President Obama is DFER's Ed Reformer of the Month

It's hard to believe, but the 2012 Presidential campaign has, for all intents and purposes, already begun.  I will be supporting President Obama again.  Yes, he's made some mistakes and I sometimes wish he'd fight harder for certain principles I know he believes in, but I think 90% of what people criticize him for isn't his fault.  The best analogy I can give is a bridge player who's dealt terrible cards and then has to choose the least-bad card to play each time, with his mortal enemies screaming "You bum!" at him every time he's forced to play a bad card.  

 

Take the economy: it was in a state of complete collapse when he was elected, yet today, 2 ½ years later, it's recovering nicely.  I never would have believed it, given that there was utter panic in the markets and we were on the verge of another Great Depression.  Obama deserves tremendous credit for getting the big calls right: he engineered a big government stimulus/liquidity injection (to be fair, Bush deserves credit for initiating this), he intervened to help the automakers get back on their feet, yet didn't nationalize the banks (those who accuse him of being a socialist have yet to explain that one).  Yes, under- and unemployment remain a big problem and he should have been much tougher on the banks/Wall St., but I think it's a minor miracle that we are where we are today.

 

And on education, my big issue, President Obama been exceptional.  He appointed and has fully supported a true reformer, Arne Duncan, as Secretary of Education, and backed a revolutionary program, Race to the Top, a competitive distribution of nearly $5 billion of federal education funding.  For this reason, Democrats for Education Reform has made him Ed Reformer of the Month (and "he's really more like the education reformer of the decade.").  I just donated $2,500 to his reelection campaign and hope that if you choose to donate as well, you'll do so via the DFER web page at https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/dferapril11.  Here's a letter from DFER's Joe Williams:

 

Dear Friends,

 

OK, he's really more like the education reformer of the decade. But after the 2009 stimulus yielded the largest federal education investment in history, sparking unprecedented state and local reforms, and on the heels of a tough budget fight in which he managed to protect key education reform initiatives, who but President Obama could be April's Ed Reformer of the Month?

 

The recent deal cut billions from the federal budget but the administration doubled down on their signature program, Race to the Top (RTTT). During 2010, 47 states applied for RTTT funding, affecting dramatic reforms throughout the country. That the President fought for $700 million to continue the program speaks volumes about his priorities.

 

It's pretty surreal because, a few years ago, electing a reform-minded president seemed like a long shot. Successfully agitating for a reformer like Arne Duncan to be named education secretary was unprecedented. And any kind of competitive distribution of federal education funding was a total pipedream.

 

Yet RTTT has already eclipsed the total collective discretionary funds available to all prior education secretaries. Implementation hasn't been perfect but it's still pretty impressive.

 

We don't always agree with the administration on education policy. Sometimes they yield too much ground to the status quo, like in recent comments by both the President and Secretary Duncan on the overhaul of No Child Left Behind. All the more reason to buck them up and demonstrate how much we support their education reform efforts.

 

It's time to saddle up. Right now is, in many ways, the best time to give. By showing up early for his campaign, we can show the President that we appreciate his priorities. Having a lot of donors is just as important as a lot of money (probably more important), so please go to https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/dferapril11 and give whatever you can.

 

Thanks again,

 

Joe

 

Behind the Abortion Warr

I hope the Republicans spend a lot of time and energy on things like abortion and whether Obama was born in the U.S. – their extremist views may energize their base, but it completely alienates moderates in the middle, the 10% of voters who determine every close election.  Here's Gail Collins with an op ed about Republican attacks on abortion, which is really an attack on contraception:

Beyond the science, there's the fact that many social conservatives are simply opposed to giving women the ability to have sex without the possibility of procreation.

"Contraception helps reduce one's sexual partner to just a sexual object since it renders sexual intercourse to be without any real commitments," says Janet Smith, the author of "Contraception: Why Not."

The reason this never comes up in the debates about reproductive rights in Washington is that it has no popular appeal. Abortion is controversial. Contraception isn't. A new report by the Guttmacher Institute found that even women who are faithful Catholics or evangelicals are likely to rely on the pill, I.U.D.'s or sterilization to avoid pregnancy. Rachel Jones, a lead author of the report, said the researchers found "no indication whatsoever" that religious affiliation has any serious effect on contraception use.

What we have here is a wide-ranging attack on women's right to control their reproductive lives that the women themselves would strongly object to if it was stated clearly. So the attempt to end federal financing for Planned Parenthood, which uses the money for contraceptive services but not abortion, is portrayed as an anti-abortion crusade. It makes sense, as long as you lay off the factual statements. 

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April 13, 2011

Behind the Abortion War

By GAIL COLLINS

www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/opinion/14collins.html

Part of the price of keeping the government operating this week is another debate over the financing of Planned Parenthood. Whoopee.

At least it'll give us a chance to reminisce about Senator Jon Kyl, who gave that speech against federal support for Planned Parenthood last week that was noted for: A) its wild inaccuracy; and B) his staff's explanation that the remarks were "not intended to be a factual statement."

This is the most memorable statement to come out of politics since Newt Gingrich told the world that he was driven to commit serial adultery by excessive patriotism.

And here's an article about the birther issue:

Investigations have concluded that President Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii in 1961, as he has always said.

Just this week, on the news program "Good Morning America" on ABC, George Stephanopoulos produced a copy of the president's Certification of Live Birth, causing a potential presidential aspirant, Michele Bachmann, the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, to say that the issue appeared settled. In 2008, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging that proof.

But the so-called birther controversy stubbornly refuses to go away.

The issue, which has simmered at the fringes of the nation's political discourse for years, even got a recent burst of attention when it was adopted as a talking point by Donald Trump, a potential Republican presidential candidate.

The result is that what had been a wispy tale of purportedly buried documents and cover-ups designed to hide the president's supposed birth in Kenya — a tale that has been dismissed by most mainstream members of both political parties — now appears to have staying power as the political season lurches toward 2012.

A New York Times/CBS News Poll released Thursday found that 57 percent of adults surveyed nationwide said they thought Mr. Obama was born in the United States, versus 25 percent who said he was born elsewhere. 

But digging deeper into the numbers shows striking disparities along party lines and regions of the country. Among Republicans, for instance, 33 percent said they thought Mr. Obama was born in America, while 45 percent said his birth occurred in another country. The nationwide telephone poll, conducted April 15-20 with 1,224 adults and a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, said that majorities in all regions of the nation think the president was born in the United States, but that those majorities were smaller in the South and Midwest than in the Northeast and Far West.

Around the country, the issue has proved to be a sure winner for the conservative base, with bills popping up in more than a dozen state legislatures to force future presidential candidates to prove their citizenship. Those legislatures, though, have been much more reluctant to turn this issue into concrete law.

Birther bills have foundered or fallen dormant in at least five states and are still being debated in more than a half-dozen others. In Arizona, where both legislative chambers passed one such bill, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, vetoed it this week, calling it "a bridge too far."

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Evidence Aside, State Lawmakers Debate 'Birther' Bills

By KIRK JOHNSON

Published: April 21, 2011

www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/us/politics/22birthers.html

OKLAHOMA CITY — Investigations have concluded that President Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii in 1961, as he has always said.