Barack Obama; the Sound and the Fury.
Stop America’s illegal detention systems. Tighten emissions regulations on cars. Trillion dollar stimulus plan to create jobs and help homeowners.
What more could an American public ask for?
Encompassed in there are our most obvious aspirations for the positive development of the country we live in, some of them are the keystone reasons that Barack Obama was elected president of this great nation.
In the last few weeks he’s garnered a lot of good press for making headway in these directions, though the progress seems more symbolic than practical– the devil is in the details, and with a few swipes of a pen those grand ideals can be brokered into PR stunts, carrying lofty iconic power but lacking any of the teeth needed for effective policy construction, and resting on the fact that the electorate only comprehends a shallow depth in the issues.
Guantanemo Bay prison is a festering boil on the face of American foreign policy—lambasted in every press, well known the world over, Gitmo serves as a potent reminder of American Imperialism at it’s worst, and it deserves to be immediately closed [hopefully in favor of a memorial to the people tortured there]. However, Gitmo isn’t the end of our detention policy, and you can do only limited good without closing the CIA floating jails, the network of ‘black sites’ across Eastern Europe, and most importantly, significantly altering our policy regarding ‘extraordinary rendition’ [the process of apprehending people in a foreign nation and moving them, without legal process, to a third party nation with laxer human rights laws-- this was made ‘legal’ in a presidential order by Clinton in 1995]. Has Obama made any mention of these other elements, no—he simply wants the camera’s to get him closing Gitmo and locking it behind him.
He’s imposing stricter regulations on auto emissions… sort of. He’s actually allowing the states to enact policy ‘which does not exceed the governmental policy’ 4 years earlier than the Fed is planning on doing it. So that means that instead of the Bush plan to raise efficiency from 27 mpg to 35 mpg in 2020, he’s allowing the states that feel so inclined to require that change by 2016. Is this what change looks like? What about the California Clean Air Act of 1995 which required automakers to create ZERO EMMISION cars and market them such that 10% of their cars would be as such within 5 years. That would make a huge difference in the amount of greenhouse gas created, and foreign oil burned—this new law does nothing but speed up the timeline on a miniscule alteration—is increasing average car efficiency by a few mpg the radical change this country so desperately requires?
The Stimulus plan is possibly the worst part—he should be sending our country into debt in order to stave off a major meltdown in the short term … but you can’t do it with Reagan Era tax cuts. Every time they talk about the plan, it becomes more tax cuts and less infrastructure—Josh commented on my last piece to inform that the plan is less than 20% infrastructure at this point. We need to put people to work, we need to fix our aging country. We don’t need to give tax cuts to people whether they need them or not.
Don’t let the symbolic change distract you from the static nature of greater picture—Washington is still doing business as usual, its just launching a new Brand.
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Actually, Obama ordered the close of all CIA detention centers period, and created a special task force to investigate the previous practice of extraordinary rendition. We’re still breaking a bunch of the Geneva conventions, particularly relating to the use of certain weapons, but it’s a start.
Also, I’m not sure where you guys are getting your information about the stimulus from, but if you read the actual document, you will see that about 1/3 (275 Billion) of the proposed package will be spent on tax cuts. Most of it (550 Billion) will be spent on public programs, R&D and infrastructure a basic breakdown looks like this:
54 Billion: invested in clean energy technology and infrastructure
16 Billion: 10Bn for scientific research and 6 for the expansion of broadband access
90 Billion invested in bridges, highways, etc. 10Bn of that in public transportation (clearly not enough, but a start)
142 Billion in education
24 Billion investment into our healthcare infrastructure
102 Billion to expand unemployment, food stamps and to help workers keep health insurance
91 billion to state governments to prevent government job cuts in vital areas like fire departments and public safety
I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it’s not quite as bleak as you are making it out to be.
i found the full text the three presidential orders regarding gitmo, torture, black sites, and extraordinary rendition–
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090122/ap_on_go_pr_wh/suspected_terrorists_glance
it does immediately end our use of CIA detention facilities … leaving only the Navy floating jails as official US extralegal prisons. It does call for a review of our rendition policy, and will hopefully be followed up with additional orders removing our powers of rendition and requiring we operate within the bounds of the law in the sovereign state in which we act.
i do recognize that the steps being taken are positive, and are fairly sweeping, but i still contend that if the door to extralegal rendition, interogation etc. is left open a crack, then the previous measures come to naught— acting within the bounds of international law is a black and white issue, you’re either in observance, or you’re not.
if we decide that our current rendition policy is fine, then instead of keeping the illegal prisoners in our cia sites, or gitmo, we’ll just send them to Egypt or Somalia to be tortured by CIA trained operatives [like Chile in the 70s and 80s] … and these signed orders will have meant little.
as for the fuel efficiency element- while allowing the states to increase the pace of the change is a good thought, it doesn’t take a firm stand on the need for stricter control nationwide– moreover, wouldn’t one hope that Obama would work fast to enact stricter standards than Bush was pushing for?
i feel like the huge number of crises looming before us give him a mandate to act radically and quickly– FDR 100 days style— and i want to see him go to the mat for these kinds of issues, changing them and this irrevocably in the process.
Huh…I had seen much different figures on MSNBC in terms of the tax cuts in the package. But your info seems to match the other info I can find, so…good. I’m glad tax cuts are not as big a part of the package as I thought and that most of it is going toward infrastructure.