King Jr. brought America to an unprecedented level of social justice.

The peerless oratory and tireless diplomacy of the man who would become Israel’s Foreign Minister, Abba Eban convinced the entire world that after the wanton murder of six-million Jews in the Holocaust its straggling survivors deserved their own state of Israel. The inspiring words and decisive actions of President Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, tore down the Berlin Wall, and restored economic prosperity to America. The efforts of these towering figures resulted in a more highly-evolved world.

We have also seen the opposite in totalitarian leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam Hussein, among others, who exploited their masses, destroyed their economies, brought havoc, turbulence, grief and massive death within and outside of their countries, and made the world a more dangerous and threatening place.

The one thing all of these virtuous and evil men had in common was love for their respective countries, in fact a burning passion that superseded all else. The virtuous believed in freedom and democracy. The evil believed in subjugation of their peoples and lifetime tenures for themselves in order to actualize their goals of conquering their eternal enemies – Americans and Jews.

Today, we have a new crop of inveterate America- and Jew-haters, among them the Marxist leader of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega, Iran’s “death-to-America-and-Israel” study-in-abnormal-psychology Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the ever-sabotage-America and anti-Semitic “leaders” of the 22-Arab states that surround Israel.

I have either read about or observed firsthand all of these people. Yet in my decades of commenting on the political scene, I cannot recall a single leader of any country or regime who has ever spoken negatively of his country or tolerated others speaking ill of the land or the people he represented

Until now

Bizarre and, yes, repugnant as it is to our essentially centrist country, America now has a president who has broken that time-honored tradition. Barack Obama, on the campaign trail and as the leader of the free world is the first U.S. president to proclaim to anyone within earshot that he, like his wife, is not proud of his country, and is all-too-willing to offer serial apologies – for America! – to Americans and foreigners alike.

As Ed Lasky writes: “We know that during the campaign [Obama] warned that criticism of his wife was `off-limits’. But criticism of America – well, that is fine.”

We also know that during his run for the presidency, Obama expressed sneering condescension towards all those bible-clasping, gun-owning yahoos who “cling” to those silly things, and that in Europe he consistently gave voice to America’s supposed “sins.” But all that pales in comparison to the clear contempt – looks more like hatred to me – that Obama feels for the United States of America and for its most revered founding document, the U.S. Constitution.

In just the first 100-days of his tenure, Obama’s words and actions have demonstrated that he is no friend of the country he leads. This is only a smattering of what happened on his recent three-continent trip abroad and to Mexico:

  • In France, Obama told his audience that America “has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward Europe.
  • In Prague, Obama – in true utopian-kindergarten fashion – pledged “with conviction” that America will “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” In other words, destroy big bad America’s ability to defend itself!
  • In London, Obama made clear that the world’s financial wealth was no longer made by those inferior leaders Roosevelt and Churchill, effectively ceding America’s leading role in creating and sharing wealth to nations that have never measured up to our country’s bountiful generosity or spirit of free-market entrepreneurship.
  • In Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Obama sat passively while the Marxist Chavez handed him an American-bashing book and delivered another revile-America speech, while never once rising to defend our country.
  • In Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Obama again sat passively while the Marxist Ortega blamed the United States for a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America, again emitting not a whisper of defense on our country’s behalf.
  • In Turkey, Obama said – incredibly and inaccurately – that America was not a Christian nation.
  • And in his recent trip to Mexico, Obama said that the escalating border violence was essentially America’s fault.

Scan your memory. Can you think of any other leader in world history who so consistently badmouths his own country, or fails to defend it? I can’t.

Wall St. Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz notes that Obama “had gone to Europe not as the voice of his nation, but as a missionary with a message of atonement for its errors. No sitting American president had ever delivered indictments of this kind while abroad, or for that matter at home. When [our allies] see Obama’s moral equivalence, they realize they are on their own and must cut their own deals to survive – understanding that multicultural trendiness is now a cynical cover for moral laxity and ‘can’t we all get along?’

Historian Victor Davis Hanson also noticed something odd about Obama’s apology tour. “Despite this fresh climate of atonement, there was a complete absence of a single apology from any other foreign leader…not a word came from Britain about colonialism…nothing from Germany on the Holocaust…not a peep from France about Algeria or Vietnam. Turkey was mum on the Armenian killings…Russia said nothing about the 30 million murdered by Stalin…Nothing came from China about the 70 million who perished under Mao…Mr. Medvedev said nothing about Putin’s brutish rule…We saw no concrete evidence of any help — or hope and change — from any foreign leader. Zilch.”

In addition, Hanson continues, “We hear nothing about our Gettysburg, or our entry into World War I. Iwo Jima and the Bulge are never alluded to. Drawing the line in Korea and forcing the end of the Soviet monstrosity are taboo subjects. That we pledged the life of New York for Berlin in the Cold War is unknown. Liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from the diabolical Taliban and Saddam Hussein is left unsaid. The Civil Rights movement, the Great Society, affirmative action, and present billion-dollar foreign-aid programs apparently never existed. Millions of Africans have been saved by George Bush’s efforts at extending life-saving medicines to AIDS patients — but again, this is never referenced.”

Blogger James Lewis says that Obama’s “obsessive need to put down his own country shows a stunningly ignorant man who has evidently never spoken to a concentration camp survivor, a Cuban refugee, a boat person from Vietnam, a Soviet dissident, or a survivor of Mao’s purges.”

And Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell adds, “Obama `gets’ the America-haters.”

Abandoning allies, Embracing enemies

“If you are a longtime enemy of the United States, count on a grand reception from the Obama administration. All is forgiven and, worse, forgotten,” write Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. “But if you have a track record as an ally or friend, you won’t get the right time of day.”

Of course apologists for Obama & Co. point to “progress” in our foreign policy, ignoring, as Caroline Glick points out, that “America’s betrayal of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies – enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease.” Glick lays out the cold hard facts:

  • Obama abrogated America’s strategic commitment to the defense of our ally Japan when his administration reacted to North Korea’s ballistic missile test by saying the U.S. would only shoot the missile down if it targeted U.S. territory.
  • Obama slapped our ally India when he refused to make ending Pakistan’s support for jihadist terror groups attacking India a central component of its strategy for contending with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
  • Obama failed to assure our ally Iraq that democracy and freedom will be secured before U.S. forces are withdrawn next year.
  • Obama de facto abandoned our allies in Eastern Europe when he announced his intention to forge a new alliance with Russia. “The Czech, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian governments,” Glick says, “were quick to recognize that Obama’s strong desire to curry favor with the Kremlin and weaken his own country will imperil their ability to withstand Russian aggression.”
  • Obama “is sacrificing the U.S.’s alliance with our ally Israel “in a bid to appease the Arabs and Iran by supporting the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state,” which, Glick warns, “requires Israel to commit national suicide in exchange for `peace.’” Obama also made clear “that from the administration’s perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran.” In addition, Obama sent Hamas $900 million of foreign aid, “channeled through the UNRWA, a United Nations front filled with Hamas operatives”
  • Obama slapped our ally England when he returned the bust of Winston Churchill to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
  • Obama slapped our ally Colombia and its president Alvaro Uribe when he refused to submit the free trade deal with Bogota to the Senate.

“What a great time to be our enemy!” Glick exclaims. “What a terrible time to be our friend!”

And speaking about appeasing Iran, the Obama administration recently asked a federal judge to throw out a $6.6-billion class-action lawsuit against Iran filed by 52 American diplomats and military officials held hostage for more than a year at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran 30 years ago. Nothing like selling out Americans to make brownie points with a bloodthirsty dictator!

Barry Rubin explains: “Friends, especially in Europe, are pleased, applaud, but then add that they don’t have to give this guy anything because he is all apologies and no toughness. They like the fact that he is all carrots and no sticks. If, however, they are states more at risk…they worry that they cannot rely on the United States to help and defend them. Enemies or potential rivals…say that this guy is weak and defeated. He apologizes, offers unconditional engagements, and promises concessions…they’ll eat the carrots and, if possible, their neighbors as well.”

NY Post writer Ralph Peters, a former military intelligence officer, sums up the hate-America core tenets of the “Obama Doctrine” as follows:
(1) We’re to blame,
(2) Problems can be negotiated away,
(3) Problems that can’t be talked out can be bought off,
(4) Islamist terrorism doesn’t exist,
(5) It’s all our fault,
(6) Israel’s the obstacle to Middle East peace,
(7) Our nukes threaten world peace and we need to get rid of them,
(8) Our military is dangerous,
(9) Our intelligence services are even more dangerous than our military,
(10) It’s only torture if we do it, and
(11) Blame President George W. Bush.

Obama is clearly not satisfied with threatening the safety of our tried-and-true allies abroad. He is also determined to undermine the bedrock foundation of America’s security – our military and intelligence agencies. By disclosing interrogation memos – and planning to release photographs associated with military probes into prisoner abuse – he has betrayed every heroic person who risks his or her life for our country, and unforgivably given aid-and-comfort to enemies who seethe with virulent anti-Americanism and lust for our demise. And in the Department of Homeland Security’s infamous memo, he has called members of our military, among others, potential domestic terrorists!

“After September 1th, the general outcry was, ‘Why don’t we have better overseas capabilities?’” said Porter Goss, director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006. “I fear that in the years to come, this refrain will be heard again. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day ‘I have your back,’ only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it.”

How horrifying to contemplate that it is the President of the United States himself who is wielding that back-stabbing knife!

Questioning Obama’s patriotism

Before the November election, legal scholar Henry Mark Holzer wrote – and scrupulously documented – a stunning indictment of Obama in which he stated that Obama’s repeatedly professed claim to be a patriot is “a fraud on the American people – and an insult to the countless true patriots who, for over two hundred years, have loved and loyally and zealously supported the United States of America.”

“Patriots,” Holzer concluded, “don’t associate with and derive sustenance from terrorists, America-haters and anti-Semites; they don’t countenance fixed elections; they don’t keep secrets from voters; they don’t intimidate their enemies; they don’t denigrate and degrade our military; they don’t gratuitously interfere with their government’s efforts to protect our country; and they don’t disdain the symbol of this great nation, which for over two centuries men and women have fought and died: the American flag. Whatever Barack Obama is, we can be certain that he is no patriot!”

The events that have followed Obama’s election, Holzer says, “have compounded the proof of the president’s lack of patriotism,” which he has recently spelled out in a follow-up article. A few of the many examples he provides of what “a patriotic American president does not do include:

  • Bankrupt this country and court massive inflation in order to implement his vision of a fascist/socialist nation.
  • Sit on his hands with a straight face while a South American thug insults his country.
  • Appoint America-haters to his cabinet.
  • Cozy up to a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iranian madman.
  • Impotently watch the probably-already-nuclear-armed North Korean Stalinists lob a ballistic missile across the Pacific.
  • Fail to stanch the flow of illegal aliens across the Mexican-United States border.
  • Cut the defense budget.
  • Strangle innovation during a serious recession by raising taxes.
  • Close Guantanamo Bay without a clue of how to handle the enemy combatants incarcerated there.
  • Publicly announce what measures military and CIA interrogators can use to extract information from terrorists.
  • Apologize to the world for what has made America great and grovel to persons, nations. and institutions unfit to shine our shoes!
  • Cede American sovereignty to the American-hating United Nations.
  • Defy the Second Amendment and a Supreme Court decision by making an end run that substantially reduces the supply of certain ammunition.
  • Repudiate the policy and practice of missile shield installation.”

Some dare call it treason

It is one thing to question a president’s patriotism, but even more serious to accuse him of treason. In an open letter to Obama on Treason, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1975) minces no words in accusing the president of sending Army forces to Samson, Alabama, and Boston in violation of the Constitution. Here are excerpts of his letter:

“I have observed and extensively recorded invidious attacks by military-political aristocrats against the Constitution for twenty years. Now you have broken in and entered the White House by force of contrivance, concealment, conceit, and deceit. Posing as an imposter president and commander in chief, you have stripped civilian command and control over the military establishment…
“We come now to the reckoning. I accuse you and your military-political criminal assistants of TREASON. I name you and your military criminal associates as traitors. Your criminal ascension manifests a clear and present danger. You fundamentally changed our form of government. The Constitution no longer works….

“I identify you as a foreign-born domestic enemy. You are not my president. You are not my commander in chief.

Fitzpatrick is not alone. John Smith – a blogger on Townhall.com, titled a recent article “Obama Is a Traitor.” Commenting on the president’s release of the “torture” memos, Smith says:

“Given the actions of Barack Obama in recent days, one has to wonder how many soon-to-be released State secrets have been gathered by radical left-wing traitors and hidden in the dark recesses of Washington, awaiting the Manchurian Candidate’s command to publish them…

“The motivation for Obama’s recent intentional disclosure of Top Secret CIA memoranda…was an act committed solely to increase his own political power through appeasement of the radical left…or was it …guided by the twisted moral imperative uniquely embraced by the Left, which dictates that only those actions that serve to limit individual liberty, punish patriotism, and destroy the traditions and culture of the United States of America are good?…

“Were Obama’s actions motivated by a deeply rooted desire to harm this Nation?…

“Article III of the Constitution defines Treason against the United States as “… levying War against them or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort…”.

“Top Secret information is the highest level of classification that we have on a national level. By definition, such material, if made public, will cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security…

“The willful disclosure of Top Secret information is an act of Treason against the United States….A sitting President of The United States of America has committed Treason.”

Fitzpatrick and Smith are among a rising tide of voices – in and outside of the military – who have observed with growing horror Obama’s proclivity to destroy our capitalist economic system, subvert the U.S. Constitution, endanger our military and intelligence services, and obsequiously embrace America’s sworn enemies.

Dr. Jack Wheeler, a consummate Washington insider, goes one step further. “The evidence that the President of the United States is a traitor is mounting. The evidence that the President of the United states is a mortal danger to America’s national security is mounting. The evidence that the President of the United States will not defend America from threats and insults from every two-bit fascist dictator in the world …is not only mounting, it is overwhelming.”

Writer Amy L. Geiger-Hammer states: “I do wonder if Obama should be called a traitor or just incompetent…does he ever talk about what a great country America is?”
And UK journalist Gerald Warner echoes that rising tide: “If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people – not even Jimmy Carter. Obama’s problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. “

Is America Lost?

Multiple lawsuits to find proof that Obama is Constitutionally ineligible to be president are ongoing and will ultimately determine if he is an American or Kenyan or Indonesian or UK “natural-born” citizen. To this date, he has spent over a million dollars blocking the suits about his still-missing birth certificate, and there is increasing evidence that the birth certificate attested to by FactCheck.org, FightTheSmears.org, and DailyKos.com are forgeries. And of course we still have not seen Obama’s Selective Service record, medical records, multiple visas, college transcripts, et al.
If Obama is proven to be the fraud and interloper many suspect, every one of his edicts, bills, laws, dictates, Supreme Court selections, et al, will be overturned , leaving America to cope with serious problems – under the leadership of the incomprehensible Joe Biden – but nothing approaching this hate-America president’s far-left socialist domestic programs and appease-our-enemies foreign policy.
The huge national turnouts at the Tea Parties of April 15 were only the beginning of a movement that was spurred by ordinary Americans waking up to Obama’s destruction of our economy, his attempts to reshape America into a banana republic, the grave damage he’s inflicted on our military and intelligence services, and his unsavory predilection for embracing our enemies and apologizing non-stop for the most magnificent nation on earth.
In short, they are waking up to the president who hates his country.
Editor Charlotte Baker predicts that “the Tea Parties and other, more aggressive, protests will grow exponentially, and that the Obama juggernaut can and will be stopped.” It’s crucial, she says, “for all Americans to recall the history they learned in school – at least before the Left hijacked what used to be known as `education.’ The Europeans, Japanese and Russians were all taken over by one form or another of totalitarianism because their combined history was one of absolute rulers – kings, czars and `divine’ emperors. They were totally conditioned to tyranny. 
“But the monstrous anti-American gang that rigged the voting system on November 4, 2008– as they do routinely in Obama’s Chicago Machine politics – to push Obama into We-the-People’s White House, have shown – even before his inauguration – the kind of overreaching that arrogant tyrants always demonstrate. Hitler, Mao, Tojo and Stalin all got away with overreaching, but they weren’t brutalizing Americans.
“Tolerating totalitarianism is simply not in the genetic code – the DNA – of Americans!” Baker adds. “Freedom and Liberty run in our blood!”
Indeed!

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Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Socialist Agenda – LEAKED

This is a preserved copy of what was cached by Google when a staffer on Obama’s website accidentally published a new section of this website, before the intended publication date. If anyone has been wondering if Obama is going to govern from the center, stop holding your breath. This is a clear outline of what is coming to America.

—(at the time http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:lZ5nLB1m2TMJ:www.change.gov/agenda/iraq/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a) —

PLAN TO STIMULATE URBAN PROSPERITY

“Americans work harder than the people of any other wealthy nation. We are willing to tolerate more economic instability and are willing to take more personal risks to get ahead. But we can only compete if our government makes the investments that give us a fighting chance – and if we know our families have some net beneath which they cannot fall.”

— Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”

The Problem

Failing Commitment to America’s Economic Centers: Today, government programs aimed at strengthening metropolitan areas are spread across the federal government with insufficient coordination or strategy. Worse, many federal programs inadvertently undermine cities and regions by encouraging inefficient and costly patterns of development and local competition.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan

Strengthen Federal Commitment to our Cities

  • Create a White House Office on Urban Policy: Obama and Biden will create a White House Office of Urban Policy to develop a strategy for metropolitan America and to ensure that all federal dollars targeted to urban areas are effectively spent on the highest-impact programs. The Director of Urban Policy will report directly to the president and coordinate all federal urban programs.
  • Fully Fund the Community Development Block Grant: In the long run, regions are only as strong as their people and neighborhoods. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program is an important program that provides housing and creating jobs primarily for low- and moderate-income people and places. Barack Obama has fought against Bush Administration cuts to the CDBG program and, as president, he will restore funding for the CDBG program.
  • Do No Harm: Barack Obama and Joe Biden do not support imposing unfunded mandates on states and localities. They strongly support providing necessary funding for programs such as No Child Left Behind.

Stimulate Economic Prosperity in our Metropolitan Regions

  • Support Regional Innovation Clusters: Thriving innovation clusters across the country like the North Carolina Research Triangle Park and Nashville’s thriving entertainment cluster prove that local stakeholders can successfully come together and help reshape their local economies. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a federal program to support “innovation clusters” – regional centers of innovation and next-generation industries. This innovation clusters program will provide $200 million in planning and matching grants for regional business, government and university leaders to collaborate on leveraging a region’s existing assets – from transportation infrastructure to universities – to enhance long-term regional growth.
  • Support Job Creation: The federal government has a role to play to ensure that every American is able to work at his or her highest capacity. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double federal funding for basic research, expand the deployment of broadband technology and make the research and development tax credit permanent so that businesses can invest in innovation and create high-paying, secure jobs.
  • Enhance Workforce Training: Obama and Biden will make long-term investments in education, language training, and workforce development so that Americans can leverage our strengths – our ingenuity and entrepreneurialism – to create new high-wage jobs and prosper in a global economy. A critical part of this process is ensuring that we reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and ensure that it strengthens federal investments needed for success in the 21st Century.
  • Increase Access to Capital for Underserved Businesses: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will strengthen Small Business Administration programs that provide capital to women and minority-owned businesses, support outreach programs that help business owners apply for loans, and work to encourage the growth and capacity of these firms. They will also strengthen Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), which are engaged in innovative methods to provide capital to urban businesses.
  • Create a National Network of Public-Private Business Incubators: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support entrepreneurship and spur job growth by creating a national network of public-private business incubators, which facilitate the critical work of entrepreneurs in creating start-up companies. They will invest $250 million per year to increase the number and size of incubators in urban communities throughout the country.
  • Convert our Manufacturing Centers into Clean Technology Leaders: America boasts the highest-skilled manufacturing workforce in the world and advanced manufacturing facilities that have powered economic growth in America for decades. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that America is at a competitive advantage when it comes to building the high-demand technologies of the future, and they will help nurture America’s success in clean technology manufacturing by establishing a federal investment program to help manufacturing centers modernize.
  • Strengthen Core Infrastructure: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will make strengthening our transportation systems, including our roads and bridges, a top priority. As part of this effort, Obama and Biden will create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. These projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs per year and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.
  • Improve Access to Jobs: America’s families and businesses depend upon workers having reasonable access to their places of employment. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program to ensure that additional federal public transportation dollars flow to the highest-need communities and that urban planning initiatives take this aspect of transportation policy into account. The Obama-Biden urban agenda will also help facilitate the creation of new jobs in underserved economic areas, so more low-income urban residents can find employment within their home communities.
  • Invest in a Skilled Clean Technologies Workforce: Obama and Biden will increase funding for federal workforce training programs and direct these programs to incorporate green technologies training, such as advanced manufacturing and weatherization training, into their efforts to help Americans find and retain stable jobs. Obama and Biden will also create an energy-focused youth jobs program to invest in disconnected and disadvantaged youth.

HOUSING

  • Lower People’s Interest Payments by Creating a New Mortgage Interest Tax Credit: Many middle class Americans do not receive the existing mortgage interest tax deduction because they do not itemize their taxes. Obama and Biden will ensure that middle-class Americans get the financial assistance they need to purchase or keep their own home by creating a 10 percent universal mortgage credit that gives tax relief to 10 million Americans who have a home mortgage.
  • Increase the Supply of Affordable Housing throughout Metropolitan Regions: Communities prosper when all families have access to affordable housing. Barack Obama and Joe Biden supported efforts to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to create thousands of new units of affordable housing every year. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will also restore cuts to public housing operating subsidies, and ensure that all Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs are restored to their original purpose.

POVERTY

  • Establish ‘Promise Neighborhoods’ for Areas of Concentrated Poverty: Successful strategies to address concentrated, intergenerational poverty are comprehensive in nature and address the full range of obstacles that stand in the way of poor children. One highly-acclaimed model is the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, which provides a full network of services to an entire neighborhood from birth to college. Obama and Biden will create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in cities that have high levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student academic achievement.
  • Increase the Minimum Wage: As president, Obama will raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011 and index it to inflation so full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing – things so many people take for granted.
  • Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit: In the Illinois State Senate, Obama led the successful effort to create the $100 million Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). As president, Obama will reward work by increasing the number of working parents eligible for EITC benefits, increasing the benefit available to noncustodial parents who support their children through child support payments, increasing the benefit for families with three or more children, and reducing the EITC marriage penalty which hurts low-income families.
  • Help Low-Income Workers Enter the Job Market: As president, Obama will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathways programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Americans succeed in the workforce. This investment will be coupled with other measures to encourage the private sector and state and local governments to increase their support of these effective employment programs.

STRENGTHEN LIVABILITY OF CITIES

  • Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Our communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to leave our cars, to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. As president, Barack Obama will re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.
  • Control Superfund Sites and Data: As president, Obama will restore the strength of the Superfund program by requiring polluters to pay for the cleanup of contaminated sites they created.
  • Use Innovative Measures to Dramatically Improve Efficiency of Buildings: Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of carbon emissions in the United States today and carbon emissions from buildings are expected to grow faster than emissions from other major parts of our economy. It is expected that 15 million new buildings will be constructed between today and 2015. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work with cities so that we make our new and existing buildings more efficient consumers of electricity.
  • Foster Healthy Communities: How a community is designed – including the layout of its roads, buildings and parks – has a huge impact on the health of its residents. For instance, nearly one-third of Americans live in neighborhoods without sidewalks and less than half of our country’s children have a playground within walking distance of their homes. Barack Obama introduced the Healthy Places Act to help local governments assess the health impact of new policies and projects, like highways or shopping centers.

URBAN EDUCATION

  • Support Teachers in Urban Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden value teachers and the central role that they play in education. To ensure competent, effective teachers in schools that are organized for success, the Obama-Biden K-12 plan will expand service scholarships to underwrite high-quality preparation for teachers who commit to working in underserved districts and support ongoing improvements in teacher education.
  • Expand Early Childhood Education: Obama and Biden have a comprehensive “Zero to Five” plan to provide critical supports to young children and their parents by investing $10 billion per year to create: Early Learning Challenge Grants to stimulate and help fund state “zero to five” efforts; quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start and increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both; work to ensure all children have access to pre-school; and create a Presidential Early Learning Council to increase collaboration and program coordination across federal, state, and local levels.
  • Reduce the High School Dropout Rate: The warning signs for high school drop-outs often occur well before high school. Obama will sign into law his “Success in the Middle Act” to improve the education of middle school students in low-performing schools. Obama and Biden will also establish a competitive grant process for entities pursuing evidence-based models that have been proven to reduce dropouts.

CRIME AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

  • Support Local Law Enforcement: Barack Obama and Joe Biden are committed to fully funding the COPS program to put 50,000 police officers on the street and help address police brutality and accountability issues in local communities. Obama and Biden also support efforts to encourage young people to enter the law enforcement profession, so that our local police departments are not understaffed because of a dearth of qualified applicants.
  • Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Supports: America is facing an incarceration and post-incarceration crisis in urban communities. Obama and Biden will create a prison-to-work incentive program, modeled on the successful Welfare-to-Work Partnership and work to reform correctional systems to break down barriers for ex-offenders to find employment.
  • End the Dangerous Cycle of Youth Violence: As president, Barack Obama will support innovative local programs, such as the CeaseFire program in Chicago, that have been proven to work. Such programs implement a comprehensive public health approach that implements a community-based strategy to prevent youth violence. He will also double funding for federal afterschool programs and invest in 20 Promise Neighborhoods across the country to ensure that urban youth have meaningful opportunities to succeed.
  • Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
  • End Racial Profiling: Barack Obama cosponsored federal legislation to ban racial profiling and require federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to take steps to eliminate the practice. He introduced and passed a law in the Illinois State Senate requiring the Illinois Department of Transportation to record the race, age, and gender of all drivers stopped for traffic violations so that bias could be detected and addressed.

STRENGTHEN HOMELAND SECURITY

  • Allocate Funds Based on Risk: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that the president and Congress should direct our precious homeland security dollars according to risk, not as a form of general revenue sharing. To address this pressing issue, Obama introduced an amendment, supported by the Families of 9/11 and former 9/11 Commissioners Lee Hamilton and Tim Roemer, to increase risk-based funding in the 9/11 bill.
  • Prepare Effective Emergency Response Plans: As our nation witnessed in the Hurricane Katrina crisis and its aftermath, too many localities do not have integrated emergency response plans to handle disasters. As president, Obama will further improve coordination between all levels of government, create better evacuation plan guidelines, ensure prompt federal assistance to emergency zones, and increase medical surge capacity.
  • Improve Interoperable Communications Systems: Barack Obama and Joe Biden support efforts to provide greater technical assistance to local and state first responders and dramatically increase funding for reliable, interoperable communications systems.
  • Safeguard Mass Public Transportation: Every weekday, Americans take 34 million trips on public transportation systems to get to work, school and beyond. Obama and Biden will fight for greater information-sharing between national intelligence agents and local officials and provide local law enforcement agencies with the everyday tools they need to protect their transportation systems.

SUPPORT FAMILIES

  • Provide a Tax Cut for Working Families: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they deserve. They will create a new “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family.
  • Strengthening Fatherhood and Families: As president, Obama will sign his Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act into law to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, ensure that support payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies, fund support services for fathers and their families, and support domestic violence prevention efforts.
  • Support Parents with Young Children: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand the highly successful Nurse-Family Partnership to all low-income, first-time mothers. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis concluded that these programs produced an average of five dollars in savings for every dollar invested and produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family enrolled in the program.
  • Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children.
  • Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit: The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides too little relief to families that struggle to afford child care expenses. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit for their child care expenses.
  • Cap Outlandish Interest Rates on Payday Loans and Improve Disclosure: In the wake of reports that some service members were paying 800 percent interest on payday loans, the U.S. Congress took bipartisan action to limit interest rates charged to service members to 36 percent. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that we must extend this protection to all Americans, because predatory lending continues to be a major problem for low and middle income families alike.
  • Encourage Responsible Lending Institutions to Make Small Consumer Loans: Some mainstream, responsible lending institutions are beginning to enter the short-term lending market to provide many Americans with fair alternatives to predatory lending institutions. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work with his Secretary of Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to encourage banks, credit unions and Community Development Financial Institutions to provide affordable short-term and small dollar loans – and to drive the sharks out of business.


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Change Is Coming – Obama’s Top 5 Power Plays by March

To say that expectations are high for the presidency of Barack Obama, would be an understatement. From the economy to Iraq, here are five changes that you can count on happening now that Democrats are back in control of the White House.

1). A Second Stimulus Package – In his first press conference Obama used the phrase economic stimulus five times. He has made it clear that this is his number one priority when taking office. I would expect expanded unemployment benefits, an increase in energy assistance and food stamps, tax cuts, and possibly another round of rebate checks.

2). Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program - SCHIP has bipartisan popularity, it was only President Bush’s veto, and House Republican obstruction that prevented the program from being expanded earlier this year. (Republicans balked that the plan was too expensive, and would cover adults. The cost was $35-$60 billion. Adults and illegal immigrants were not covered. States were given the option of covering adults at their own expense).

More unemployed adults mean more children without healthcare. Speaker Pelosi has already cited this bill as one of her top priorities, so look for it to pass quickly and be signed into law by Obama soon after he takes office. The bigger question for me is how this is going to be paid for. The original bill used an increase in tobacco taxes, with tobacco tax revenue on the decline; this is not the best option. The cost is only $7-$12 billion a year for five years, or about the cost of a month in Iraq.

3). Embryonic Stem Cell Research - This is another piece of legislation that has bipartisan congressional support that was halted by a Bush veto. Currently, there is a federal ban on funding for exploration of new embryonic stem cell lines. However, expansion and funding of stem cell research is very popular, and it has been reported that Obama’s team is already reviewing Bush’s executive orders on stem cell research. If Obama is looking to avoid bringing up an issue that arouses passions through, he may reverse Bush’s executive orders. This is likely the route he will choose.

4. Iraq – The Iraqis want us to start getting out of their country, and the United States looks willing to leave. The Iraqi government is already negotiating an agreement with the Bush administration on a timeline for troop withdrawal, and they like Obama’s 18 month phased withdrawal plan. Plans could change if there is an outbreak of violence that destabilizes the country, but it appears that all sides are in agreement that it is time for U.S. troops to start coming home. I would suspect that the withdrawal might take longer than 18 months, but the era of America’s open ended commitment to Iraq is over.

5. Closing GITMO – The AP is reporting that the Obama team is putting together a plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The plan involves releasing some detainees, trying several others in the criminal court system in the United States, and creating a third court that would be designed to handle high risk national security cases. Republicans will oppose any plan that brings detainees to the United States, while some Democrats will oppose any plan that creates a new court that doesn’t give full rights and protections to detainees.

This is by far the trickiest political minefield that Obama will have to navigate, but one thing is clear, the United States can’t be the symbol of freedom if they are running a prison that denies detainees basic protections. This is not the way to set an example of democracy for the rest of the world. GITMO has turned into a national black eye that has to go, but the question is what does Obama replace it with?

It is clear that Obama is coming into office intent on cleaning up the mess that the Bush administration will leave behind. My list did not even include energy and global warming which are two additional policy areas where changes are certain to be made. Obama will not make everything perfect, or save the world, but he does have the opportunity to get this nation back on the right track, and I think that is all that the American people really want. – thanks politicususa

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