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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 6:58 pm Post subject: |
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If Congress approves President Obama's budget requests, there will be no more federal funding of abstinence-only education programs.
Barack Obama has recommended completely zeroing out Title V abstinence programs to states, as well as abstinence education programs to community-based organizations (CBAE) and replacing them with more than $100 million for contraceptive-based sex-education programs. The massive omnibus bill signed by the president had already reduced funding to abstinence programs by $14 million. |
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=522676
http://news.google.com/news/more?um=1&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=dMqiQhYlQILILTMJb9dB92gImSH_M
Stuff like this will pull in some social libertarians. |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 6:08 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| If the dems and Barack Obama seriously want to keep the under 30 cohort, then they shouldn't be laughing off drug liberalization. |
Why not? Where else are they going to go?
Successful politicians tack center. And Obama was laughing off drug liberalization as economic policy, not drug liberalization per se. |
I was thinking they may just abstain. Bucheon Bum is right that the under 30/civil libertairian types will not go for the republican party in their current state. However, many ppl were hoping to see a change in these policies which judging from Obama's and Yata's sophmoric responses, they won't. The drug war has been a collosal failure, and it isn't just stoners who realize this. Obviously, there is no hope with the R's, but apperantly there is no help coming from the D's either. Where would the Under 30/civil libertarian crowd go? Nowhere, they'll just abstain. |
I'm for drug liberalization as sound social policy.
But Obama's response was clever, he didn't address the ultimate issue b/c the questionner presented drug liberalization as a possible economic issue.
This isn't the final word the administration will have on this issue. But he's right that he'd be out of sync with our current priorities to be addressing drug liberalization now. However, I also will say Obama seemed the most reticent of all the serious Democratic candidates to change the drug status quo, so . . . |
I didn't particularly find his response clever. In fact, I found it condescending. I suppose that is a matter of opinion, all in the eye of the beholder. However, Obama's presidential career is still young and I am willing to give him the benifit of the doubt. I am withholding judgment. I/r/t the economy and the bailout mania of the past few months, I hope its all just an anomoly. That in fifty years time all of this nonsense we are living through now will just be a blip on the map of history. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 6:37 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| dporter wrote: |
dems vs repubs is a false paradigm that gives the illusion of choice.
in reality, the parties are simply two faces of a pro-war, pro-big business, anti-liberty monster. |
It is important to note the function of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party here, which is to channel the sentiment of the disgruntled masses into remaining invested in the status quo while paying lip service to the illusion of "hope and change."
BO, who has been handpicked, vetted, and financed by finance capital, has now shown where his loyalties lie. In the Senate he voted AGAINST a 30% cap on credit card rates, he wants to put the Fed, which is responsible for the current financial disaster, in charge of all other banks, and just about every position in his cabinet has been filled with the same Wall Street people in order to effect the final, total plunder of the little wealth left to the masses. And of course he is continuing all of the war-mongering of his predecessor.
"Hope and change" alright. We can "hope" that we get to keep some of the "change." |
Obama's Violin
Populist rage and the uncertain containment of change
May 2009
By Paul Street
As of this writing in late March, the Barack Obama administration and its allies in the Democratic-run Congress have been attempting to perform system-maintaining acts of co-optation and popular pacification that no Republican presidency or Congress could ever carry out. Lance Selfa reminds us in his recent book The Democrats: A Critical History (Haymarket, 2008) that corporate America would have no reason to embrace a two-party system if there were no significant differences between the two competing "subdivisions" of what Ferdinand Lundberg once aptly called "the Property Party." The business elite profits from a narrow-spectrum system in which one business party is always waiting in the wings to capture and control popular anger and energy when the other business party falls out of favor.
But the two parties are not simply interchangeable. It is the Democrats' job to define and embody the constricted left-most parameters of acceptable political debate. For the last century, it has been the Democratic Party's distinctive assignment to play "the role of shock absorber, trying to head off and co-opt restive [and potentially radical] segments of the electorate" by posing as "the party of the people"(Selfa). The Democrats performed this critical system-preserving, change-containing function in relation to the agrarian populist insurgency of the 1890s and the working-class rebellion of the 1930s and 1940s. They played much the same role in relation to the antiwar, civil rights, anti-poverty, ecology, and feminist movements during and since the 1960s and early 1970s. In every case, the movements that arose to challenge concentrated power and oppression and to reduce inequality were pacified, silenced, and ultimately shut down, their political energies sucked into the corporate and militaristic Democratic Party.
The standard historic pattern of Democratic Party co-optation and progressive surrender is currently trying to repeat itself amidst epic economic crisis and imperial disruption. Two and a half weeks after Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official, commented on the president-elect's corporatist and militarist transition team and cabinet appointments with a musical analogy. Obama, Rothkopf told the New York Times, was following "the violin model: you hold power with the left hand and you play the music with the right."
The Obama administration's record so far is richly consistent with the violin analogy. Dominant, so-called "mainstream" media routinely portray Obama as a "bold" and even "radical" "departure from the past"�a person of what the leading communications authorities call "the left." This is offensive to people on the actual left. The supposed "peace candidate" intends to increase the United States' massive "defense" budget this and next year. Reading the fine print on Obama's Iraq plan, moreover, it is clear that he plans to sustain the illegal occupation of that country well past 2011 and very likely into the indefinite future.
To make matters dangerously worse, Obama is actively increasing the level of U.S. violence in Afghanistan and�most ominously�in nuclear Pakistan. The New York Times reports, with no hint of disapproval, that he is considering "expanding the American covert war in Pakistan," where every U.S. missile attack destabilizes the political situation a bit more. Obama and his so-called "national security" team are planning, the Times reports, to "widen the target area" of their already "extensive [CIA] missile strikes" on that country to include Baluchistan, "a sprawling province that is under the authority of the central government" (March 20, 2009).
Obama is continuing core Bush policies on Israel and Iran. He refuses to pay honest attention to the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people about whose fate he stayed revealingly mute during the savage U.S.-Israel assault on the people of Gaza last December and January. He made no effort to resist the U.S. Israel lobby's torpedoing of Charles Freeman's nomination as chair of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman, a veteran national security operative, was brusquely dismissed because he dared to suggest that the Israeli apartheid and occupation state might bear some responsibility for violence and hatred in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Obama dangerously and revealingly resists pressure to investigate and prosecute the monumental war and human rights crimes of the Bush administration. He quietly commits to the officially concealed trillion dollar annual Pentagon budget, a giant subsidy to high-tech industry that pays for more than 760 bases across more than 130 nations and accounts for nearly half the military spending on earth�all in the name of "defense." The leading Wall Street investment firm and bailout recipient Morgan Stanley reported the day after Obama's election victory that Obama "has been advised and agrees that there is no peace dividend."
More, and several must-read Tom Tomorrow cartoons, at link. In fact, If you only read the cartoons, you'll get the gist of the entire article (and save time!) |
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lithium
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| rollo wrote: |
| I am a very devout Democrat but if we stay in power for forty year, I hope that their is a strong opposition party to keep us in check. Yet I see no hope for the Republicans for at least a decade. Conservative Republicans not neo-cons, not religious freaks need to begin organizing a new party today. The Republican party has left it's sane members in limbo. But I believe that the Democrats have the right ideas tooo steer America is a post-industrial, age in an increasingly diverse country. WE have seen what happens when those who believe jesus is coming soon and what we do doesnt matter, seize control. |
The only thing wrong with the Republican Party is the lack of a leader. America is a Conservative country; i.e. abortion going down in flames when voted on. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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| lithium wrote: |
| America is a Conservative country |
Yes. That's exactly why the GOP is having so much trouble. They're not even Conservative anymore. |
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lithium
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| What I do like about him is that he is using the tools of government to address problems. |
That is exactly the problem; using the government in a way that the founding fathers did not intend. Ronald Reagan was right when he stated that "Government" was the problem. |
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lithium
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 10:08 pm Post subject: ! |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| If the dems and Barack Obama seriously want to keep the under 30 cohort, then they shouldn't be laughing off drug liberalization. |
Any stats on the percentage of stoners who get it together enough to vote on election day? |
We agree on something. I think you have Conservative views that are trying to surface. DON'T FIGHT THEM! |
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lithium
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Pluto wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| If the dems and Barack Obama seriously want to keep the under 30 cohort, then they shouldn't be laughing off drug liberalization. |
Why not? Where else are they going to go?
Successful politicians tack center. And Obama was laughing off drug liberalization as economic policy, not drug liberalization per se. |
I was thinking they may just abstain. Bucheon Bum is right that the under 30/civil libertairian types will not go for the republican party in their current state. However, many ppl were hoping to see a change in these policies which judging from Obama's and Yata's sophmoric responses, they won't. The drug war has been a collosal failure, and it isn't just stoners who realize this. Obviously, there is no hope with the R's, but apperantly there is no help coming from the D's either. Where would the Under 30/civil libertarian crowd go? Nowhere, they'll just abstain. |
What about the "D's" War on Poverty? It is older than many of the Obama voters and there is no end in sight. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 12:25 am Post subject: |
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| people aren't going to jail for that "war" lithium. It doesn't provide some BS excuse for cops to suck at their job. And there have been reforms for that war on poverty. Can't say the same about the war on drugs. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 1:09 am Post subject: |
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| lithium wrote: |
| The only thing wrong with the Republican Party is the lack of a leader. |
That and being totally intellectually bankrupt. |
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