I received a concise comment from Pam Tisza who wrote:
Probably should not reply this morning because I am so disturbed by the loss of 38 of our young people in that foolish war in Afghanistan. Anyway, the polls show that 36 per cent (I think that is correct) of people do not approve of Obama's handling of the debt crisis. I think that is pretty much his liberal base--and Krugman speaks for that base. I am old enough to remember the last bad depression from Mt. Hoover, and I see it all happening over again.
Which prompted a rather long response from me that I want to share with my readers:
The poll figures are 48% disapproval of Obama's handling of the debt crisis and 71% disapproval of the GOPs approach. 48% is hardly the base. It undoubtedly includes those who think that he compromised too little, and those who think he compromised too much, with the vast majority not really having any opinion, except a general feeling that all must be to blame.
What I am trying to accomplish, and I am not sure I am succeeding, even with the relatively small audience that I have, is for people to get the facts before forming opinions. Nobody seems to care about the facts. It is as though all approach the issues of the day with, "I have made up my mind, don't bother me with the facts.”
This is something I have railed about for a long time against the Right, but now I find the Left is no longer interested in the facts either. Obama has been criticized for caving in to avoid a shutdown of the government. I have searched the media - I cannot find any description of what was conceded to avoid the shutdown. Some Right Wing sources have been grumbling that the GOP got nothing, that they caved completely and settled for bookkeeping gimmicks, but nowhere can I find what if anything Obama conceded. But the left criticizes that he gave up too much and nobody even attempts to get the facts, or if they have them they aren't sharing them with the public.
Now in connection with the debt ceiling compromise, I searched the New York Times and the Washington Post pages and found almost nothing on what the details of the compromise were. I finally found a good summary in CNN Money and the Wall Street Journal, but the facts are entirely at variance from what is represented in Krugman's and other "liberal" columns and in the e-mails I got from liberal organizations the facts are completely misrepresented. This is what I was trying to get across in my last blog. I am not sure anyone is hearing me.
All I am urging is Facts First, then opinions based on those facts. Krugman and the others are blatantly misrepresenting the facts. I am not sure whether they speak for the base, or are leading the base, or rather misleading the base.
You say you are old enough to remember the great depression and I see that at 88 you are indeed old enough. I came to the US in 1939, well past the worst of it, but I have read enough about it and seen enough documentaries, that I think I am as familiar with it as anyone. But there is no comparison between that and what we are experiencing now. Now we have an unemployment rate or 9.1%. In 1933 we had an unemployment rate of 37%. It is often said that we didn't get out of the depression until the war got us out of it, but by 1940 the unemployment rate was 13.9%, far worse than we have now, but a hell of an improvement over 37% which is what the Roosevelt Administration inherited. See my commentary on my blog entitled: "Roosevelt and the Great Depression."
What I am trying to get across is that the attacks are not only unfair, but they are based on either a misconception or a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. What will it accomplish? It can only accomplish one thing, and that is to elect the real villains of the piece. Do we really want a President Bachman, or not much better a President Romney, who will run on a platform that he was a businessman who knows how to create jobs, but the dirty little secret will be that all he ever did was eliminate jobs.
All these Pundits seem to think that the President has the powers of a dictator. That he can sign an executive order that would have eliminated "Don't Ask Don't Tell.” That he could have simply invoked the 14th amendment and kept borrowing. They are not living in the real world. Aside from the fact that the Public (and the Left is not the public) would not have supported such high handed behavior, the chances are that the markets would have questioned this, and quite likely refused to lend, except at much higher interest rates, almost as great a disaster as going into default. The President lives in the real world, one in which no other President in American history has had to deal with. An opposition party that will resort to every tactic never before used. To filibuster everything that they don't like in the Senate, resulting in an unheard of situation where 59 to 41 in favor, defeats any bill, to using the debt ceiling as a weapon, which also has never been done before. Both Roosevelt and Johnson had huge majorities in both houses. Obama has had to work with slim margins. The legislative branch does count.
And almost from day one, the people who should have had his back, like Krugman, instead buried their dagger in it.
Now with all these obstacles has Obama accomplished anything? He has kept an incipient major depression form occurring and so instead of an unemployment rate of 37%, as we did in 1937, we have an unhappy 9.3%. Not good, but thank God.
Despite all the criticism of Obama from both the Right and the Left he has had more major achievements than any President before him since Lyndon Johnson.
We have universal Health Insurance. To be sure it is not single payer and does not have a public option. But it is more than any other President has been able to achieve, and to boot it is will lower the deficit according to the CBO, which Republicans cite if they like its findings, but ignore when it doesn't.
The left was very impatient with Obama because he was too slow to get rid of " Don't Ask, Don't tell," but he has now succeed where all his predecessors failed, and where the policy was adopted under the aegis of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton. Under his Administration we have now in place some stern (yes, they could be sterner) bank regulations. If he had accomplished nothing else, this would be a brilliant record of achievement but he has accomplished much more.
$19 billion has been allocated to help implement an electronic medical record system.
On infrastructure the Department of Transportation has approved 2,500 highway projects.
A $2,500 tax credit to help offset the cost of tuition (among other expenses) for those seeking a college education has been enacted. Nearly five million families are expected to save $9 billion.
He saved the auto industry and untold millions of jobs in the process.
He allocated $2 billion in stimulus cash for advanced batteries systems. One high-ranking Hill aide called battery technology "the next big frontier" in the automotive world.
Set up an office of Urban Policy in the White House
Through the Recovery Act, DOJ secured $2 billion for Byrne Grants, which funds anti-gang and anti-gun task forces. The money, cut during the Bush years, should have massive ramifications on inner-city crime and violence.
Signed Schip legislation giving health coverage to millions of children by a bipartisan vote.
Pushed for and got unemployment insurance extended more than once on bipartisan votes.
The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 put under federal protection more than two million acres of wilderness, thousands of miles of river and a host of national trails and parks.
He signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, designed to make it easier for workers to sue over gender-based pay discrimination.
He cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers in his stimulus package.
Tightened limits on interrogation tactics by Central Intelligence Agency officers.
Removed financing restrictions on groups that provide or discuss abortion overseas.
Granted California a waiver to regulate automobile tailpipe emissions linked to global warming.
The day after pill to stop unwanted pregnancies was approved by a new science based FDA.
Dealt effectively with a standoff with Somali Pirates.
Changed Cuba policy allowing Cuban Americans unlimited travel and money transfers to relatives there.
Signed an executive order reversing the ban on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research.
Restarted nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia.
Released the Bush Torture Memos, almost without redactions.
Announced a new policy on medical marijuana raids by the federal government.
EPA's adopted the position that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare.
Got rid of ineffective missile shield in Poland and Czech Republic.
Negotiated a treaty with the Russians to reduce the nuclear arsenal of both countries and managed to get it approved by the Senate.
Put Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court
Despite the rise of the Right and the Tea Party we are making more progress on DOMA than anyone could have hoped.
Oversaw the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, an objective that had totally escaped the Bush Administration.
Set a new standard, which will eventually require a 54.5-mpg fleet average (roughly 163 grams of CO2 per mile), will effectively double the average fuel economy of US vehicles by 2025.
Set new standards for commercial trucks to reduce by up to 20 percent fuel consumption and pollution emissions, beginning with 2014 models. Heavy-duty pickups and vans, will need to curb fuel use and emissions to achieve up to a 15 percent reduction by 2018. So-called "vocational vehicles," such as garbage trucks or fire engines, will have to cut emissions and fuel use by about 10 percent by 2018.
By executive order eliminated expensive copays for birth control.
And I am sure I missed many achievements.
Clinton did a terrific job in raising taxes early in his term, which together with an agreement with Fed Chairman Greenspan, to lower interest rates, brought on the eight most prosperous years in a very long time and wiped out the deficit. But he was lucky to get it passed. It passed by a tie vote in the Senate with the VP breaking the tie, which by the way shows that bringing prosperity is not a sure fire way to win a mid-term election.
Nevertheless, Clinton after losing the midterms, swung Right, employed that hired gun, Dick Morris, became famous for triangulation, and presided over, among many other things, the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act, which probably was largely responsible for the bank crisis, presided over the abolition of Welfare, signed into law the "Don't ask, Don't Tell" and couldn't stop the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Yet the base never savaged him. Somebody tell me why these Presidents are treated so differently?
Well, maybe because Obama unrealistically promised both to be a post-partisan and a transformational President, which are contradictory and impossible to achieve. But it should have been obvious that these are aspirational goals, not achievable ones.
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