Government & Politics

Here, then, is Obama’s astounding record of failure.

Eric Zuesse, Strategic Culture Foundation

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31.12.2016 | I’m a former lifelong Democrat, stating here a clear and incontestable fact: Barack Obama is a failed President.

It’s true not just because of the sad realities such as that «Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94 % Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time» — or, as the economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz wrote in the original of that study: «94 percent of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements». («Alternative work arrangements» referred there to Americans who were involuntarily working only part-time jobs — they simply couldn’t find full-time, though that’s what they wanted.) In other words: Obama’s failure isn’t just because of America’s increasingly sales-clerk, and burger-flipping, workforce.

And Obama’s failure is also not just because «Poverty Rose In 96 % Of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency». (However, that reality turned out to be decisive in Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump on November 8th, as Nate Cohn pointed out in The New York Times on December 23rd, headlining, «How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump». Hillary was running on Obama’s poor record.)

Eric Zuesse: American writer and investigative historian

Full story … 

Previously in this series:

• Part 6: Barack Obama Wanted To End ‘Childish Things’ In Washington. Instead, He Got Trump.
• Part 5: Women No Longer Pay More For Health Care Just For Being Women
• Part 4: Obama Called Inequality ‘The Defining Challenge Of Our Time.’ He Didn’t Do Much About It.
• Part 3: Americans Approve Of Barack Obama’s Legacy But Don’t Necessarily Want To See It Continue
• Part 2: Barack Obama Expanded The Presidential War Powers He Once Vowed To Limit
• Part 1: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Leaves Behind An Uneasy World

Related:

Shutterstock 

Shocking Truth: This Is How Barack Obama Was Able To Prop Up The U.S. Economy, Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse / the Daily Sheeple

• A day of reckoning is fast approaching, and I am not sure if Donald Trump even realizes that he will soon be faced with some incredibly heartbreaking choices.
• Related: Capitalism's war on climate science

This piece is part of a series on Obama’s legacy that The Huffington Post will be publishing over the next week. Read other pieces in the series here.

The State Innovation Exchange (SiX) was founded in 2014 as a progressive answer to ALEC. It works with state legislators in a variety of ways to advance legislation, educate lawmakers and build a progressive power base in the states. (Blackbird Film Co./ Flikr)

• 'For too long, we’ve been very focused at the federal level. And we’re seeing what happens when you put all your eggs in that basket and suddenly the basket breaks.'
• Progressives’ answer to ALEC is helping to build power from the ground up.
• Related: A Tough-Love Letter to the Left

Theo Anderson, In These Times

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February 6, 2017 Since the 2010 election, in which the GOP won power in a majority of statehouses, progressives have often lamented the influence of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which creates template bills that allow legislators to easily replicate right-wing laws across states. It’s been a driving force, for example, in the spread of “right-to-work” legislation as the GOP’s strength in the states continues to grow.

The State Innovation Exchange (SiX) was founded in 2014 as a progressive answer to ALEC. It works with state legislators in a variety of ways to advance legislation, educate lawmakers and build a progressive power base in the states. Last year, staff members met with groups of legislators in about 20 states, to help them establish their policy priorities and understand the issues better. SiX’s priorities include climate change, predatory lending, criminal justice reform, education, election reform, and worker wages and benefits.

Theo Anderson, an In These Times staff writer, has contributed to the magazine since 2010 and is currently a Schumann Center writing fellow. He has a Ph.D. in modern U.S. history from Yale and is working on a book about the intellectual and religious origins of conservatism and progressivism.

Donald Trump plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis this week.

Related: Dan Rather Just Gave The BEST Response To Trump’s Comey Firing.

Ruth Conniff, the Progressive

May 13, 2017 | Donald Trump plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis this week when he fired FBI director James Comey in the midst of Comey’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to tip the 2016 election to Trump.

The parallels to the Watergate crisis are “undeniable,” one Nixon scholar told me.

When President Nixon fired Archibald Cox, who was investigating Watergate, The Progressive called on readers to exert “immense and unremitting pressure” to convince Congress to impeach Nixon. “Public opinion, forcefully applied, can move the requisite number of Representatives to embark on the process of impeachment,” we editorialized at the time.

We are in the same situation once again. And public pressure is building.

Citizens are packing town hall meetings to demand answers on the Comey firing and to express their worry about Republican plans to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

Meanwhile, Trump has launched yet another cynical attack on our democracy. Our publisher, Norm Stockwell, spoke with Greg Palast this week about Trump’s new voter fraud commission, led by one of the chief architects of the phony claim that there are millions of illegal voters in the United States.

Ruth Conniff is an American progressive journalist who serves as editor-in-chief of the Progressive. In addition to the Progressive, Conniff has written for the Nation and the New York Times.

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Dan Rather Just Gave The BEST Response To Trump’s Comey Firing, Robert Haffey, Occupy Democrats 

In the wake of Trump’s self-serving removal of James Comey from his role as Director of the FBI, many Americans have been left reeling, struggling to make sense of the undemocratic move. As has become increasingly the case, journalist Dan Rather offered one of the most articulate assessments of the situation.

Related: We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump

• In the wake of Trump’s self-serving removal of James Comey from his role as Director of the FBI, many Americans have been left reeling, struggling to make sense of the undemocratic move. As has become increasingly the case, journalist Dan Rather offered one of the most articulate assessments of the situation.
• Related: We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump

Robert Haffey, Occupy Democrats

May 9, 2017 | “Future generations may mark today as one of the truly dark days in American history, a history that may soon take an even more ominous turn.

President Trump’s sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey is a matter that should deeply concern every American, regardless of party, partisan politics or ideological leanings.

Robert Haffey is a journalist and winner of the Screencraft Writing Fellowship. 

Full story (video and transcript) … 

Related: 

We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump, Sarah Kendzior, The Correspondent

• Having studied authoritarian states for over a decade, I would never exaggerate the severity of the threat we now face. But an American kleptocracy is exactly where president-elect Trump and his backers are taking us. That’s why I have a favor to ask you, my fellow Americans.
• A president-elect who wants to strip our country down for parts
• Related: Dan Rather Just Released Heartbreaking Statement Against Trump