The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: legacy
Trump Is A Reminder That Obama Has Made America Greater

Trump Is A Reminder That Obama Has Made America Greater

He definitely got a bump after the Republican National Convention. And by “he,” I mean “President Obama.”

At the beginning of the Gathering of the Trumppalos in Cleveland, the president’s approval rating had sunk below 50 percent in Gallup’s daily tracking poll, an unusual occurrence this year, with only a +2 margin over his disapproval rating at 47 percent.

Two weeks later, the president is back at 54 percent, with a 11 percent margin, and probably wishes there could be alternating Republican and Democratic conventions for the rest of the year.

It’s hard to say what did more to improve President Obama’s image:

Was it the parade of D-level conservative talent in Cleveland followed by Donald Trump ranting for 76 minutes about how he “alone” can fix an America unrecognizable to those of us who realize that, under Obama, crime has gone down by about a fifth, the stock market has more than doubled, layoffs per capita are at an all-time low, and total employment is at an all-time high?

Or was it the parade of A-list Democrats in Philadelphia, along with various independents and members of the military, followed by President Obama himself arguing that America hasn’t fully recovered from the crises and wars that began under GOP rule, but that we’ve made huge strides to rebuild America by embracing the diversity that so threatens the rotting peach of a lunatic nominated by the other party?

Either way, Americans are more appreciative of the president than at any time during his tenure save the few months after his two victories in Electoral College landslides. And the fact that we’re in the middle of the longest sustained period of private-sector job growth in U.S. history is just one reason.

This president hasn’t been perfect. Hopes that he would reverse the drift of the deep security state have all but evaporated. But the spirit of those expectations has been borne out in the nuclear deal with Iran, the long overdue normalization of relations with Cuba, and the global agreement to take on climate change.

That’s why America’s image with most of our allies has improved drastically under this president.

GA_2016.06.29_balanceofpower-0-00

Obama has done more to advance the fight against global warming and the rights of LGBTQ Americans than all other presidents combined — almost no other president (aside from Clinton) acknowledged that either existed.

But these achievements are all the more impressive given that his predecessor did everything possible to make both worse. And his Republican would-be successor would do the same — or worse, given the growing urgency of the climate crisis and utter inhumanity of threatening to reverse the steady progress toward equality.

Obamacare isn’t single-payer health care. But it has began the transformation of America’s health care system we so desperately need, given the fact we continually pay more for worse results than any country in the world.

And the results of these imperfect reforms have been spectacular, especially given the extraordinary resistance they’ve faced from Republicans: 20 million Americans have gained coverage, health costs are now predicted to be $2.6 trillion lower than they were before the ACA became law, and consumers are getting better coverage for less money.

Most important, the law has strengthened the social safety net by reimbursing hospitals for coverage they’re obligated by law to offer anyway.

Yet many Republicans widely regard Obamacare not just as something they hate because it has personally inconvenienced them, but as an abomination that is a greater failure than the Iraq War, Katrina, and Scott Baio’s singing career combined — which brings us to what the president likely regards as the greatest failure of his presidency.

He wanted to bring us together, yet we’ve become more and more polarized.

The division in America isn’t based on the two parties. It’s a continental divide connected by a mostly frozen sea. And we see that in the two nominees the parties are running for president, who are aren’t just hated by members of the other party, but despised by them, like mosquitos carrying Zika and audit letters from the IRS.

PPP Polling finds “74 percent of Trump voters think Clinton should be in prison, to only 12 percent who disagree. By a 66/22 margin they say Clinton is a bigger threat to the United States than Russia. And 33 percent think Clinton even has ties to Lucifer, to 36 percent who say they don’t think so, and 31 percent who are unsure either way.”

Is this Obama’s fault?

Did he start a conservative news channel 20 years ago right around the time the Republicans decided that they should impeach President Clinton over offenses similar to those or far worse than those committed by members of the Republican congressional leadership of the late 90s? Did he encourage that conservative news channel to help lie us into war? Did he tell them to give an open invitation to a reality TV clown whose only political qualification was that he was willing to ask the first black president for ID?

Could eight years of progress and soaring rhetoric fix that?

Probably not. Obama’s success has made them only more enraged, as rants about the unemployment rate, gas prices, the deficit, and Obamacare have been contradicted again and again by reality. The GOP base was left with nothing but white hot fire of their hatred for the man, the left, and the brown people they imagine have stolen their rightful legacy. So they nominated a birther.

And what did President Obama say to them on Wednesday night in Cleveland?

He didn’t attack them for empowering a man who has attacked his very identity. He appealed to their better angels.

He noted that what “we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican – and it sure wasn’t conservative.” And his argument against Trump wasn’t personal, it was about the purest American value there is: “We don’t look to be ruled.”

We look to be led. And for eight years, President Obama has led us and we are greater for it.

 

Obama Legacy Gets Second Legal Test Over ‘Goof’ In Climate Rule

Obama Legacy Gets Second Legal Test Over ‘Goof’ In Climate Rule

By Mark Drajem and Andrew Zajac, Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON — A congressional drafting error and clunky phrase is putting a second of President Barack Obama’s signature endeavors in jeopardy. This time it’s climate change.

Challengers to Obama’s policies are exploiting a law written 25 years ago in a lawsuit to derail Environmental Protection Agency rules designed to curb carbon emissions. The case, using a line of attack similar to one against his massive health-care overhaul, is set for a hearing Thursday in federal court.

If coal-mine operator Murray Energy Corp. and states led by West Virginia convince a panel of judges named by Republican presidents to agree with their reading, the EPA rules could be tossed before they are made final.

“It’s a perfect storm of timing and congressional goofs that leads to these interesting arguments,” said Thomas Lorenzen, a former government lawyer on clean-air cases and who is now a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney. “And Murray Energy drew a good panel for themselves, so there will be some conflicting tendencies there.”

Courts have rejected attempts to challenge rules before they become effective, and the carbon rules would be completed until later this year. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said she’s confident Murray’s lawsuit will be dismissed, too.

“There’s been no final action they can challenge,” said David Doniger, director of the climate program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed briefs in support of EPA. “Even with a conservative panel, that will be an issue.”

Still, either now or later, a federal court will need to rule on these issues, and they’ve taken on great political importance as Obama has made fighting climate change a top priority in the final years of his presidency.

For the administration, this case has similarities to the challenge over the Affordable Care Act that is awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court. In that case, the fight is over a phrase that says people qualify for tax credits when they buy insurance on an exchange “established by the state.”

Obama opponents say that phrase means subsidies aren’t available in dozens of states that didn’t set up exchanges. Residents of those states instead use the federal healthcare.gov system, with an estimated 7.5 million getting taxpayer-subsidized discounts.

The carbon rule’s effects are primarily on power utilities, but will have broad impacts on citizens and the economy, both supporters and critics say.

Meeting agency standards for reducing carbon dioxide would produce $90 billion in climate and health benefits and cost utilities as much as $8.8 billion, according to the EPA. Obama has also pushed a broader climate plan that would make freezers, microwaves, and other appliances more efficient; curb methane from landfills; and cut the use of climate-altering chemicals in air conditioners.

Congressional Republicans are sparing no effort to fight those initiatives. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote state leaders this year, urging them not to implement the EPA rule, much as many states refused to establish state insurance exchanges for Obamacare.

To add legal heft, coal producer Peabody Energy Corp. hired Laurence Tribe, Obama’s law professor and mentor at Harvard University, to help. Tribe, a leading liberal constitutional scholar, has argued 35 cases at the Supreme Court, including the 2000 election case for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore over Republican George W. Bush.

Tribe, who says the EPA rule is akin to ripping up the Constitution to address climate change, is scheduled to handle part of the oral argument against the government at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Murray Energy, the biggest closely held U.S. coal company, challenged the law in June, and was joined in February by Peabody, the largest publicly held coal company.

Fifteen states, all with Republican attorneys general except coal-heavy Kentucky, have sided with coal producers, along with business groups including the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

At issue is how the EPA used sections of the Clean Air Act to regulate pollution. The companies argue the rules violate an amendment to the Act in 1990, which they say limits regulation of the facilities for pollutants to just one section of the law. Since the EPA in 2011 mandated cuts in mercury and toxic emissions from power plants under section 112, they can’t also be regulated for carbon pollution under section 111(d), which is what the EPA proposed last year.

“The plain text of section 111(d) flatly and unambiguously prohibits EPA’s proposal,” Tribe told a congressional panel last month. “The absence of EPA legal authority in this case makes the Clean Power Plan, quite literally, a ‘power grab.'”

The EPA’s lawyers counter that a drafting error by lawmakers actually created separate amendments for that part of 111(d); one passed the House and the other by the Senate. When different versions of legislation are blended into a final document, such conflicts are supposed to be resolved. Yet both were in the bill passed by Congress and signed into law.

While the agency argues neither prohibits the carbon regulation it’s pursuing, the Senate amendment doesn’t contain any restrictions on double regulation. The House measure would only prohibit double regulation of specific pollutants, and doesn’t include a general prohibition on regulating power plants in two different areas, the EPA’s supporters say.

“The novelty of this situation does not justify petitioner’s unique approach to statutory interpretation,” Harvard Law School professors Richard Lazarus and Jody Freeman, said in a filing on behalf of the EPA. “EPA’s proposed interpretation is at the very least reasonable.”

And the legal wranglings have one odd twist. Many of the states questioning the carbon rules have also taken a case to the Supreme Court arguing that the EPA failed to account for costs before issuing its mercury rule under section 112. If that rule gets tossed by the highest court, then it would remove the double regulation argument against the carbon plan.

The Supreme Court case was argued last month, and a decision will come in the next few months.

Photo: Eric Brown via Flickr

Our Trust Survives

Last month, I was reading a newspaper in a coffeehouse in downtown Providence, R.I., when a stranger walked over to me and pointed to a nearby table.

“Would you mind watching my laptop while I run to my car?” he said.

I returned his smile and said, “Sure.”

I must look pretty harmless, because it’s not unusual for strangers to ask me to guard their stuff. Over the years, I’ve kept watch over lots of luggage, purses, newspapers and, on one memorable occasion, a Chihuahua sleeping in a hot-pink pet carrier.

This time felt different, probably because I was thinking about the upcoming anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Every newspaper in the country was planning special commemorations.

For the first time, it struck me as quite remarkable that most Americans still want to trust one another in this post-9/11 world. So many predicted otherwise, you might remember. So many thought our grand experiment was over.

Certainly, we’ve stooped to unthinkable lows. We’ve made a blood sport of stereotyping and targeting Muslims, most of whom are good and decent people. Fear-mongers now dominate talk show airwaves, fueling the worst among us. They are loud, but they are outliers.

True, we have constant reminders of that horrible day. A lot of us think about it every time we throw our shoes into a bin at the airport or produce a passport to cross the Canadian border. But we still get on planes, many of them bound for faraway places. We board trains, buses and subways. We slide into cars and share the highways with thousands of strangers every day.

We fill arenas for concerts and sporting events. We attend political rallies and town hall meetings and knock on strangers’ doors for campaigns and causes. We send our children off to school, to camp and to college. We stroll in shopping malls, feast at crowded festivals and throng to amusement parks. We gather every week in churches, temples and mosques around the country.

In the weeks and months after the 9/11 attacks, discussions on talk shows and across kitchen tables focused on what we had lost. Almost 3,000 innocent Americans died that day. I remember thinking for weeks that everyone must be scared to death, but I can speak only for myself: I was terrified.

Frantic phone calls that day — to my daughter, my son, my dad. I remember my father saying the same thing over and over into the phone: Jesus. Jesus, Connie. He was not a religious man, but he told me that day he thought he’d stop by the church where my mother used to sing in the choir.

“Just, you know,” he said. And I did.

I have often wished I’d met my husband sooner than 2003, but whenever I recall how I felt on the day of the attacks, I’m glad I didn’t know him then. He was a member of the House of Representatives at the time, and his two daughters — now my beloved stepdaughters — endured several anguishing hours when they couldn’t reach him. Even now, I fight the urge to walk away from my computer and shove that story out of my mind.

All of us have our own fears, our own worst-case scenarios.

This weekend, as a nation, we remember a moment in America when we huddled with those we loved, reeling from a collective shock. We mourn whom and what we lost, search for evidence of what remains. We will marvel at all that has come to pass, all that we’ve survived, in 10 years’ time. Many of us will bend our heads in prayer.

And then it’s onward, into tomorrow, where most of us will continue to believe in the good intentions of total strangers. How else to avoid becoming our own worst nightmares?

We are Americans.

We may not be fearless, but we refuse to be afraid.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and an essayist for Parade magazine. To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

On Hearing The Real Dr. King

WASHINGTON — We tend to honor the Martin Luther King Jr. we want to honor, not the Martin Luther King Jr. who actually existed.

We forget the King who at the time of his ministry was labeled an “extremist,” who explicitly called out “moderates” for urging African-Americans to slow down their march to justice, who quite brilliantly used the American creed as a seedbed for searing criticisms of the United States as it existed.

The postponement of the planned ceremonies dedicating the new memorial to Dr. King did not come in time to stop the tributes from flowing in advance. This was a blessing. Debating the meaning of King’s legacy is one of the best ways of ensuring it endures — although some will always try to domesticate him into a self-help lecturer who’d be welcomed at the local Chamber of Commerce or even a Christian Coalition meeting.

That we have failed to live up to King’s calls for economic justice — a central commitment of his life’s work to which my colleague Eugene Robinson rightly called our attention — is one telltale sign of our tendency to hear King’s prophetic voice selectively. But selectively hearing him is better than not listening at all, as long as it doesn’t lead to a distortion of what he believed.

One of the many things King understood was the always incipient radicalism of the American idea. At a time when paying homage to our nation’s origins seems far more a habit of the tea party than of progressives, King, like Abraham Lincoln before him, threw our founding documents in our faces and challenged us to take them seriously.

His “I Have a Dream” speech was an extended and impassioned essay on the American promise. The civil rights movement’s demands, he insisted, arose from American history’s own vows.

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,” King proclaimed, “they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'”

One of the most dramatic moments in the speech came next. “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned,” King said. “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.'”

This is the wonderful paradox of King: A Christian preacher, he understood the power of rooting arguments in a tradition. But this did not make those arguments any less radical. His emphasis was on those words “insufficient funds,” on our sins against our own claims.

This focus on calling out injustice — pointedly, heatedly, sometimes angrily — is what the people of King’s time, friend and foe alike, heard. It made many moderates (and so-called moderates) decidedly uncomfortable.

Anyone tempted to sanitize King into a go-along sort of guy should read his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” from April 1963. It’s a sharp rebuke to a group of white ministers who criticized him as an outsider causing trouble and wanted him to back off his militancy.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King replied. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. … Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” Yes, pleas for justice ought to be able to cross state lines.

King also declared himself “gravely disappointed with the white moderate” who, he feared, was “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

And recall King’s response to being accused of extremism. Though “initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist,” he wrote, “as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label.” Jesus, he said, was called “an extremist for love,” and Amos “an extremist for justice.” The issue was: “Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”

We have rendered Dr. King safe so we can honor him. But we should honor him because he did not play it safe. He urged us to break loose from “the paralyzing chains of conformity.” Good advice in every generation — and hard advice, too.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.

(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group