Tag: obama

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Ending gender gap in government employment

imagesPresident Obama on Friday called for the elimination of any gender pay gap in the federal workplace, issuing an executive order requiring a full review of pay and promotion policies, reports GovExec.com

“The federal government is the nation’s largest employer,” Obama wrote in the order. “It has a special responsibility to act as a model employer.”

“Obama called for a report from the Office of Personnel Management within 180 days to provide a “governmentwide strategy to address any gender pay gap in the federal workforce.” The proposal should include any changes that need to be made to the General Schedule to address the issue and provide guidance to agencies on how to promote transparency with starting salaries, Obama said.

“The executive order also asked each agency to review its specific policies, focusing on treatment of employees who take extended time off or work part-time in order to serve as caregivers to family. Obama requested each agency share its best practices for improving gender pay equality.

“All agencies must report to OPM within 90 days.”

 

More at: http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2013/05/obama-asks-federal-agencies-be-model-gender-pay-equality/63114/

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Obama can shut Guantanamo

In his press conference Tuesday, President Obama repeated that he wanted to shut Guantanamo Bay but blamed Congress for stopping him, according to Slate.com images-3 “They would not let us close it,” he said. But that’s wrong. President Obama can lawfully release the detainees if he wants to. Congress has made it difficult, but not impossible. Whatever he’s saying, the president does not want to close the detention center—at least not yet.

“The relevant law is the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA). This statute confirms the president’s power to wage war against al-Qaida and its associates, which was initially given to him in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed shortly after 9/11. The NDAA also authorizes the president to detain enemy combatants, and bans him from transferring Guantanamo detainees to American soil.

“The NDAA does not, however, ban the president from releasing detainees. Section 1028 authorizes him to release them to foreign countries that will accept them—the problem is that most countries won’t, and others, like Yemen, where about 90 of the 166 detainees are from, can’t guarantee that they will maintain control over detainees, as required by the law. Continue reading “Obama can shut Guantanamo”

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The New “mean world syndrome”

Decades ago media theorist George Gerbner coined the term “mean world syndrome” about a mindset of disproportionate fear among individuals.

Now the mean world syndrome is taking on international proportions. The communist enemy, with the “world’s fourth largest military,” has beentrundling missiles around and threatening the United States with nuclear obliteration, writes Tom Englehardt in today’s issue of Le Monde.  Guam, Hawaii, Washington: all, it claims, are targetable. The coverage in the media has been hair-raising. The U.S. is rushing an untested missile defense system to Guam, deploying missile-interceptor ships off the South Korean coast, sending “nuclear capable” B-2 Stealth bombers thousands of miles on mock bombing runs, pressuring China, and conducting large-scale war games with its South Korean ally.

Only one small problem: there is as yet little evidence that the enemy with a few nuclear weapons facing off (rhetorically at least) against an American arsenal of4,650 of them has the ability to miniaturize and mount even one on a missile, no less deliver it accurately, nor does it have a missile capable of reaching Hawaii or Washington, and I wouldn’t count on Guam either. Continue reading “The New “mean world syndrome””

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Obama budget: Jail before drug treatment

The Obama administration budget released Wednesday emphasizes drug abuse punishment and interdiction over treatment and prevention, despite recent rhetoric from the Office of National Drug Control Policy on a “21st century” approach, reports Huffington Post

“The White House budget proposal for fiscal 2014 devotes 58 percent of drug-control spending to punishment and interdiction, compared with 42 percent to treatment and prevention. The drug control spending ratio in this year’s budget is even more lopsided, 62 percent to 38 percent.

“The administration deserves some credit for moving this ratio slightly in the right direction over the years, but a drug control budget that increases funding for the DEA and the Bureau of Prisons is simply not the kind of strategy we need in the 21st century,” said Marijuana Majority spokesman Tom Angell. “At a time when a majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, and states are moving to end prohibition, this president should be spending less of our money paying narcs to send people to prison, not more. If, as administration officials say, ‘We can’t arrest our way out of the drug problem,’ then why are they continuing to devote so many resources to arresting people for drug problems?” Continue reading “Obama budget: Jail before drug treatment”

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Support for raising minimum wage

Seven in 10 Americans say they would vote “for” raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour if given the opportunity, while 27% would vote against such a bill, reports Gallup. “The proposal, made by President Barack Obama in his 2013 State of the Union speech, is backed by over 90% of Democrats and self-described liberals, and by over two-thirds of independents and moderates. Republicans are evenly split on the proposal, while conservatives tilt slightly in favor.imgres Continue reading “Support for raising minimum wage”

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Clint and Barack back together

Today two legendary figures wrote to the Supreme Court in opposition to California’s ban on gay marriage: Clint Eastwood and Barack Obama. The famous gunslinger (who famously admonished an imaginary Obama in a chair at the Republican Convention) and the president chose the same day to ratchet up their support for marriage equality. Huffington Post, covered Eastwood’s announcement this way:imgres-2

“Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood has taken his well-publicized support of same-sex marriage one step further, calling upon the U.S. Supreme Court to drop Prop 8. As Breitbart’s Mike Flynn reports, the Oscar-winning actor and director joined more than 100 Republicans in signing a Supreme Court-bound brief in favor of allowing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples the right to legally wed in California.

“Flynn describes Eastwood as a “long-time Republican with strong libertarian leanings,” and says that signing the Supreme Court briefs implies that he “is going to stay active in the political landscape.” One of Eastwood’s representatives and a spokesman for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group spearheading opposition to California’s law banning same-sex marriage, confirmed the news to NBC. Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman and GOP strategist Steve Schmidt are among the other high-profile names to sign the brief, CBS News reports.

“The 82-year-old Eastwood discussed his generally pro-same-sex marriage stance in a September 2012 appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show. “The condition of society right now, with the high unemployment rates and the tremendous debt we’re increasing and the government spending, we’d think there’d be [many more worthy issues] to think about [rather] that worrying about gay marriage,” he told DeGeneres.In 2011, Eastwood similarly told GQ magazine, “I don’t give a f**k about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of … Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.”

 

More at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/clint-eastwood-prop-8-gay-marriage-_n_2783489.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

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Americans still fear terrorism

imgresEighty-eight percent of Americans say preventing future acts of international terrorism should be a very important foreign policy goal of the U.S., top among nine issues, reports the Gallup organization.

“Americans also give a high priority to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and to securing adequate energy supplies for the U.S. Americans are less likely to see promoting economic development in other countries and helping other countries to build democracies as very important U.S. foreign policy goals. Continue reading “Americans still fear terrorism”

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The question of the border fence

imgresAs immigration has moved to the center of political debate, the fate of possible citizenship for millions of people hinges on a bolstered southern border.

“We put more boots on the ground on the southern border than at any time in our history,” President Obama exclaimed this week, adding that illegal crossings are down 80% since their peak in 2000.

The president committed a small army to the southwestern states–over 21,000 border patrol agents–racking up an almost $11.7 billion price tag in 2012, up $362 million allotted for the year before, reports MCNBC.  “According to the Migration Policy Institute, the federal government spent a total of $18 billion on immigration enforcement agencies, which accounted for an astounding 24% more in federal spending than what was given for the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service, and ATF–combined.

“And as the number of agents and resources allocated to the border rose, the number of arrests and apprehensions along the country lines plummeted. Continue reading “The question of the border fence”

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Obama points to assault on reason

Picking up on a theme popularized by Al Gore, President Obama recently criticized media journalism for

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promoting an “assault on reason” and for contributing to a divided culture.

“The U.S. news media typically applies hackneyed or partisan templates to political issues, often distorting rather than informing the public debate,” reports GlobalResearch:

“President Barack Obama has become the latest politician to put his toe in the raging waters of the media debate, with some mild observations about the powerful role that media outlets play in reporting – and often distorting – political events.

In an interview with The New Republic, Obama stated the obvious: ‘One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates Continue reading “Obama points to assault on reason”

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American Family Association condemns inaugural speech

Famous for its reactionary takes on many issues, the American Family Association (AFA) issued a condemnation of President Obama’s broad stance on human rights in his Inaugural Address.

In its remarks, the AFA joined other right wing groups like the Family Research council and National Organization for Marriage, who recently have been stepping up their criticisms of White House policy.  The AFA’s Bryan Fischer condemned President Barack Obama’s inaugural address, pointing specifically to it specific references to the LGBT community. As Huffington Post quotes Fischer: “Homosexuals do not have a constitutional right to engage in sodomy.”  The story continues:

“Noting that sodomy was a

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felony for the first 200 years of America’s history, he added, ‘It’s absurd in the extreme, it’s ridiculous, it’s ludicrous for homosexuals to claim that they have some kind of constitutional right to engage in sexually deviant behavior. Continue reading “American Family Association condemns inaugural speech”

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Sasha and Malia to make history

“That’s how it goes with kids. You hardly notice how fast they’re growing up, then suddenly big sis is nearly as tall as Mom and the little one is a tween, gently sassing Dad.” You have to hand it to Huffington Post for this entry about something other than the most obvious headlines. As the story continues:

“On the inaugural platform again four years later, a more mature Malia Obama, 14, and Sasha, 11, smiled, sometimes giggled, and chatted with their cousin Avery Robinson as they awaited their father’s arrival. Sasha bounced on her feet a bit as if chilly; later at the parade she danced in her seat to the beat of passing drummers. Malia, rivaling her mother’s 5 feet 11 inches, looked poised in calf-high black boots. Like any girls their age, they whipped out their smartphones in the reviewing stand to take photos.imgres-4

“Both daughters appeared relaxed and oblivious to their global TV audience, unaffected by their rare status, unfazed by the fuss over their father. Continue reading “Sasha and Malia to make history”

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Selling the Shootings

Finally someone is talking about this.  No, not talking about the shootings. Instead we have found a thought piece about the mushrooming “discourse” about the shootings.

It usually takes a bit of time for such a retrospective analysis to take place, but we live in a faster world. Today in Truthout, William Rivers Pitt  looks at the war-of-positions we’ve all been

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witnessing, and his thoughts are excerpted briefly below:

“A few hours before President Obama and Vice President Biden unveiled their proposals for gun reform in America, the National Rifle Associationlaunched a preemptive strike on the president’s children. To wit: an NRA-sponsored television commercial claimed that, because Sasha and Malia get armed guards in school and your kids don’t, Mr. Obama is an elitist hypocrite. Continue reading “Selling the Shootings”

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Majority back Obama on guns

imgresSurvey results just in say the majority of the U.S. population supports President Obama’s wide-ranging proposals to reduce gun violence

“Americans’ immediate reaction to President Barack Obama’s proposals for new laws designed to reduce gun violence is more positive than negative, with 53% saying they would want their representative in Congress to vote for the set of proposed new laws, while 41% say their representative should vote against them,” says the Gallup organization

“These results are from Gallup polling conducted Thursday, Jan. 17, the day after Obama’s announcement. The question asked Americans about the “set” of new laws, even though in reality, to the extent the House and the Senate pursue these proposals, it could be on a one-by-one basis. The results suggest that Obama begins his campaign for passage of the laws with a majority — but not a supermajority — of the public behind him.

“The question explicitly identified the gun proposals as those that President Obama announced on Wednesday, making it not surprising to find that the strongest support for the proposals comes among Democrats and liberals, and the weakest support comes among Republicans and conservatives. Additionally, groups that traditionally lean more Democratic — nonwhites, Easterners, and those with postgraduate educations — are significantly above average in support. Continue reading “Majority back Obama on guns”

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Barry’s boys club

imgres-2With “binders full of women” still lingering in public memory, a New Yorks Times reporter made an uncomfortable observation about recent White House appointments.

Obama’s key advisors appear to be all male.

As January has unfolded, “Mr. Obama has put together a national security team dominated by men, with Senator John Kerry nominated to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as the secretary of state, Chuck Hagel chosen to be the defense secretary and John O. Brennan nominated as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” reported the Times. Continue reading “Barry’s boys club”

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Intelligence community tries to predict what’s next

Spying is all about predictions: about knowing what someone else can or will do next, about thinking how to win.

At least that is how governments tend to think about spying. In this context it makes sense that the Obama administration would spend some time prognosticating. Turns out they spend billions to satisfy their curiosity, as the U.S. and many other countries have done for decades. Asia Times carries a story today about this curious and expensive enterprise, which begins with the paragraphs below:

“Think of it as a simple formula: if you’ve been hired (and paid handsomely) to protect what is, you’re going to be congenitally ill-equipped to imagine what might be.imgresAnd yet the urge not just to know the contours of the future but to plant the Stars and Stripes in that future has had the US Intelligence Community (IC) in its grip since the mid-1990s.

“That was the moment when it first occurred to some in Washington that US power might be capable of controlling just about everything worth the bother globally for, if not an eternity, then long enough to make the future American property. Continue reading “Intelligence community tries to predict what’s next”

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American prison population quietly declines

It’s common knowledge that the U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, especially among it minority populations.

Less known is that those numbers are dropping, ableit slowly. As reported in thesamefacts.com, this is the “most underreported public policy story of the past year: The continuing decline in the number of Americans who are behind bars or on probation/parole. Both the change itself and low level of attention it has garnered are worthy of reflection.” Keith Humphries offers some excellent analysis:

“At the time of President Obama’s inauguration, the incarceration rate in the United States had been

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rising every single year since the mid 1970s.The relentless growth in the proportion of Americans behind bars had persisted through good economic times and bad, Republican and Democratic Presidents, and countless changes in state and local politics around the country. Continue reading “American prison population quietly declines”

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Obama official sketches end to war on terror

“Neither the George W. Bush nor Barack Obama White House ever laid out a vision for what an end to the war on terrorism would actually look like,” reports Spencer Ackerman in today’s DangerRoom. “But as Obama prepares for his second term in office, one of his top defense officials is arguing that there is an end in sight, and laying out conditions for when the U.S. will reach it.

“On the present course, there will come a tipping point,” Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, told the Oxford Union in the U.K. on Friday, Continue reading “Obama official sketches end to war on terror”

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The Obama murder manual

Since President Obama took office in 2008, the CIA has killed 2,500 people with robotically controlled drones run by technicians housed in remote trailers. Anticipating a possible new regime in Washington, the administration accelerated work on a set of guidelines to give a new president standards and criteria for future killings. It’s worth noting, that 70 percent of the deaths have been civilian casualties, according to TruthOut (See, “Civilian Deaths From US Drone Attacks Much Higher Than Reported”

The secret drone policy under consideration was discussed in today’s Continue reading “The Obama murder manual”

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The opening of the American mind

Anyone paying attention to conservative media in these post-election days has heard this refrain: America has changed, the country’s ideals have been subverted, and something has gone terribly wrong. Of course, it’s possible to write this off as one more set of conservative delusions––one more Romney alternate reality. But this incredulous response runs deeper than that, since it signals a rejection of the very basis of democracy itself and the founding principles so many Republicans claimed to hold dear

These issues are explored in a thoughtful essay by Dinesh Sharma appearing in today’s online edition of Asia Times, entitled “Transformation of the American Mind.”  Sharma writes that “with President Barack Obama’s reelection it is increasingly clear, as I have argued in my book Continue reading “The opening of the American mind”

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World responds to U.S. election results

Outside the bubble of American media, nations around the globe are responding to the news of Barak Obama’s reelection.  See “World Congratulates Obama on Victory” in todays edition of Al Jazeera: “World leaders have hailed President Barack Obama’s sweeping re-election, with allies  pledging to deepen cooperation with the United States on fighting the world economic slump and maintaining security across the globe.”

Remember that opinion outside the US had favored a second term to the incumbent U.S. President by a five-to-one margin, as reported in Worlding.org (See “World Opinion on U.S. Election.” Oct. 24, 2012)

As Al Jaeera continues “Congratulations poured in on Wednesday from across the world, including fellow UN Security Council members Britain, China, France and Russia as well as its staunch Middle East ally Israel and Obama’s ancestral home in Kenya.

“Russia President Vladimir Putin, whose relations with Washington have often been frosty, sent a telegram congratulating Obama on his victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.”