Just a few random thoughts:
- I thought there would be a whole section about gun control, especially given the empty chair next to the First Lady. Did I miss something?
- The President was in a very good mood tonight. I don’t know when I’ve seen a President act like he was having so much fun giving this speech.
- It was different for “The State of our Union is…” to be the final sentence of the address. Usually its near the beginning.
- I’ve heard good things about Gov. Haley’s response. I was driving home from the watch party while she was speaking and didn’t see it, but I understand she did not let her own party off the hook regarding the breakdown of our governance.
What say you?
Please share widely!
Normally, because of the whole Kennedy vs. Nixon debate thing, I try to listen to things of this sort on the radio. Unfortunately, for most of the speech, TV was my only option, and Paul Ryan had a look on his face, through out the entire speech, that I just wanted to dope-slap him. He basically looked exactly like I do whenever I listened to Newt Gingrich or Mittens Romney.
I believe that his legacy of peace, justice, prosperity and progress for all will rank him as our greatest president since FDR.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Peace!?!?! Come on.
in the Middle East quagmire is the best definition of peace we can hope for in this crazy world. We will have to live and adapt to terrorist threats just like Israel has by hunting down and killing terrorists but we should NEVER — EVER— intervene in an all out land war in Middle East civil wars again. It is not in our national interest.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Just because American casualties are to a minimum does not mean we are not in a very active war.
The nature of war is changing and all out land wars may not happen much again involving the major superpowers. Those superpowers still engage in very active war, though.
Just because he was better than Bush does not make him good. On foreign policy, this administration has been terrible and offered nothing close to peace.
It is PRECISELY because American casualties are at a minimum around the world that means we are NOT involved in a major war.
By wisely using diplomacy and economic sanctions first and military intervention as a last resort this Administration forced Iran to end its nuclear development, led nearly 200 nations to a global warming climate change agreement, advanced international trade with labor and environmental safeguards and nurtured hemispheric stability by restoring relations with Cuba.
President Obama and his Administration deserve the respect and gratitude of every peace loving citizen of America and the world.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I didn’t contradict myself at all. We appear to have differing definitions of war. Leaving aside the now pointless issue of declaring war with an act of congress, which we simply do not do.
I said we are engaged in war. When we are killing scores of suspected militants and civilians throughout the middle east and central Asia, what are we supposed to call those actions? No, it is not a major, country-mobilizing all out land war, but the lack of such an event absolutely does not mean we are at peace.
Let me ask you, what have we been doing in Yemen and Pakistan during the Obama administration?
I know Democratic leaders can do no wrong in your eyes, but please, a little bit of reality.
BECAUSE they respected President Obama NOT because they feared the bellicose buffoonery of bombastic fascists like Trump and Cruz.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
why are we talking about income inequity accelerating? I don’t think hardly anyone (well except of course the 1%) would answer the question “Are you better off now than in Jan 2009?” in the affirmative.
The economy has objectively improved and joblessness has plummeted. Wages have gone nowhere. We’re in much better shape, but there is still a lot of pain and hopelessness – much more than seen in the late 90s.
I think Obama’s legacy will be the ACA, being in office during an economic turnaround (which we always overrate a President’s impact on), movement on LGBT rights, and government secrecy and extrajudicial killings.
On balance not great, and the ACA could be gone depending on the next election. It’ll be the first thing to go under a Republican, and even if Sanders somehow won, we know he wants to “dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,” according to Chelsea Clinton.
to be in the “great” category. While the economy has improved in the aggregate, that includes huge gains at the top, and nothing or loss at the middle and bottom. Good for the legacy? While the official unemployment percentage is down, participation rate (the denominator) is at the lowest levels ever. Good for the number, bad for people. Record numbers of people are claiming disabilities because they can’t find work. Again good for the number, bad for everyone else.
Wars have continued. Rights have been trampled on. Most people (including here) aren’t fond of ACA and its flaws will become more apparent over time.
I just think the net/net, no matter what your leanings, is not good. We’re back to the “well…. a Republican would have be worse” refrain.
I am struck by how different the world IS, as we enter the final year of the Obama administration, than it seemed to be in January of 2009 at his inaugural address.
The administration of Barack Obama has been one of the great disappointments of my lifetime, even more so than the administration of Jimmy Carter. He brought so much into office, and did so little of that.
I, sadly, agree with you that “the net/net, no matter what your leanings, is not good. We’re back to the “well…. a Republican would have be worse” refrain.”
I really thought it was going to be different. Some of this is interpretation. One view says “the Republicans never worked with Obama.” Another is that in 2009 in stimulus discussions, the Obama administration was talking about some good stuff and Republicans were listening, then Reid and Pelosi told Obama “buzz off we’re writing this”, Republicans got annoyed, and the seeds were sown for confrontation. Not sure what’s right there. I guess (and this was my thinking at the time, not hindsight) that Obama in 2009 should have focused on structural change in the economy, whether that was infrastructure improvement, tax code, Medicare/Medicaid expansion or others. Maybe letting the housing market flush itself. Instead we got a lot of stupid measures that propped things up (cash for clunkers) and didn’t really fix anything. They should have known that this was not an ordinary downturn (I knew it, as did many others). Shouldn’t have re-appointed Bernacke and the all the quantitative easing did was jack up the stock market. ACA was a total distraction. Extend Medicare down to 60 and apply Medicaid to everyone under 22 (or whatever) and move on. Make employer plans cost more (like removing deductability) and so move us towards single payer.
I really thought there would be some progress and there wasn’t. He couldn’t have done worse for the Democratic party- 2010 and 2014 were historic so not sure what was the point of his actions (bad for the country, bad for the party). At least in MA you get what the central goal of DeLeo and Rosenberg is- preserve the super majority, even at the expense of the state. Obama didn’t help either.
I liked Jimmy Carter too (deregulation and Paul Volcker licking inflation was his legacy) but he sucked at optics, and that’s an important quality when it comes to being president. He also got sandbagged by Congress.
I’m mostly with you that a massive jobs program to rebuild our infrastructure might’ve been a better year 1 plan, or immigration reform which Reid did block in 2007 under Bush according to Teddy. Then again, if the tradeoff is no ACA I’d say it’s not worth it.
I am a lot less optimistic about the GOP willing to go along with your ACA alternative, but it’s an interesting road not taken and one I won’t discount. Personally I think cash for clunkers and Romney’s opposition to the GM bailout singlehandedly saved Obama’s re-election.
Can’t tell you how many McCain voters told me they had switched to Obama because of that issue. The dealer in reddish Sandwich IL who sold us our car for one, and voters I called in OH, MI, PA, and WI as part of my 2012 phone banking. The Rust Belt should’ve turned on Obama and didn’t, and I largely think the GM bailout is underrated as the main reason.
but there are many stories out there of companies switching to truly atrocious insurance plans- high cost AND high deductibles. Telling people on COBRA “you might want to check out the exchanges.” When people have it good (let’s say a BC/BS with a reasonable premium), then they see change as bad. When they have it bad, then change is easier. What I’m struck with is when I talk to friends from Europe who are conservative business types but don’t question government health care or people’s right to it. That make me think how one stands on the whole concept is more situational rather than philosophical. So once things get worse you’ll get your single payer anyway, and the ACA was an unnecessary diversion and structural change during his administration was a lost opportunity. I’m not exactly with you on the cause of Obama’s reelection, but a number of factors went into pumping the economy, including subsidizing shortfalls in local revenue, which just postponed public sector layoffs. I was opposed to the GM bailout because of the cost (final cost $17B) and the way that it disrupted bankruptcy law. Someone would have bought the assets, or it could have run under Chap. 11 until reemerging. I do see how it had political benefits.
Most people here would say single payer or even multi payer is preferable to ACA. I still don’t understand progressive opposition to the cooperatives which Baucus proposed as a middle ground. They weren’t as good as a public option but better than what we ended up with. MD cost controls are a good idea and will be on the ballot in MA pretty soon.
That said, as someone who needed ACA and used it for six months when I was unemployed and then underemployed, it was a literal life saver. And I’ve run into other people in line at Walgreen’s and even the RMV who have said the same thing. I do appreciate that you are a center-right poster who recognizes the injustice and inefficiency of our current system of health care and is open to more progressive options than the ACA.
I think everybody, including Barack Obama, knows that we’ll end up with single-payer. I think everybody, on both sides of the aisle, are grandstanding and lying about that.
In my view, what the ACA does is basically channel a big chunk of change into the insurance industry, so that when the inevitable end comes various people can say “we did our best”.
We need government-sponsored single-payer health care similar to that used in the rest of the first world. Neither party will admit that, and neither party will face the wrath of the deep-pocketed 1% that currently fund and therefore own our political system.
Like gun control, single payer is another policy objective I’ve become pessimistic about implementing on a wide scale anytime soon. Before I get into a back and forth let me reiterate my strong commitment to both policies as a personal value. That said, Vermont was an ideal location to start it and it still was ultimately unworkable there.
Our best chance at getting it might have been in the 40s before the lobbyists and private care industry became so entrenched not just as political opponents but actually as a cancer on the American health care economy. It may be impossible to target them without hurting other vital organs like a states budget or the middle class tax burden.
So Obama was honest when he said if we were starting from scratch we’d pursue it but with our ad hoc system it is better to streamline it, force efficiency and insure universal coverage. ACA will fail at cost containment and you will see MD style cost controls be the next big thing, and it won’t surprise me if Republicans jump on board with that one. After that I think a public option which over time will become close to single payer, ultimately covering more Americans than it doesn’t. But we won’t have an NHS in America. And that style of system is becoming harder to contain and control in a post-industrial context.
On the whole I think ACA was an improvement, but there is no doubt that offering a service (health insurance) previously utilized by X people, and expanding that service to X+ costs money, and the cost is coming from higher-than=expected premiums, both on the exchanges and otherwise. I sit on the board of a nonprofit, and every year costs go up, and we are forced to water down the protection further, and shift more cost onto employees further in order to keep the plan affordable.So every year the deductibles and co-pays get bigger and the caps get smaller.
It is already the case that small businesses, which are the ones for whom coverage is so expensive because the employee pool is small, are weighing whether it might actually be better for employees to take the fine, kill the coverage outright, pay them, and let them find things on the exchange.
We usually hear what a success the law is because of the declining % of uninsured. But beyond that surface, I am less than confident that the thing is working.
Any modern health care system will be convoluted. Goes with the territory, but the ACA setup invariably involves stomping out a healthy number of fires.
Yet I think the reckoning that’s coming will be from employers, who should have wanted off this hamster wheel decades ago. Tethering you health coverage to your employment is an idea that has failed. It limits mobility in the job market, it stifles entrepreneurhip, the time management overhead for employer-based health care also surely reduces productivity.
I’m pretty sure, because of the ACA, employers with fewer than 50 employees already can opt out of providing health benefits. My expectation is we’ll just climb the ladder from there. If so, the replacement will be some sort of uniform system.
So I think you’re right that the ACA has inherent problems. The system it attempts to bolster is not sustainable. I view the ACA as an interim step. People can argue over whether we had to take it, but now that we have, we can at least assess our new position and ask what’s really going to work in the long term.
I think that’s part of the ACA’s design is that it will be a backdoor leading to a future public option, tighter price controls, and shifting the system to individuals on the market rather than employers. That will actually accomplish something conservatives have long wanted, but doing so will have have the consequence of making the public option appear to be relief or the salve.
The architecture and foundation is basically in place for government to subsidize an individuals plan based on their income, it will just be a question of expanding it and sustaining it. So building the exchanges actually will contribute to the death of employer based plans and eventually to the enactment of narrower choices under the umbrella of government funded plans. I don’t think it was by accident, Obama is a big proponent of libertarian paternalism and the Thaler/Sunstein rubric of choice architecture.
Great policy that worked and saved a lot of jobs and a major American industry. Exactly what government should do – step in in a smart way when things get bad, then get out. Romney’s opposition was so stupid.
Disagree on cash for clunkers. Not sure that did much good.
Fiat-owned Chrysler isn’t. Are GM cars assembled in Mexico American? Or cars assembled from parts made in Mexico? Is the whole Honda network in the US, with not only assembly but all the Japanese owned suppliers here?
I don’t really see any company as ‘American” anymore.
Not only Cash for Clunkers but also all the mortgage programs that were announced. The only people I know that benefited could best be described as scamming.
By taking older used cars out of the marketplace, it ensured the purchase of the cars being assembled by the UAW, and let them become more expensive by limiting availability.
I agree that things are not good. There has been a sizable recovery, however. Not nearly enough, but we are better off now than we were right after the downturn. That doesn’t really mean jack shit to the people who have left the workforce, lost their homes, remain in massive debt, have no savings to speak of, etc.
In terms of a legacy, one can’t look at the Obama years and see them as an economic disaster like one can with the Bush years. (He did make huge missteps which were foreseen and doomed the recovery to only being a partial recovery, though.)
Re: the ACA. For all its problems, it is still one of the most significant domestic policy changes in recent history and for the good. If we fail to build on it, however, it will go nowhere, or it could be completely dismantled by a Republican administration.
Roughly 25 million people stand to lose health coverage if the ACA gets repealed. A return of denials for pre-existing conditions and of lifetime coverage caps likely are unpalatable.
It may be that we need to feel even more pain and suffering before people realize that the GOP lies about health care are just lies.
Government-sponsored single-payer health care is the ONLY long-term approach that works. ACA was sold to progressives as a step towards that. I suspect it was, instead, a stop-gap and sop to insurance industry political donors.
I think it could well be the case that the only path towards single-payer that Americans will embrace is a path that repeals ACA, breaks EVERYTHING, and creates government-sponsored single-payer from the ashes.
I think I could make an argument that that’s the ONLY scenario for getting single-payer that has ever been viable, and that the ACA was in fact nothing more than a delaying tactic. I think I could also argue that if the repeal of ACA and subsequent collapse of our health care system (and perhaps economy) happens during a GOP presidency, then an equally-corrupt Democratic party will point a finger at that and say “See — we told you so.”
We are, in fact, at stalemate. Our political system is broken and has failed. I think the question is what, if anything, we’re going to do about it.
It might serve to force the media and general population to become aware of just how broken the system is. The ACA has directed sunlight onto health care, which now gets coverage at a fairly detailed level. We’ll have to see if that acts as a disinfectant.
I still think it’s possible the right gives up the ghost on single-payer at some point. Employer-based health coverage is bad for business and most of the Baby Boomers will be on Medicare in another decade. The health care profit margins on older Gen Xers won’t be nearly as attractive, less of them. On top of that, issue fatigue sets in when you don’t have a compelling alternative.
President Obama made major changes in energy policy, specifically on climate change-related policies. The list is really quite long, ranging from EPA to DOD to COP21. It’s not enough, but it’s a remarkable change in direction from the WJC and GWB years. A Democratic POTUS 16-20 would help preserve and, indeed, extend that change.
We kind of got out of that game under W Bush and I am really impressed with the agreements we got with Iran, the global climate agreement, and the handling of the Euro crisis from our side of the pond. Even the TPP, which I oppose, is an impressive diplomatic achievement and it is unlikely W Bush would’ve been able to get that many countries to agree to something. And it is largely a credit to both Secretaries of State, particularly John Kerry who is much better suited to be a diplomat than he ever was at being a politician.
Small things too like actually funding the Foreign Service and Diplomatic Corps and relying on soft power and trying new things like pop up embassies. If there is anything that will convince me that most swing voters will stick with the Dems it is this, I strongly doubt any of the Republicans have the capabilities to be good stewards of our foreign policy. Zero.
So Rubio’s reaction to Obama’s State of the Union is to say that the reason Iran detained the 10 American sailors was because they don’t respect Obama:
Obama brilliantly constructs constraining cages for our enemies that render them harmless (as in the 10 sailors being returned within 24 hours), save the lives of American military servicemembers, and create a future world that is in America’s national interest.
The response from the Chicken-Hawks? A yearning to send someone else’s children to fight their wars, a yearning for a return to bravado, and a yearning for a world of simple good versus evil dichotomies.
I’m a little surprised at the reaction to Nikki Haley’s response. It’s good that she called you-know-who (she didn’t say his name), and she really did do a great job in the wake of the shooting last year.
But that speech the other night … I don’t know. The transcript doesn’t do it justice. It was something about her delivery, which seemed stilted but … I don’t know how to capture it. I found it terrifying.
I mean, can anyone remember another Republican response that wasn’t totally forgettable or remembered more for a gaffe than the substance? Most of the Democratic ones were forgettable when Bush was president too, other than Jim Webb’s (where was that Webb on the campaign trail?)
What I find interesting is that she immediately was blasted by the troika of far right media (Coulter, Rush, and Ingraham) that have increasingly become the kingmakers in this primary. It was a successful play for positive beltway/Acela corridor coverage, but that very love is a double edged sword in modern Republican presidential politics. It’ll be interesting to see if they are mature enough to move to the middle in 2020 presuming the lose in 2016. She would be an effective figurehead for such a move.