Archive for January, 2010
January 31, 2010
Framing Errors in the State of the Union Address
Anyone who watched the televised exchange between the President and Republican lawmakers at their retreat last week – anyone, that is, with an ounce of objectivity in them – would presumably concede that, in a straight-up fight between Barack Obama and the entire Republican leadership, the President would win by a clear knock out. So […] read more »
January 30, 2010
The Housing Policy in 2009
The Obama administration moved quickly to help American families remortgage their houses and avoid foreclosure. On February 19 it put aside $75 billion of the bank bailout fund to help 4 million homeowners renegotiate their primary mortgages by giving financial incentives to lenders to modify loan terms and by subsidizing the borrowers’ interest payments over […] read more »
January 28, 2010
Chapter 9: Reviewing 2009
The Move from Iraq to Afghanistan Five key developments are particularly worthy of note in 2009 l. The slow run down of the US military presence in Iraq 2. The escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan 3. Stalemate on the peace progress in the Middle East 4. The Obama acceptance of the Nobel […] read more »
January 25, 2010
Chapter 8: A review of 2009
2009 saw significant (and ultimately negative, from a progressive standpoint) developments on two fronts in 2009: on gay rights and on abortion rights. The record on gay rights was mixed. Initially the year was all progress. Legislatures and courts in Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire, Maine and the District of Columbia legalized gay marriage; the new […] read more »
January 23, 2010
We Need a Fighting State of the Union Address
It took FDR two goes to establish the political architecture of the New Deal. We do well to remember that the Roosevelt administration triggered a second “hundred days” of radical reform as a conservative Supreme Court began to strike down the first wave of New Deal legislation. There is surely a lesson here for the […] read more »
January 18, 2010
Immigration: The Story in 2009
There were three major areas of development on the immigration front in 2009. 1. The adverse effect of the recession on numbers and employment of both legal and illegal immigrants. 2. Clear support from AFL-CIO for comprehensive immigration reform; and 3. Changes in administration policy – away from ICE raids towards employer verification – as […] read more »
January 15, 2010
Chapter 1: January 2010 Update
The need for a “moving left show” could not have been more visibly demonstrated than by the loss of Senator Kennedy’s Senate seat to the Republicans in the special election held in January 2010. The result triggered these thoughts, first put on tpmcafe January 20 2010, the morning after the defeat. read more »
January 12, 2010
Chapter 3: The Story in 2009
2009 was dominated by first the passing and then the impact of the Obama administration’s stimulus package. That package drew a principled rejection from fiscally conservative and free-market minded conservatives, using arguments of the kind discussed in the text. It also drew criticism – as too little and too late – from the progressive wing […] read more »
January 10, 2010
The Foreclosure Crisis
The 2009 story of the Obama Administration response to the foreclosure crisis is given below: but first, this 2010 update, pointing to the very genuine danger of a second wave of foreclosures to come. • Evidence continues to build that the Obama program (details of which are below) helped very few homeowners in difficulty in […] read more »
January 5, 2010
Chapter 2: Looking back at 2009
The intense outrage against any form of progressive agenda that Rush Limbaugh articulated early in 2009 did not abate. On the contrary, it intensified throughout the first year of the Obama presidency, as a new set of right-wing luminaries joined Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Michael Steele, the House Republican leadership and Senator Jim […] read more »
